The Cats Who Own Us
The story of Nike (deceased)
Our first cat. Nike was brought by my mother-in-law and sister-in-law when
my wife and I had been married for five years. They decided, apparently,
that we wouldn't be breaking up immediately, so came up to visit us from
Redding. They brought a cat with them, not inquiring first whether or not
the apartments permitted them (fortunately, yes). The cat was the cutest
scrawny little runt, about a pound of fuzz and squeak with very sharp claws.
We named her Nike because she was a tortoiseshell and had a 'swoosh' marking
on her head like the logo of a certain athletic shoe designer.
Nike was a very cute and loving kitten; we discovered when we took her to the
vet that she had a urinary tract infection, which we were able to get rid of,
but it was just the first of a long string of medical problems for the poor
kitty. She learned the HOWL OF ABANDONED DESPAIR when we left her at the vet
for her 'surgical procedure'. She practiced it all the way home and every time
we took her in the car. When she was about four, she came down with anemia,
due to a severe and sudden flea infestation. We discovered then that she had
been infected, as a kitten, with Feline Immune Disfunction Syndrome, a cat
disease similar in the way it functions to AIDS, but much much more contagious
between cats. It spreads in nasal secretions; cats greet each other (outdoors)
by touching noses.
We got her thru the first attack of anemia, and she was a little shakey but
she survived it and apparently returned to health. We learned how to kill the
common household flea. Regular flea killers work fine, but you also use the
"second line" of defense: spray all corners, floorboards, under couches and
beds, and on the bedclothes and sleeping and eating areas the cat uses with
a solution of IGR, insect-growth regulator. It keeps baby fleas from shedding
their shells while they grow ... Since a few years back there's also a pill to
sterilize any flea that bites your pet.
Anyway, Nike got thru her first anemia, but when winter came, she was stressed
by having some visitors who stayed a month and her anemia returned. Again, we
were able to keep her alive, force-feeding her, keeping her warm, and taking
care of her. The doctor coudn't believe we'd brought her thru the second
attack. She recovered, losing the tip of her tail and bits of one ear, due
to capillary failure. We were amazed too -- she was even more loving and
friendly than she'd been before, but still kind of weak. She didn't even
complain too much when we took her to the vet for follow-up examinations.
But on one of those vet visits, a cat with FIP was in
the room. Feline Infectious Peritonitis is a killer disease, and we'd gotten
her the vaccine, but it didn't take because of the FIV. She died in June
of 1989, as I was taking her to the vet emergency room, of a congested heart.
We had her cremated. In a bizarre twist, we learned later that the place we
took her had been dumping the bodies of animals rather than cremating them,
and we don't know for sure if the ashes and vermiculite we were given are
hers or if we were defrauded.
The story of Faux Paw
We waited a few months for any virus in the apartment to die, and then we
contacted a family who had listed their pregnant cat with the vet. We went
to the farm and checked it out -- there were four kittens not yet spoken
for, but the two which we liked best were a tiger-stripe marmalade tom, a
fiesty little guy, and another tortoiseshell. Both were polydactyl -- that
is, they had extra 'fingers' on their front paws. The tom was already taken,
so we reserved the torty (like calicos, almost all tortoiseshells are female,
and males with that gene expressed are sterile). We named her Faux Paw, and
when we got her home, she hid from us.
It seems that the cats had been in the barn with the cows, and one of the
other kittens had been stepped on -- so all of them had gotten a bit spooky
about Big Things Moving Around Noisily. It didn't help that their father was
a feral cat. Faux Paw hid, and when we got close, she HISSED, but when we
talked to her, she realized we weren't cat-stomping cows, and purred and let
us pick her up and feed her. Because she was clean of fleas, we didn't do a
Full Flea Bath (my LEAST favorite pastime) and instead just cleaned her with a
warm cloth.
She got a lot of ... (TO BE FINISHED)
The story of Savoir Fur
WORK IN PROGRESS
We were driving up to Target (a large chain department store with low prices)
on March 26th, 1996 when Penny saw something crouched under a car near the
parking place I had chosen. "Hello, kitty cat," I said inanely. MRRRRow?
(runrunrunleap PURRRRRRRRRRmewPRRRRRRRRRRR) he said in reply, jumping in
my open door, and begging for help and rescue. He was at most seven months
in age, and he was an un-fixed tomcat. He had a flea collar, and gum in his
fur, and generally was maybe five pounds of bone and fur.
Naturally we took him with us. There were no signs, no posted "Lost Cat"
and no registration of the lost kitty at the animal shelter across the road.
We ended up adopting him, to the utter disgust of our three prior cats.
He's been fixed, we've broken him of spraying, biting, playing hard with hands
unless the leather gloves are on, and almost have him trained to come to his
name all the time. He's a wonderful, affectionate beast, and I only hope that
the people who dumped him at a parking lot (!) will never ever have the chance
to own another cat, because they clearly don't know how to handle them.
Oh yeah -- Clint now weighs about twelve pounds, and is still growing.
He doesn't miss having his cojones, and we don't miss the spraying.
After two years, he's been reluctantly accepted as co-conspirator by most of
the other cats, except for (hiss) Vinaigrette, who still thinks he's the most
obnoxious dirty trick we've played on her since we took her home and had the
bad taste to already have two cats in residence.
My wife Penny is also on the net,
penny@agora.rdrop.com
-- she's an artist. She also writes. In fact, the only thing she doesn't
do, usually better than I do, is program computers and throw frizbees. When
she gets her own web page set up I'll put pointers here but for now I can
only gush about her in text format.
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Stephen Hutchison, June 19, 1998