Kitty Cats I Have Known

At about the age of five, I met a terrorist. No cutesy little pet kitty cat, huh-uh! His name was Reddy. A large orange colored tomcat, Reddy lived on the ranch but was hardly a pet. Perhaps my parents left food out for him from time to time, but mostly he lived on mice and whatever else he could find.

Like my fear.

Reddy may have just had an overdeveloped sense of mischief. If not that, then he really and truly did not like me. The monster would find a high place, like the edge of the porch roof, and lie in wait. When his unsusupecting victim finally came innocently and ignorantly out of the house, Reddy would leap down onto his prey with a broodcurdling warcry.

It was not like I had tormented him to get on his bad side. Even at that age, I'd have spoken out against anyone I'd seen mistreating an animal. If ever in my life I have asked, why me?--that was the time.

Strangely enough, he never did any real damage. At fourteen pounds or more, a half wild tomcat in "kill" mode should have left me needing stitches. Yet he never did. Looking back, it does make one wonder: Could he have been trying to make friends? A weird way to do it, true, but I've seen guys (including me) do stupider things than that just to get a pretty girl's attention.

Reddy disappeared after a year or two. Living as close to the wild as we were, many enemies in the area were capable of causing the demise of a mere housecat. Pet-sized kitty cats, in case you didn't know it, are considered snacks by everything from barn owls to cannibalistic cougars. If you run across a cougar going "Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" he's trolling for lunch.

Whatever caused the Orange Oppressor's disappearance, my nerves were able to settle down some, and life went on. Other cats came and went around the barn and granary, where mice and shelter were both plentiful, but as nearly as I could foresee, cats were no longer a major factor in my life.

Who knew I would become a complete cat lover at age thirty?

Once I graduated from high school, my ability to stay rooted in one place... vanished. Between the Montana ranch and the Eugene, Oregon townhouse, there had been many different jobs, one divorce, military service, a college degree, and literally dozens of places I called home...for a while.

In late 1973, that temporary "home" place was a brand new townhouse apartment in Eugene. I was working in a local insurance office as an underwriter. My second wife, Carolyn, had a job as a receptionist in a different office. We weren't getting rich, but we were surviving. You know the drill. Another day, another dollar.

That December, Carolyn came home one evening to inform me that we needed to adopt a kitten. Not just any kitten. This particular, tiny, tortoise shell female had turned up at a neighbor's place, possibly because she sensed the cat the neighbor was already hiding from the managers. Pets were not allowed in those units. We needed to share the risk.

So of course I said okay, and my life changed forever. Cindy, as we named her for the "cinnamon" part of her coloring, was a sweetheart who minded her manners except for the two times, later in life, when she came into heat and slipped out to get pregnant. Hey, life is life. I'm willing to bet you lady readers whose clocks are ticking can understand.

From that first night, Cindy slept on the bed with us. This was a new thing for me, and it did take some adjustment. She was a smart little kitty who figured that if people used drain holes for toilets, she should, too. She taught herself to go in the bathtub drain...and to this day I regret we had to explain the downside of that to her. What an accomplishment, figuring that out all by herself, and we had to go spoil it.

Her first litter was born while we were away on vacation. She was staying with Kari, a dear friend of Carolyn's from work. Kari woke up one morning to find that the entire batch of babies was already present and accounted for...right there between Kari's legs, under the covers!

Cindy was a great Mom to her babies, too. We watched her teach one of her half-grown sons how commando kitty cats treat a dog: Eight or ten claw-swipes across the unsuspecting canine's nose, lightning-blur-fast, before the dog (a little one) could even yelp or back up. Message passed: Don't get too close to Mommy's babies.

From the day that Cindy-kitten came into my life, I've been a cat person. Neither my wife nor I can understand people who write about them as being mysterious, aloof, users, etc. There was one period of some years when I had no cats in the house, but that was due to wife number five's extreme allergies. She literally cannot breathe around cat hair, and of course that had to take precedence.

With that one exception, however, there have always been cats in my home. Rarely as few as one, seldom more than six. All of them started out as stray or feral (wild born) kittens with the exception of Cindy's two litters. But...mysterious? Are you kidding me? Guess not; that term makes it into print a lot. To me, kitties are simplicity itself. Their creed:

Take care of me and I'll love you from the heart.

So they don't always come when you call? Big deal. I don't always come when my wife calls, and not even she would call me mysterious! Aloof? You'd rather have a dog you could teach to play fetch? Hey, Pam taught Moe Key Man to play fetch before he was six months old! Instead of throwing a ball or stick, we throw toy mice, but the principle is the same.

In fact, when Moe Key was a "trucking cat", riding in the cab with us when I drove OTR (Over The Road), he and I had a routine. When I parked at a truck stop or on a road shoulder to get some shuteye, I was not allowed to go to sleep until I tossed his toy at least ten times. In the cab, it was not possible to throw far, but he and I worked out a system.

I'd lie on my back. He'd crouch on my stomach, watching my throwing hand with the toy in it. After a few fake pumps, I'd flip the thing in the air, trying to get it past his lightning-swift paw-swipe. If he batted it right back at me, I just had to try again. If it did get past him, he'd swivel his hips, dash the few feet to the foot of the bed, grab the toy, and bring it back to me. And...repeat.

Kitten Precious plays fetch, too. Even Green Eyes is starting to pick it up, though she was an adult when she came to us (from a life on the streets) and didn't know much about play, having been working too hard just to survive.

All of our cats trust us completely--we've earned that trust, of course--and we trust them as well. Moe Key Man often sleeps with me, although he'd sleep with Mommy more often if his weight wasn't too much for her ailing body to take long term. Kitten Precious guards Pam like the little Angel she is. Sometimes she will do rascally things like bump a small pill bottle down from the bed headboard....

But that usually turns out to be a time when Pam knew she needed to get up--to take meds, exercise numb limbs, whatever. Rather than true mischief, it is more like a health warning: "Get up, Mommy, and take care of yourself; I know you need to."

Green Eyes, Pam has concluded, is probably an "old lady". That is, she may have come to us not as a kitten like Moe Key Man and Kitten Precious did, but as a mature adult "full sized woman cat" of six to eight years old. Our veterinarian could doubtless estimate her age with some accuracy, but we see no need for her to go there yet.

Why not? Simple: She's one kitty cat who has lived this long by her own wits, perhaps being abandoned during the last year or two by a previous owner, but (1) she seems totally healthy so far, (2) has contracted no diseases that we can detect, and (3) seems to have lost interest entirely in roaming the countryside. With her risk factors thus minimized, why traumatize her with a visit to the vet?

After all, even I still hate shots, and I know why I'm getting them!

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32