I thought it was time for an update regarding our cat situation. When I last spoke of the cats I talked about the origin of our 'Front Door' cats and how they came to us at a time we were pretty sure we were getting out of the 'cat business' - more specifically, that my husband was 'over' having cats because he felt they led such 'miserable lives' and that he couldn't bear to be a part of the whole fur covered drama.
I think sometimes that the universe is just waiting for us to make these kinds of declamatory statements in order to prove just how ironic life can be. "Oh," the universe says, "You are 'over' cats?... because they lead 'miserable lives'? Well let's just see you turn your back on this little drama." - and then it drops starving kittens on your doorstep. Yeah, okay FINE! We get it. We are back in the cat business. Please forgive us for ever considering not having cats. No - seriously, there is no need to have that same mother cat produce another litter for us to adopt. Look, we got them all fixed so there won't be any more. You can STOP now! Quit bringing us more strays!
So, the number of cats we had in 2008 quickly rose from two (a number that was our lowest in years) to five, then up to eight, then down to seven then up to eight then down to seven, then six and finally five... then briefly to six and now back down to five. Oh, please, please let it stay at five.
Unfortunately we have not been strangers to multiple cats. I arrived in the relationship with my husband with four cats. It takes a certain kind of guy to take on a crazy cat woman but he didn't flinch so we managed to work it out. Those original cats have long since passed, but I wanted to record their lives in this story because I consider them 'foundation cats' who had rather unique personalities.
Khym
This was one of my original rite of passage into adulthood cats. I adopted him and his sister when they were just six weeks old. I took on this responsibility at a time when I was not sure where I was going to live, so for a brief time all of my worldly possessions and two kittens lived in a pinto station wagon with me. Khym was my nomadic buddy and we moved together over a dozen times during his long life.
Other than cats I had as a child I was closer to Khym than any other cat. He slept curled up next to me each night - he was the 'cat love' of my life. I was not very knowledgeable about cats in those days and did not get them neutered. He got into quite a cat fight once and ended up with an abscess on his face. He came home after being missing for a couple of days and literally fell into my arms with one half of his face swollen and oozing.
I took him to the vet and although his face got better, he kept getting thinner. It finally dawned on me that something was wrong with him and I brought him back to the vet. It was not good news. The vet said that he had something called feline infectious peritonitis and that his blood count was so low they usually would have begun transfusions by now. The vet also suspected Khym had feline leukemia, even though the test came back negative. He suggested I put Khym to sleep to end his suffering.
Well, I was not having any of that. I told the vet that although Khym was thin and feeling poorly he was not suffering and I was not about to put him to sleep. The vet said there was one thing we could try and I should bring him back twice weekly for shots of 'imuno-regulin'. Now at this point in my life, the idea of spending $15 per injection twice a week on my cat was more than I could fathom, but the vet was kind and let me start a payment plan so Khym could begin treatment.
I brought Khym home and decided I was going to help him get better in the only way I knew how. I created special four course meals for him twice a day consisting of cooked chicken liver, dried fish, ground beef and chicken breast. I also read to him from the Louise Hays book of healing affirmations. I would look up one of Khym's symptoms and read the affirmation as I held him on my lap. Between the bi-weekly injections, the food and the affirmations, Khym began to respond. After several months he was doing great. The vet was impressed with his recovery. I never shared with him my food and affirmation part of the deal, so he thought it was just the injections. The total for Khym's treatment came to nearly $1000, which took me a long time to pay off.
I consider it quite the deal since Khym lived for a happy and healthy 18 years. I first held him when he was a six week old kitten in May of 1985 and held him in my arms for his last breath in July of 2003.
Solo
Solo was a surprise in many ways. First of all, I was surprised to learn that cats, especially cats from feral origins go into heat at about six months of age. These were the cats Khym and his sister Hilfy who were Solo's father and mother. I had gone out of town for the weekend and apparently they had quite the party when I was gone. When I finally figured out Hilfy was pregnant I estimated she was just a couple of weeks along because her belly was so tiny. Then just a couple of days after this realization I was falling asleep with Hilfy on top of my chest. As I was drifting off, my mind kept asking me a question. "What is important about rhythmic breathing?" Hmmm, I wondered as I was just about asleep... rhythmic breathing ... And then I was bolt awake in time to witness Hilfy give birth to Solo right on top of me.
He was a tiny little thing and the only one, which gave me the idea for his name. Hilfy was an awesome mom in many ways, but at the time I was living in a two story apartment whose stairs did not have a back to them. I was downstairs a couple of days after his birth and out of the corner of my eye say Hilfy on the stairs about halfway down. I then noticed she jumped down from that height and turned to find that she had dropped little Solo as she had attempted to move him from his upstairs nest. The drop seemed to have no ill effect on the little guy but as the days passed I noticed he was not using his back legs, but rather pulling himself along by his front legs only. He finally began to use his back legs but was always a little tottery in his balance.
When Solo was two, I decided to change his diet to something healthier. Solo decided that he was not going to eat anymore. After about three days of not eating and not using the litter box I was panicked and took him to a special cat only vet. She was quite a character. First she told me he couldn't be just two years old. "Look at his teeth," she said pulling back his lips, "These are the teeth and gums of a ten year old cat." I told her I knew for a fact he was two since he had been born on top of me. When I told her his parents were brother and sister she said "That's it!" and proceeded to tell me how Solo got the short end of the genetic pool. "He won't likely live very long," she said sadly.
She got him through that episode and admonished me about changing his food. She told me something that I have remembered to this day. "Cats are creatures of habit and ritual," she said. "They are so stuck in their ways that the habit of the ritual can over-rule their instinct to live. Your cat didn't like the food so he stopped eating. The new habit became not eating and he was willing to starve himself to death just to keep up the ritual." I don't know if this is true, but she was wise in the ways of cat and I have taken it to heart.
I also took to heart her pronouncement of Solo being not long for this world. With his tottery legs and his tendency to ritualize himself to death I decided it was probably his last year. I had many, many last years with Solo. Every time he would take a turn for the worse, I would tell my good friend, "I think this is Solo's last year." And then he would rally and go gamely on. In all, Solo had 16 'last years'. He took his first breath right on top of me in September of 1985 and he took his last breath in my arms in May of 2001.
Jake
Jake came into my life as a full fledged adult cat whose owner had a new girlfriend who was allergic to cats. Although you can't really judge it from this photo, Jake was a monster of a cat. He was very muscular and lean, but topped the scales at over 12 pounds. His front claws were black instead of white/clear and so sharp that he once scratched several grooves into a sliding glass door.
Jake was a very dog like cat in several ways. He answered to his name and he loved to fetch. If you threw something he would bound after it, pick it up and bring it to you, dropping it at your feet so you would throw it again. He also had a stuffed dragon that was almost as big as he was that he liked to cuddle with and would also fetch it. Unfortunately for him he had asthma and died as a result of his condition in 2000.
Sunny
Sunny came from the same household as Jake and I was never sure of her exact age except that she was older than Jake by several years. She was a very vocal cat who would answer to her name but only if you said it exactly the right way. My husband used to test her and call her name in a very sweet voice and she would answer back. He would then call her name in a much less sweet voice mimicking the villain in a movie. Sunny would not answer back.
She had a strange habit of drinking water by dipping her paw into it then drinking off of her foot. She lived quite a few years with me then died of apparent old age in 1999.
Wilbur
Wilbur was the first of the 'cat math' equations that played itself out after my husband and I were together. Cat math is how you manage to attain more cats even when all of the cats you currently own are neutered. At the time he decided to come on board we had the four 'foundation cats': Khym, Solo, Jake and Sunny. I had created an enclosure in the greenhouse for my indoor only cats in order to help transition them into outdoor life. Wilbur sensed the 'cat vibe' and was drawn in.
Our neighborhood has had an unfortunate situation in that some of the residents are cat collectors. Now a cat collector is someone who begins to feed strays, but never neuters them. Soon they have a growing colony of many cats and kittens living inside and outside their homes. This seems to afflict people late in life and at some point their living situation changes, such as they have to go into assisted living or move in with a relative. At that point the collection of cats no longer has a home or consistent food and they disperse into the neighborhood en masse. One day there will be a normal amount of cats around and the next day the place will be thick with them. Much of the time these cat colonies will be related so they will have very similar colors or markings. One year we had lots of tabbies around then another year we had lots of black and white cats roaming the neighborhood.
We found Wilbur up in the attic of our shop after one such dispersal. I looked up and found this black and white cat looking at me. He did not seem wild, but he was very quiet. The next night he was still there as if he had not even moved. I decided to get involved and brought over a ladder and took him a bowl of water. He let me pet his head but otherwise did not move. Another day came and went and he was still there so I gave up and brought him some food.
Around his neck was a elastic ring of plastic beads and it was somewhat tight so I took it off. His neck was totally bare under the necklace as if he had some allergic reaction to it. He also had what looked to be a bite mark near his tail. He was friendly enough but not at all interested in leaving. I took pity and began to bring him food and water each day.
Here is what we pieced together through the various clues as we discovered them. He looked to be an adult cat somewhere around 8 to 10 years or older. He seemed totally clueless as to how to conduct himself outdoors and when we finally did get him down from the rafters he liked to press himself close to your chest as if giving you a hug. This coupled with the plastic necklace around his neck had us thinking he was one of the cat collectors prized pets. Perhaps he was one of the first or from one of the first litters. He was obviously used to being held and cuddled.
The bite mark on his back end told a different story. Perhaps he had been an inside cat and when his original owner left he was thrust into the cold cruel and tomcat filled world. A fight had ensued and he got bitten and ran, finally climbing up into the rafters of our shop. Here he had found sanctuary and here he was determined to stay.
Even though he stayed in the rafters most of the time we found he was a very clumsy cat. The evidence showed that he routinely fell off and knocked things over on his way down. We never witnessed such an event, but we did find all the things he knocked down. There was also the question of where his 'litter box' was. Unfortunately it turned out he decided it was fine to use a corner of the attic and this brought him into contention with my husband who did not like his shop ceiling smelling like cat pee.
A couple of weeks of this brought a battle of wills with my husband trying to chase the cat from the shop each time the cat tried to do his business in the attic. One day it came to a head. Wilbur had just used the bathroom in the attic when my husband was in the shop. My husband began to bang the ceiling with a broom to scare him off and the cat made a leap trying to get back to another part of the shop. His leap was less than what was needed to make it up onto a shelf. Both my husband and I witnessed Wilbur attempt to pull himself up and then he just stopped and let himself sort of hang there with his feet on the table and his paws on the shelf. His body language said it all. Clearly he was saying, "Go ahead, you win. Do what you must but I am not leaving. I don't have anywhere else to go." It was the most mournful set of slumped shoulders I had ever seen in my life. My husband looked at me and we both just cracked up at the drama. We picked him up and cuddled him and from then on he was ours forever.
Wilbur had the strangest set of eyes I have ever seen on a cat. Perhaps this was another thing his original owner liked about him. One of his eyes was green with brown mottling and the other was green with three brown spots. Sometimes the spots were larger and sometimes smaller. I could never find that there was any medical significance to these spots. He was very tolerant of our Schnauzers and very intolerant of the Westie. He also did not like other cats very much. He loved to go into the garden with me and watch me pull weeds. We first met him in 1998 and he delighted us with his sweetness until he passed from kidney problems in 2009.
Now this ends the log of the ghosts of cats past. It is a tale of love and drama and exemplifies our dedication to seeing our little loves through to their passing. I am glad that most of them had very long lives and most of them passed away at home in familiar surrounding without suffering. It was bitter-sweet remembering them. With a cat's potential lifespan of 18 to 20 years, you have a long time to build a close relationship.
Coming up next - the current cats...
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