My Life In Cats

And suddenly it’s the end of October!  October is significant because it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I wrote about that last year, and it’s here on my Blog page if you’re interested.  I think this particular October is also significant simply because we’ve made it through another month of pandemic, and because the land to the south is about to vote.  I wish there was some kind of vaccine we could get to make both of these crises go away, but being 2020, even if there was such a thing, I have a pretty good idea where it would be administered.

Right now, I really feel the need for distraction from all things that could make me sob (begging the question Why did you let me watch My Octopus Teacher???) therefore, I thought I would write about cats, as we’ve just passed National Cat Day. (Yeh, I pretty much miss every significant day, so sorry about not sending the anniversary present.)

At the moment, I am what would technically be called a ‘recovering cat person’.  I’m actually on the Patch to manage my cat cravings.  I have been sans feline for about 4½ years and have been trying to hold off for an even longer time, if not permanently, and I’ll tell you why momentarily.  But I loved all of the cats that I adopted as an adult and also the ones I had when I was a kid, although it was a different time, and we didn’t look after them in the same way.  So, I thought I’d let you see the Rogue’s Gallery of misfits and ne’er do wells that I and then also my husband shared our lives with.

CLEO-1985?-2000

I believe Cleo was a stray, so she could have been 5 when I adopted her in 1990, or older.  She was loveable and cuddly with me; she had some kind of problem with Bob.  Perhaps it was political, or maybe she just didn’t like the cut of his jib. (Full disclosure; I had been cutting his jib, but I was definitely not a professional jib cutter) It’s too bad because he was also a true-blue Cat Guy.  But whenever he picked her up for a snuggle, she’d turn away from him, like a silent movie actress getting pulled in for a kiss by the creepy bad guy.  She’d had her front claws removed, something I would never do, but I thought it was a happy coincidence, because I had just recently purchased fairly pricey pearly pink leather loveseats, so win-WIN!  And then I learned how much damage her rear claws could do to that pricey pearly pink leather, so in reality, lose-lose.

Right out of the gate, Cleo suffered from some gastro problem, which led to her barfing on pretty much everything I owned.  In the 10 years that I and then Bob and I had her, I believe we laid out roughly the Gross National Product of Lichtenstein to veterinarians trying to find the cause.  But it remained a mystery to the end.

 

And here’s something you don’t know when you adopt a stray; as mild-mannered as she was on her own, whenever she was in the presence of another cat, let’s say my parents’ cat Mitzie, when they took her to cat-sit the first time we had to travel for work, she would attack that cat with the same ferocity and viciousness of a couple of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fighting over the last pair of sale priced Jimmy Choo’s, only with slightly less screaming.  Maybe it was all sound no fury, but I believe she truly wanted to rip their heads off and cursed the lack of front claws in those moments.

NELSON- 1999-2015

We got Nelson immediately after Cleo went to the great Cosmic Scratching Post.  He was two months old, and an adorable maniac.  I remember fondly that day when I was standing at the sink in the kitchen and all of a sudden, felt this searing pain in my right butt cheek, as if I had been shot with 10 poisonous darts.  After quickly checking that I wasn’t dying from some jungle toxin, I carefully pried Nelson from my backside. I think I still walk with a slight limp from that attack.

Nelson grew from a wacky, entertaining puffball, into a handsome, serious, sensitive creature.  Bob enjoyed the occasional afternoon nap, and whenever he plunked down on the couch, Nelson was sprawled out on top of him within 30 seconds.  I can’t remember exactly when it started, but he had a habit of pooping just outside the litter box.  I don’t know how many times I told him, ‘Nelson!  It’s THINK outside the box!’  Made no difference.  It was as if he didn’t understand English.

It has always amazed me that even though he was an indoor cat, and fed the best possible food, we had numerous medical emergencies; the sliced tendon, the blocked penis(OUCH!) plus an ongoing stomach issue that started 4 or 5 years in, which ultimately led to pretty severe disease.  With Bob holding him, I syringe fed him for his last 8 months, thinking that we could turn our baby around.  But in the end, he finally had to make it clear to me that he’d had enough.

MITZIE – 1989?-2003

This cutie was originally my Mom and Dad’s cat…well, my Dad’s.  A few months after he died in 2000, we added Mitzie to our home because my Mother was not really the biggest animal lover and we knew that Mitzie and Nelson got along like a house on fire.  They chased each other around the house like cartoon cats and when Mitzie caught Nelson they’d wrestle each other and nobody ever got mad and claws never came out.  And she would cuddle with Nelson which was the best possible outcome.  She was a loveable girl who was obsessed with rubbing her head on anything she could grab on to, often Bob.

She was just the sweetest, most sociable little thing…until you picked her up.  And then she unleashed 18 Ginsu knives that could slice and dice one moderately sized human into bite sized pieces with just four lightning swipes.

Whenever we had to get her into a carrier for a vet visit, it was like running a highly dangerous secret ops mission:

“All right troops, without Target’s knowledge, secure the crate and place in hidden position, lure Target to the designated spot with promise of treat, while Target eats treat, rear team grabs Target and pivots NO MORE than two inches to crate opening, insert Target in crate, and CLOSE DOOR as fast as humanly possible!  Good luck team, and let’s everybody come back alive!”

I think somewhere around a year after we got her, she started showing signs of illness, which meant that she barfed on just about everything we owned that hadn’t already been barfed on by Cleo.  Heavy sigh.

BELLA  2003?

I can’t remember the exact year we had her.  She was a tiny shivering stray that we found practically on our front doorstep coming home on a cold rainy night.  As soon as she saw us she started crying.  Of course, we took her in.  We thought she was 4 or 5 months old.  She was just the most loveable thing.  She liked adults, kids, other cats, although Mitzie was not thrilled with her.  Whenever Bella walked past her, Mitzie would give her a whack.  Perhaps Mitzie had become a grumpy grandma.  But after a few months, it turned out she was severely ill.  I think that might have been why she was so small, because the vet thought she was older than she looked.  And I also think that might have been why she was dumped on the street.  And so, heavy sigh, we let her go to the Great Scratching Post.

WINSTON  2001-2016

I read something written by a cat expert, probably a vet, a few years ago, and they said that if you’re thinking about getting another cat as a ‘friend’ or playmate for a cat you already have, you probably shouldn’t bother.  They’re not pack creatures.  They’re cats, and they are pretty content on their own.  They’re the Greta Garbo of the Animal Kingdom.  I read that roughly fourteen years too late.  Don’t get me wrong, we loved Winston.  He was adorable and hilarious.  About a month and a half after Mitzie was called to the Big Litterbox, I thought Nelson sounded lonely.  He would walk up to us letting out these sad, pathetic meows.  I later realized that was just him.  He was a bit of a whiner.  But I said let’s go get him a friend!  So, we did.  And we made a point of picking someone who seemed as playful as Mitzie was. What could go wrong?  And on that score, we were successful.  Winston was very playful, almost too much sometimes, so that Nelson would get mad, a fight would ensue and then they’d bring out the automatic weapons and police would be called.  Good times!  It was clear pretty early on the difference in their personalities.  Winston was such a clown, so we called him The Comedian.  Nelson, on the other hand, was serious, sensitive, so he became known as The Critic.

I used to wonder why Winston ended up at the shelter, seeing as he was such a loveable bonehead.  It took me many years to figure it out.  As a matter of fact, I really wasn’t absolutely sure until after Nelson was gone: Winston was a pee monster.  He peed on EVERYTHING.  Everything that hadn’t been barfed on by Mitzie and Cleo, plus everything that HAD!  Leave a plastic bag on the floor too long?  Pee.  Buy an attractive basket to hold newspapers?  Pee.  Stack your sweaters in your closet on a shelf?  True story; we’re getting ready to go dancing at a club one night, and I realized when I put on the ONE sweater I wanted to wear, it had that familiar odor! WTFFFFF!??  But maybe nobody but me will get a whiff.  Did I mention I’m delusional?  We started dancing.  Body heated up.  I notice the floor starts to clear around me leaving me boogying solo in my urine soaked cloud!!

Nelson contributed a little bit to this bladder anarchy, but I believe he started peeing just to maintain his self-respect in the face of that jerk!  I tried everything; litter boxes in every room.  Pheromones!  I sprayed pheromones all over our homes, even spritzed a bit behind my ears!  It did nothing for the cats, and even less for Bob.  The end result was that I spent thirteen years washing, scrubbing, laundering, baking soda-ing EVERYTHING to make sure our home didn’t smell like we had 200 cats instead of 2!  I hope I was successful.  After Nelson died, I realized that I had blamed him for a lot of the indiscriminate liquid dispersal, and regretted that.  Once he was gone, it became clear why Winston had been given up.  And yet, I loved that little house wrecker.

So perhaps you’ve picked up on clues to answer the question Why Doesn’t Linda Get Another Cat During Covid So At Least She Has Some Company And Then She’ll Stop Bothering Us?

I get it.  You’re tired of me showing up at your place when I’m not in your Safe 6, or Double Bubble, or even know you.

The answer is that for those 26 years that I deeply loved those soft, warm, adorable house wreckers, it was nothing but barf, pee and poo, vets, vet bills.  And I’m just not ready to do that again.

I’ve heard about people who adopt cats and never have a day of health problems, and then after a long life, the cat pops her clogs when she goes to sleep one night.  I’ve heard tell in stories told ‘round a campfire, of people who put unrelated felines together and they all cozy up like long lost Frat brothers.  I’ve heard these stories, but I think they’re just legends, urban myths.

Some have suggested I might be cursed in that department and it’s hard to argue that point. I did have TWO black cats, after all.  Who knows what spells they may have spun on me.  I just don’t want to test the theory.

So for now I take pleasure in other people’s non-universal-peeing pets.  I’ve got the cravings under control…eeee, look at these pretty things…

…I’m booking a doctor’s appointment…I think I need a fresh patch.