Those Whom the Cat Gods Love

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*A blast from the past post from December 13 2010.  It’s a silly post about how we came by our cats.  Also, as a public service, announcement, Peter Grant sent me an email asking:

Following my recent guest article, as you’ll recall, a reader asked how
to avoid the pitfalls of writing about military service and combat
without having experienced them.  I’ve been thinking about how to
approach the subject, and tonight I put up a blog post asking my readers
for input.  It goes into a lot of detail about the problems involved,
and asks whether it’s worth trying to set the record straight, or leave
well enough alone.  You’ll find it at:
Writing about military service and war

I’d be grateful if you’d please mention that to your readers tomorrow,
and ask them to click over, read the article, and leave their comments
and input.  — Peter

Also, under various news: in case you wondered what was up with Witchfinder, part of it has been trying to get the cover just right.  Well, I think I have now, so I’m posting it below.  Now health holding a little while, I’ll get the edits gone over and send to the subscribers and make an ARC available for purchase.  (Why an ARC?  Because I’ll only officially release it three months from now. I’m going to announce it, send it out for reviews, etc.)witchfindercoverfinalSoon, very soon.  I promise.*

And now, Those Whom The Cat Gods Love!

D’Artagnan in pastels, by Sarah

Cats. I think twice in our whole lives as cat owners (though there is some doubt as to who owns whom) we went out of our way to get a cat. First, when we bought our first house. We finally could have pets (before that we had a remote controlled jeep we called Fido and took for walks. Freaked out the neighbors) and I held out for a marmelade cat. We heard of a friend whose daughter, living in a college dorm, had unwittingly given refuge to a female marmelade (it’s so rare, she assumed cat was male) in what the victorians called an interesting condition. This girl cat, Tiffany, had delivered herself of four bouncing baby kittens and the dorm didn’t even allow pets, much less five cats in one room.

So we went out and fell in love at first sight with this bouncy little ball of fat and fluffy orange fur whom they called Garfield – and we called Pixel. Problem was Pixel was still nursing, at eight weeks, and eating no solid food. Also, he was very attached to his identical, somewhat thinner, twin whose original name I can’t remember but whom we named Randy.

My husband who had never had a cat in his life told me “you know, they’ll need company while we’re away at work. If we take the twins it will be better.” So, we promised to pick them up when Pixie started eating solids and we went home.

This is when the cat-gods intervened. You see, cat gods are… well… cats. They hear your willingness to host one of their minions, and they … see an opening. In the next week, my husband went for a drive and rescued a scrap of a black kitten, whom he named Petronius the Arbiter before I ever met him. (Pete earned the nickname “Cat from Hell” on his own.)

Suddenly and through no fault of our own we found ourselves with three alpha males. (Pixie did start eating solid food. At sixteen weeks. No, I’m not joking. For the longest time he’d run away if there were more than three pieces of dry food on his dish. I have NO idea why. I think he thought they were preparing for revolution? We had to feed him three bits at a time. But he grew into a lovely and headstrong cat who “spoke” the closest to human I’ve ever heard including freaky internet talking cat videos. The other cats used to have him talk to us when there was a problem, (like lack of food or water) earning him the family title of Speaker to The Humans.)

But the cat gods weren’t done with us – oh, no. Over the next year we rescued a couple of twin orphans, DT and Zebbie.

And then it stopped raining kittens – or at least being at maximum capacity, (though we lost Zebbie a year in) we were more careful about you know… attracting the critters – for about twelve years. At which point, I thought “all our cats are going to get old. We should get a new kitten to cheer us up.”

My husband said if we got any more cats, we’d have to get a Cornish Rex. I THINK he thought this would stand in the way of the mad feline divinities. Lo and behold, there was a litter for sale half an hour from our house. We acquired Miranda with part of the advance for my first book. (She rules the household with an iron paw.)

The problem is – apparently – we’d attracted the attention of the cat gods. The next year, when Pete died, through a combination of factors too weird to explain, we rescued Euclid (aka Pythagoras in the mysteries, aka, the world’s most neurotic cat.) A year after that we lost Randy and two years later, D’Artagnan waltzed into our kitchen in the middle of a snow storm. He was a little 8 week cat all fluff and meows. We couldn’t find anyone who admitted to knowing him (though we found out whose he was eventually. Yes, we did. They threw him out. During a snow storm.) What could we do? He’s been with us ever since.

And I thought that was it, even though we lost Pixie. Turned out I was wrong. You see – sigh – I thought it was perfectly safe to go mini golfing on a warm summer night. Only, there was this incredibly fuzzy white and grey cat (other than the patches being grey, he looks EXACTLY like a Turkish Van. Same personality, too) starved and covered in grease and with a broken tail. He came to my younger son and… yeah. His name is Havelock Vetinari, Havey for short or – appropriately – Absurd. He was a great comfort to DT in her last year of life. She’d lost all her friends and none of the three new cats were friendly, but Havelock liked to cuddle and groom her.

And that’s it, right? We’re safe now, right?

Only Robert says when he moves he’ll probably take D’Artagnan. And Marshall says if when he gets to move he’s taking Miranda. (They’re inseparable.) And we’re thinking… is the cat gods attention activated by our wanting cats, or by a cat family being a few cats below par? Maybe we should get a dog instead? Is there such a thing as a dog god?

103 thoughts on “Those Whom the Cat Gods Love”

  1. My god, a Sarah post without comments? Can’t have that.
    The cat gods are indeed capricious. For a while they rained kittens on us, and then the rain stopped. Our last two, Shadow and Kahlua, died a couple of years ago, and now we have none. Sadness reigns. (Our condo’s rules changed and furry pets are not allowed. May have to move.)

    Like

  2. I miss cats. I have been living vicariously on your cat posts this year. The dog on the other hand… she’s very friendly, smart, if not fully trained (there were good reasons, including that she wasn’t HIS dog until they didn’t want her anymore, and then she was)…

    Like

  3. Did I ever tell you about the feral tortoiseshell kitten with dysentary that moved in on me? I had three other cats (rescued kittens) at the time and apparently she figured it was warm, there was food, no other cats hassling her, and there was this shelf of shirts in my closet that she could have the squirts on. She was a wild little scrap of misery that could barley move. And she still managed to escape from the vet’s examination room and might have made it out the door but was misdirected by the plate-glass windows. After three or four years, she will actually sit in my lap an likes to be petted.
    Or the other little black kitty that got my attention by sitting on the pumpkin on my front porch? The one the vet diagnosed with FLV and said “six months”. And that was also about 4 years ago. He is now sitting on my lap biting at my fingers.

    Like

  4. The cats of Casa d’Alger: Better stand back; this could get long. I should write a post on my own damned blog. Look for it this Caturday. Long/short: we have ten. In a thousand-square-foot shack. Primary selection criteria, upon being offered a kitten: “Is it cute?”

    M

    Like

      1. no… from the dictionary apparently it comes from the Middle French “chitoun” which is a descriptive of what they do. (and they are sooo darling doing it)

        Like

    1. I have not read the story, so I’m unfamiliar, but I dig the cover treatment. That being said, I’m confused by the tagline:

      An evil man conspires to destroy magic. In all the worlds, only a man can stop him.

      My brain keeps trying to read the second sentence as …”only ONE man can stop him.” Is there something I’m missing that alleviates the confusion?

      Like

        1. Buncha the Horde has read it, put ’em to work. Then you can throw out all the ideas and see if anything sparked…

          :P

          Like

        2. I’d go with “one” man instead of “a”, but um, I realize it is a tag line and all, but I’m hearing this in “the world’s greatest voiceover artist’s” voice as I read it. Is that what you are looking for? If so, don’t change it.

          Like

  6. Hi! I read A Few Good Men on Tuesday – perfect alternative to watching the Shit Obama Throws Up aka SOTU. Fun read. I loved the ending. Thanks!

    Like

  7. We came by our current kitten quite strangely – at least, strange for me. You see, it is the first time in well over a decade that I didn’t have a housemate with cats, or have one show up on the doorstep (I kept waiting, but the only one who shows up clearly owns the neighbors across the street.)

    So my husband took me to a shelter’s “please take some of our cats” display. And there were kittens, oh, plenty of rambunctious kittens. Couched in the back of a cage, though, was a tiny little thing trying to avoid any and all contact, and occasionally looking up in misery. Her papers said she was four pounds and three years old, missing a fang, already had a litter, and “dental health should be otherwise good!” Her eyes said “Get me out of here!”

    And so I paid for a cat. Can you buy love? You can certainly buy a cat, but the love comes free. As do the bitten fingers, the rampaging riots down the hall at 3am, the weight of eight pounds (she doubled) on my bladder and purring loudly after midnight…

    Like

    1. You remind me of the Mutts cartoon where one character says that you can’t buy love, and another retorts that it can be bought a very reasonable price at the local shelter.

      Like

  8. Like Mark, I should probably talk about my cats/dogs at my own blog, but I haven’t got one anymore.

    Pets are like Lay’s Potato Chips at my house. No one can adopt just one.

    Twenty years ago, when I was fairly newly married, I found that my wife was quite fond of cats. So I was okay with her adopting a Persian kitten from a friend of a friend (of a friend? I can’t quite remember just how far removed …) She was a beautiful tortoise Persian (the kitten, I mean) that was just darling when exploring the car while I waited for SWMBO to do a quick shopping run at the local mall on the way home. Started out with kitten blue eyes, but they turned a beautiful copper when she matured. However, as a Persian, she had that wonderful dished face that … doesn’t leave any room in the skull for brains.

    We had to cut short a vacation when our housesitter called to let us know She. Was. Done. The cat had gotten to missing us, and decided the appropriate thing was to leave smelly markers to help us find our way back. All. Over. The. House. We could never get her litter box trained again after that, so she became an outside cat. (I think I discussed her ultimate fate here a while back.) So SWMBO had to have an inside cat, and she has a soft spot for Siamese, and we found a mix at the local pound. That was Mei-Mei. Wonderful cat. Used to like crawling into my lap at night and just purring nonstop. She got to be about 13 or so and her kidneys gave out, and it was a very sad day at Maison Budge when she finally expired. My wife had been watching her closely, knowing what was imminent, but Mei-Mei decided to check out while my wife stepped out for a bit of fresh air and exercise. Hard on SWMBO.

    The next cat was adopted by my daughter. Angel is also a Siamese mix, and such a temperamental thing that I usually call her Ming the Merciless. She can be very affectionate, but she can also be nasty — I woke up one night to a burning pain in my hand, and found the cat had spooked for some reason (like Mei-Mei, she likes to sleep on my lap at night) and savaged the nearest target of opportunity, which happened to be my hand.

    Well, SWMBO couldn’t stand that her daughter had a cat and she handn’t, so it was another trip to the pound. And she brought back two Siamese mixes, because she just couldn’t stand to adopt the one Siamese kitten out of the cage and leave the other. She dubbed them Sakura and Stormy, but I call them Squeakums and Bear for the excellent reason that those are much more descriptive names. Squeakums is the most beautiful cat I’ve had in the house, with the possible exception of Misty (the Persian), but she is a bit shy and her meow is a squeaky meow. Bear is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a feline Odd. SWMBO theorizes that there is something subtly off in her eyesight, though you wouldn’t guess it from the way she chases the frikkin’ red dot that keeps appearing and dancing around her ;) She is the only cat I’ve ever met who can fairly be described as clumsy. You know how cats always land on their feet? Uh-uh. If Bear falls off something (and it happens) she invariably lands on her head. And she walks like a little bear, kind of galumfing along, hence the nickname. She’s even a bit bear-shaped. She is also much more doglike in her behavior than catlike — oh, sure, there’s the dancing red dot thing, but she has no interest in catnip, is oblivious to Ming the Merciless’ efforts to enforce a cat social hierarchy, suffers various forms of abuse the way a loyal dog would*, and so on.

    Turns out I’m more a dog person, even if I’ve become partial to the cats, and so SWMBO got me a dachshund puppy for my birthday one year. Laci was a perfect little black-and-tan shorthaired small dachshund, meaning yappy and territorial but very loyal. Oh, heck, I might as well link the essay: http://kgbudge.com/essays/Dachshunds_and_little_boys.html

    Yeah, I had a blog once. Lots of work, never attracted very many readers.

    Laci is a little too loyal. She’d whine more or less nonstop when I was at work, which drove SWMBO batty. Her solution? We adopted a second dachshund. A pet dog for our pet dog, so to speak. Suki is a long-haired dachshund, meaning she’s really a cocker spaniel with short legs and the I.Q. of a rutabaga. But she does keep Laci company pretty well.

    We were supposed to stop there, but then my daughter got recruited to foster a kitten someone had abandoned in a local park. I think I mentioned that here before too. Tiny little thing which required bottle feeding at first. Not a Siamese; a tuxedo kitty. When she growed up, my daughter couldn’t stand to give her back to the pound, which I think is what the evil pound people were kind of expecting all along. (The devils.) Her proper name is Zoe but I call her Monkey. Actually, the name is so appropriate the whole family calls her Monkey now. Monkey is a very small cat even fully grown, and she has a remarkably high diffusion coefficient. I’ve seen her fly through the air in an excellent imitation of the Vorpel Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, complete with vicious intentions at the end of the flight. (No decapitations so far, but I worry about her cat-fantasies sometimes.)

    My daughter has fostered two more cats since then. We finally drew the line on keeping them; one has found a very nice home, and the other is being vigorously marketed by the pound in the local paper. Word gets around: last holidays, we ended up putting up a very sweet little kitten for a few days in anticipation of a couple of friends surprising their children with a new kitten for Christmas.

    I keep fish, too, but having a multiplicity of fish is not particularly odd.

    ————————–
    *My wife has a bit of Ming the Merciless in her. She occasionally snatches up a cat to cuddle close to her face, whether Kitty wants to or not. SWMBO is remarkably skilled at snatching in such a way that the cat is caught off-guard and held in such a way that she cannot fight back, but only mew plaintively. Go figure.

    Like

    1. The Deranged Daughter declaimed that our Mittens (solid gray, looked like a Russian Blue near as we could figure, and never got any pie) was a small dog in a cat suit. Certainly his personality was doggish, if not dogged — the kitty ADD precluded that. He also demonstrated a remarkable facility with gravitational fields such that when he slept atop you you remained in place, unlike other cats I’ve known who floated atop the covers, allowing the sleeper to roll over from time to time. He was also the only cat I’ve ever known who could not be picked up one-handed, tending to slide out one direction or the other.

      Like

  9. Certainly there are Dog Gods, as you will swiftly find the first time you take in a stray. It will suddenly become apparent to you that there are strays everywhere. You won’t be able to drive to the store without seeing a dog wandering around with that special attitude that doesn’t say “I’m out on a lark” but instead “how has this terrible thing happened to me?”

    And unlike cats, who may be just fine wandering around scrounging meals and an occasional warm place to sleep, a dog wants YOU. He wants to swear allegiance to you and form a lifelong bond of loyalty. He wants to be a member of a pack, and he’ll die if he fails. Try passing one up after you realize that.

    Also, try this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeSNxRJ6zzA

    Like

    1. unlike SOME cats … the stray who turned up on our porch the other day made it plain, after just a little food to stay the pangs, that while she liked the food what she really wanted was to live inside, with us, and be loved. More than anything…
      Although I couldn’t call anything that would put a ferret to shame in snuggling around neck and shoulders, “dog-like”, the desire for my-persons-attention sure is!

      Like

    2. A thing I love about our area… a couple of times I’ve been bringing the kids back from the doctor or something, and seen a dog (usually a toy) out in traffic, obviously in trouble. I find a place to park, make sure it’s a cold day, crack the windows and lock the doors before baling out with my cheering gallery going full blast.
      Inside of ten minutes– because it NEVER takes less than a half hour- I’ll have at least three helpers trying to catch the little suicidal maniac.

      Each time, someone else knows where the nearest soft-hearted vet type is, so I haven’t had to try to carry a scared puppy with three kids yet….

      I’m pretty sure that those annual TV “exposes” with a little kid not getting help while crying for hours on a street are fake. Not on purpose, but because folks recognize the kid isn’t really in trouble.

      Like

      1. Agreed–I don’t believe there’s a crowd anywhere that does include one or more people who couldn’t possibly resist checking on an obviously crying, abandoned child. The first thing you do, right, is automatically check for Mom or Dad in the immediate vicinity? I don’t even had kids, but I have that much overpowering natural instinct. There wouldn’t be any choice in the matter.

        Like

        1. If I see a toddler walking/running alone in the mall, I look to see if there’s an adult chasing/looking for him/her.

          Often, if the toddler is heading toward me and I see the adult behind him/her, I’ll step into the toddler’s path.

          Nine times out of ten, the toddler will stop and look at me and I’ll point behind the toddler toward the adult. [Smile]

          Like

            1. With the way things are now days, I don’t want to “lay hands” on any child unless the adult/parent knows me. [Frown]

              Like

              1. yes – to the toddler situation … Although I have known a lot of toddler parents– who didn’t know anything about toddlers. It was always a surprise to them when the boys (and sometimes girls) wanted to run.

                Like

            2. I caught a stray ferret once – poor thing had escaped from a house three doors up, and took refuge in my back yard. He came along quietly, and was back with his household in twelve hours.

              Like

                1. None the worse for his adventure. I called a local vet about him, and their office gave me the contact for the local ferret fancier’s organization, and they arrived that afternoon with a cage, and foster care already lined up, and a couple of volunteers to go pound on doors up and down the block. I was really quite amazed at the efficiency.

                  As for stray dogs – we find them all the time. On one weekend we caught four – two each day, and returned to their owners. I was afraid to set foot out of the house, the weekend following. I was afraid the strays would be lined up on the sidewalk waiting for me.

                  Like

                    1. I wonder if I could arrange for a seven year old female beagle to show up at your place. Now what’s your address? [Just Kidding]

                      Like

                    2. I was just thinking — the logistics of a dog ‘showing up’ at Sarah’s house would not be insurmountable…

                      Like

                    4. No idea Sarah. Which, combined with the distance between us, is why I added the “Just Kidding”. [Sad Smile]

                      Like

                    5. There was a time when I could have volunteered my tube dogs.

                      Some years back, we discovered that our autistic son is quite allergic to dogs. When they lick him, he breaks out in enormous hives. The logical solution seemed to be to make our dachshunds outside dogs. (Suki the sausage dog started out as an outside dog anyway.) But the dogs did not care for this; they wanted to be inside with us, and let us know in loud, unending, yappy terms.

                      This badly upset the neighbor.

                      Various efforts to curb their barking, ranging from citronella sprays to electric shock collars, were unavailing. Not to mention that I was not exactly happy about shocking my dogs to try to change their behavior.

                      I started making arrangements with the local dachshund rescue to find them a new home, but the person I talked to suggested I keep them in a kennel inside and just make sure they had plenty of opportunity for supervised outdoor time. I was a bit surprised; keeping dogs in kennels most of the time seemed even more unappealing than the shock collars.

                      What worked was to get a large pen, something like a toddler’s play pen, where the dogs had a reasonable amount of room to walk around and could be in the room with me. It’s set up in my man cave. The dogs seem fairly content in their pen, and the neighbor has less to complain about. Far from an ideal situation, but at least workable.

                      Like

                  2. Oh yea – the ferret fanciers really do love their pets. As for the dogs– if you gave them treats, then they consider you the “hobo dinner” house. ;-)

                    Like

                    3. Until my daughter brought home Calla (whom she liberated from an unfortunate situation at her last Marine Corps assignment) my back garden was the Garden of Cats. It was the gentlemen’s club for a couple of the neighborhood cats. They would come and laze in the sunshine. One of them was Percy, whom I eventually adopted, one was Sammy who fell deeply and profoundly in love with my daughter, and the other was Flash, who seemed ageless and indestructible. We used to joke that at the end of the world, the only living beings left would be a bunch of cockroaches and Flash. Alas, he was fatally mauled by a stray dog just this last year. He must have been at least twenty, by the count of his owner and the neighbors.
                      Also alas – when my daughter brought home Calla, there went the end of the Garden of Cats. But Percy is an indoors cat now, and he may be good for another decade, at least.

                      Like

            3. Had a neighbor some years back, who had a chinchilla. I told her that she needed about a dozen and a half more for a coat.

              I got a glare.

              Like

              1. lol – oh yea they are soft. I used to work in a school age program (about six months –I didn’t enjoy it). Anyway, the chinchilla got out of the cage and it took a week before I finally caught it. They were chasing that poor animal all over the place. I just reached down and scooped it up.

                Like

  10. Sib’s former-shelter cat of 15 years passed away yesterday. He’d come with a name longer than he was. After the little bit of 5-month-old fluff trashed sib’s apartment all by himself, then sat in the middle of the floor purring and proclaiming “see what I can do!” he was renamed Loki. Or Lo-cat. Or “dang it, quit!” Or the wee gentleman, for his way of expressing unhappiness. So now they are down to one cat and a toddler. I suspect a second cat will appear by mid-summer, one way or another.

    Like

    2. Sorry to hear that; my sympathies to your sibling. I suspect you’re right – after Loki, a single cat and toddler isn’t enough chaos. Toddlers grow up, too, so another cat must come.

      Like

  11. I attracted a cat in Panama and am extremely sad that she was with us only six months. Since I have been ill, I have had cat visitors (they belong to some else, do not accept food, and come take naps with me). Usually in the summer I get one visitor.

    Yes, there is a dog god– ;-) The dog god has taken pity on us and makes the dogs around us friendly. We know the dogs, but not the owners.

    Like

  13. I still miss the orange half-Persian that I grew up with. He had the loudest purr, and would be so vigorous in rubbing up against your leg (or your forehead, if you lowered it down to him) that it was like an affectionate headbutt. He used to climb the bunk bed ladder (six rungs, at a slight incline) to my top-bunk bed and curl up to sleep on my bed. Made a funny little half-mew, half-purr sound as he climbed the ladder, too, kind of a “Prrroooup?” noise.

    Sarah, you’ve mentioned a lot of cats, but I thought you had one named Greebo (after Nanny Ogg’s cat, of course), that you haven’t mentioned. Was that another nickname for one of the ones you did mention, or am I confusing you with someone else entirely?

    Like

    2. The prrrRRUPP? is usually done by mom-cats before jumping in the nesting box so the kittens aren’t startled or scared. It means “don’t worry, it’s just me!” I love it ;-)

      My kitties are Ronin the Perpetual Kitten (who I suspect is on the feline autism spectrum…) and Opal, Empress of All She Surveys (and probably a reincarnation of Queen Victoria). Ronin has always had “issues” with cat social manners; he wanted to be friends but would just rush up to Opal and bonk her with his head, and then look all surprised when she hissed and batted him. Things have settled down now. He knows he shouldn’t bonk, and she’s decided if she MUST put up with this kitten he should at least have a clean face. Then, of course, he tries to return the favor, only he hadn’t figured out fur likes to go a particular direction. Opal had this grim but resigned expression that pretty much said “He means well….” as she tolerated the wrong-way grooming.

      Like

    3. No, no. The problem is Greebo is NOT our cat. In fact his full name is Greebo-Not-Our-Cat. You see, he’s a tamed stray. He is for good and sufficient reason claustrophobic. Also, Dan says I can’t have any more cats. So, Greebo is not our cat.
      We feed him, vet him, and pet him, but he’s not our cat.
      He got his name when he ran off momma cat’s new suitor (not his dad. His dad was actually quite nice to the kittens) at eight weeks of age. Now he keeps the neighborhood free of rodents, mad feral toms and the occasional fox.

      Like

      1. I’ve got one of those – Rommel (pronounced Row-mel for reasons unknown). Smoked Persian with yellow eyes and red-black fur. Is the neighborhood squirrel clean-up committee – we shoot ’em, he eats ’em. Hangs around Schloss TxRed and scares sales-critters spitless.

        Like

  14. Shortly before we got married, we went to the shelter to get a cat. *A* cat. This was a shelter with a “cattery” where all of the neutered adults roamed around a big central area while neurotic adults, un-neutered cats, and kittens were in the side rooms. Well, none of the adult cats claimed us, so we started going around the side rooms. In a room with three four-month kitties, one hissed at us, one climbed into my lap and started purring, and one stretched for Evil Rob’s hand. “We need this one,” I said, and he said, “We need *this* one.” So we decided to get both… and then the shelter said that we couldn’t, because the one was female and the other was male and they weren’t fixed.

    So we retreated to think this over, came back, and asked if there were any way we could get both. They said that if we got one fixed, we could have the other… but there was a maximum 24-hr hold. They were then very helpful and found us a vet with an open slot for the male and reasonable prices, so we snagged him and put a hold on her. Got him fixed, took her home, brought him home and we’ve had them ever since. Big black kitty (something like a Maine Coon/Siamese cross) and a tortie. They’ll be fourteen this year.

    Like

  15. Get a dog who likes cats. And who can tolerate cats who don’t like him yet. We adopted a stray cat when I was a teen, and he came with me when I went to spend the one month I always did on my uncle’s farm, although at that time uncle had sold a plot next to the lake to his sister, and aunt and her husband had a build a summer cottage there, and I usually slept there and spend the days on the farm. So they got a puppy one summer, and I brought that adult tom with me, surprising thing is they actually got along reasonably well. If you count the cat’s habit of staying on furniture, just out of the puppy’s reach, and swiping at him with his paw, getting along (cat didn’t seem to use claws, though, I don’t remember the puppy yelping once, and there was never any marks on his nose afterwards) . The puppy didn’t seem to mind much. Seemed to think it was fun, actually. :)

    We lost that tom after only a few years. My parents kept a fuel pump for long distance trucks – not a service station, I don’t remember how exactly the system worked, but I think the trucks which came were always the same ones, the drivers operated the pump themselves, and paid monthly or something, not when they got the fuel. Anyway, that cat got into the habit of sometimes climbing into the back of those trucks when it was ones with open beds. We got him down a few times before the truck left, and then we got him back once when he disappeared, he was found several kilometers away, but then when he disappeared the next time he disappeared for good.

    Like

  16. Haven’t had a cat since I went off to the army. My SO at the time had a pound cat that wanted to be a Maine Coon (I don’t think he was quite big enough, but he came close) and she adopted a random kitten while walking home from work one day. Ran into a random tweaker (it was Denton, there’s a few about) carrying a kitten (also a tweaker, I suspect, although unwillingly) and found herself holding a kitten and no tweaker anywhere. Those were the last.

    My first, formative cat, came along when I was a wee me. 2nd or 3rd grade, I believe. He did his best to train me up, but I was a stubborn pupil. As a consequence of my obstinance he took to hitting me with random there and gone ambushes in the dark if I was up and about. Honed my situational awareness, that did. Stuck around until I was in college, then curled up and drifted into a long sleep on the guest bed one day while I was home visiting.

    That cat carried the moniker DC all his life. Thus named by my father, not much of a pet person and reluctant regarding cats: Damn Cat. I think he took absurd pleasure in fulfilling that naming prophecy at odd intervals just to keep my father off guard. ‘Twas grand. And exasperating. Or, you know, cat-like.

    I think, as a result of a fair stretch in Iraq – home of stray dogs, that the dog gods have taken notice and interest in me for now. And thus a Miniature American Shepherd (nee Miniature Australian Shepherd) has elected me leader.

    Like

  17. When your cat population goes down you need to be very careful what you say, you never know who is listening. I learned that lesson after we lost Dusker, one of those special once in a lifetime cats. We still had Dr. Seuss, and I made the comment that if we got another cat, I wanted a female, with some white (Seussy is gray and likes to trip people in the dark) who wouldn’t be intimidated by Seuss. Mom was still on the “this is our last pet” line she goes into every time we lose a pet (it never lasts), when this pure white, extremely friendly stray cat shows up, trying desperately to get into every house on the block. Possibly due to Seuss’s presence, she started living on our porch. Her ribs started to show and I started sneaking her food. Then Mom started sneaking her food. We kept expecting owners to show up, but no one ever did. By that time we decided she was officially ours and took her in.
    About a week after Misty came inside for the first time, she went from skinny to triple the size. yes, she was pregnant; that’s why she was so hungry. It only took another week or two after that for the eight kittens to arrive.
    Misty switched from liking Seuss to attacking him on sight anywhere it the house, and discovered she liked being the boss.
    We managed to find homes for almost all the kittens, but MooBoots kept getting overlooked (possibly because he kept hiding when people wanted to look at kittens) Almost 6 years later, he and his mom are still here.

    Like

    1. We had a cat that was pregnant. One evening, a woman who was a friend of my wife’s came by. Lisa points at the cat and asks her if she thought the cat was pregnant. The woman, who was a doctor albeit not a vet, says “Heck, no, you just have a fat cat.”

      Next morning, six kittens.

      Now to that cat’s credit, I had put a cardboard box full of rags in the closet. I put that cat into the box a couple of times the week before, loudly saying to her, “this is where your litter goes, get it?” Cat immediately jumps out of box with the usual rude flick of the tail. The morning I found her, with kittens, all were in the box.

      Like

      1. Misty insisted on having someone with her while she gave birth. Mom was the only one home when Misty started, and Misty wouldn’t quit bugging her until Mom followed her to her chosen kittening spot. Mom called me home (I got to watch for the last four) and Misty protested when people left. Just like my Dusker, Misty considered people acceptable kitten sitters, and when they got too vicious or annoying would happily let people take over the job of supervision.

        Like

  18. Ah, the Cat Gods. They sense an Absence in the cattosphere of those chosen humans, and they will send another. Sometimes after, although now and again they will provide one slightly in advance of the impending Absence. My daughter’s flame-point Siamese, Sammy – who was raised from a kitten by a neighbor but fell all ga-ga-in-love with my daughter some years ago passed on just before Christmas. But about a month before, we agreed to foster a kitten for some neighbors who apparently decided they didn’t want the kitten after all. (He was a tiny, bold and charming little scrap whom they wanted to keep as an outdoor cat! On the front porch, in a neighborhood where there are stray dogs who will kill cats, and hawks that dine frequently on squirrels the size of kittens…) So, we took him home, and he’s gotten on with all the other cats, and the newest of the dogs. The people who didn’t really want him thought he was a female and named him Muffin. We call him Stud-Muffin. He’s gonna be a bruiser when he hits his full growth.

    Like

  20. The dog angels pay attention if you say, “I will never have another dog,” or “I’m not ready for another one yet.”

    Leo was the normal, non-show-quality puppy we were going to buy the normal way from a breeder. Our vet found out that he had a bad heart and a few other things wrong with him, so his breeder very responsibly came and took him back home to spend his remaining time on earth. (He lived to be about a year old.)

    Right after that, Maggie showed up in the newspaper and my parents bought her for us. She was for sale by her owners, because she was a chicken-stealing dog. Her antecedents were shady and dubious, although there were some later who thought she had been stolen from a good breeder’s litter elsewhere (IIRC) and sold by the thieves to her previous owners. She looked and acted like a sweet grandmotherly dog of perfect manners and housetraining, except for that time early on, when Mom left a chicken thawing on the counter. Maggie attempted to repeat her live chicken exploits, but found that a chicken-sicle is hard to carry away. She was a very good dog. She was always an enthusiastic licker and greeter, until the day I came back from camp to find that she’d passed away.

    All the rest of our dogs were true rescue dogs. Leo’s breeder organized the national wolfhound rescue, and kept an eye on my parents to see when they would be ready for another dog. Rory was just a tall puppy when he got stuck in a basement window one day, howling until rescue came for him and all the other half-starved Irish wolfhounds in his family, stuck in the basement of a would-be breeder with a drinking problem. Homes were found for all the others, but Rory was terribly cut on his neck, head, and chest, as well as being malnourished, afraid of men, afraid of his given name, and generally unsocialized. When his physical wounds were mostly healed, we were called to come see him. Of course he came home with us. In two weeks, he was a bold young dog with a changed name, pretty decent manners and housetraining, no fear of humans, and a habit of wagging his tail so hard it’d draw blood if it hit the walls wrong.

    Cormac was rescued from the side of the road, picked up by a local deputy who assumed he was an adult who’d gotten out from the local breeder’s place and run around all night. On closer examination, it turned out he was a puppy who’d been living alone so long that his puppy collar was nearly strangling him, and most of his diet had been trash with no food value. (He had a lifelong habit of eating used Kleenex if you didn’t keep it from him, and of shredding paper with his paws.) Rory had passed away a few years back. So after he’d been cleaned a zillion times, and his huge matted hairballs had been cut off, and our breeder friend consulted by the other breeder, Cormac was brought to our house “for a visit” to see if we’d like to foster him. Of course we didn’t let him leave, until death made him leave us first.

    Liath was born on a puppy farm, and littered twice before she was two. Her whole life was in a tiny crate. When we got her as part of the great puppy farm rescue, she didn’t understand things like “sky” or “walls have two sides” or “you can walk through doors and leave.” She learned to open doors with her nose and mouth, to bound around the yard putting the fear of Dog into every squirrel and chipmunk that had once dared to nest there, and she loved every human she ever met. Liath is the face on my avatar picture, btw.

    Rua is my parents’ current dog. She isn’t strictly a rescue, as her old family did care for her. But they didn’t find themselves up to having toddlers and a wolfhound puppy in the same house, and Rua was spending almost all day every day out alone in the yard. (Social dogs like wolfhounds do Very Badly as yard dogs.) Bored wolfhound puppies always find Things to Do (destructive things), neither crates nor chicken coops turned out to be any better places for her; but eventually the owners had a fit of sense and Wolfhound rescue came to pick up Rua. Then, on St. Francis’ Day, my parents finally brought themselves to report to our breeder friend that Liath had died that summer, and that they were definitely not ready for another dog. Unless of course there was a poor little puppy who badly needed a home, play, the whole schmole of early wolfhound puppy diet, not being allowed to jump so her leg bones could grow properly, and socialization.

    She was pure uncontrolled energy, ready to be happy or frightened at the drop of a leaf, almost more like a horse in temperament than a dog. After an unfortunate early incident which taught my mom that her bones weren’t as young as they used to be, my dad took over caring for Rua. (Rua still sticks to him like glue a great deal of the time.) It literally took years for Rua to become a normal sensible wolfhound, although she always had a good temperament.

    Rua is getting a bit old for a wolfhound now, but she’s still probably one of the sleekest, fastest, sneakiest wolfhound females we’ve ever seen. She is terribly spoiled, and quite smug about being the only wolfhound my parents have ever allowed to lie down fully on the couch.

    Like

  22. Pythagoras

    *sigh* I do love that cat… reminds me of Mamma Cat. My childhood Calico.

    Our current cats are…um… well-mannered dogs. Including their size. I love the boys (no fair asking after they land on my gut in bed) but…..

    Like

  23. Only Robert says when he moves he’ll probably take D’Artagnan. And Marshall says if when he gets to move he’s taking Miranda. (They’re inseparable.) And we’re thinking… is the cat gods attention activated by our wanting cats, or by a cat family being a few cats below par? Maybe we should get a dog instead? Is there such a thing as a dog god?

    I’ve heard Corgis work.

    That’s why my husband is cheering for one when we have our own place….

    Like

    1. Corgis are nice. Allergies keep pets out of the family homes, but I have fond memories of the corgi belonging to family friends.

      Plus of course from Tasha Tudor’s works.

      Like

  24. Incidentally, I can’t see the boys. I can hear them though, and I’m guessing the dark spot in the lounger is Princess’s kitten, and that means that Fluffy is over on the table, both of them snoring up a storm. Really snoring, I can hear them over two computers.

    Like

  25. I have two black cats, brother and sister, Max and Minerva. I wasn’t sure they were going to be black, at first they had their grey undercoat, but their black guard hairs were sparse, so they had a very odd “Inverted color” effect, which they outgrew. And Grew. They’re big cats, about 13 lbs each. Not the brightest cats I’ve had, but very well-behaved and non-destructive – except for the never throwing up on the linoleum thing.

    Like

  26. My nieces decided that I needed one of the males from a litter. He decided to fully channel the Maine Coon genes when he was growing up. Nemo (named after the captain, not the fish) averages 18 pounds most of the time and thinks the only appropriate place for him to be is on my shoulders. From a sitting position between my feet, he has jumped onto my shoulders – his back feet hit my belt and never used his claws, and I’m 6′ 3″. When I’m home, he’s rarely more than 10 feet from me. If I’ve been on the computer too long, he lays down on the keyboard. And his purr? It is not unusual to hear him from 10 feet away. Then they (the eeevil nieces) added a white and black female that a friend was having to get rid of. She’s one of those, “When I want your attention, I will sit on your lap…and I will slit your throat if you don’t put me down right this instant!”

    Like

  27. Oh yes, there are definitely dog angels, or guardian spirits. That’s how my parents ended up with three dogs.
    First, there was Charles Dickens. Dickens was a Hunting Dog who was supposed to be my dad’s hunting companion (due to Dad’s failing health, Dickens ended up being more of a newspaper reading companion). Half American Wirehaired Pointing Griffin and half Chocolate Lab, (one of those unintended breedings) misproportioned and prone to vet visits because of it.
    But then my mom got a phone call: Hogan had flunked out of Guide Dog School. Hogan had never lived with us, but he was a dog we knew, having been raised by a girl in my 4-H club. Alas, her mother is a Dalmatian breeder and they were a little over capacity. Would Mom and Dad take Hogan so he wouldn’t have to go to strangers? Well, of course they would! (Retired Guide Dogs, flunk-outs or otherwise, come with paid for vet care for life, so it is really just a can we feed this dog and have we space question.) Enter a black lab who desperately needed to be in contact with a human at all times: the joke about Hogan was that he wanted to be reincarnated as a fur coat.
    A few years later, about three, they got another call from Guide Dogs. Arco, the dog I raised, who had been working as a Guide in New Jersey, had just lost his person to cancer. Arco was too old to place with another person, too young to normally retire. We’d raised him (but I was off at college) so we had first dibs. Of course my parents would take him in! With a little trepidation, because this was Arco, who could take off leashes, open gates, find hidden objects, and destroy down comforters, and still be bored and looking for something to do. He was a yellow lab, and never understood that he was not human. Being retired was tough on him because he couldn’t go anywhere.
    Dickens, the youngest, died of his misproportions at a pretty decent old age of nine.
    Arco was an inventive food thief, and probably poisoned himself with people food (chocolate, raisins, and onions). He died of liver failure at ten.
    Hogan, by six months the elder of the three, died of old age at eleven.
    Six months later, Robert Burns, commonly called Bobbi, had moved in. Her photo was in the paper as an animal shelter resident. She’d been abused, was terrified of Dad, is of dubious ancestry (Something black, something pointer, and weighs sixty pounds) and to this day my parents are not sure how they ended up with a female dog, much less a small dog! (Technically, she’s medium, but Dickens was the smallest of their previous dogs at ninety, and they’ve never had a female before.)
    Bobbi does not bite people who step on her in the middle of the night, nor those who sit down two inches from her face to watch her eat, nor even those who trip and fall on her. This is good, because when we moved in, we brought clumsy small people. So far she has had the good sense to stay far from the local wildlife that is bigger than raccoons, but anything smaller than raccoon is fair game. Raccoon required a trip to the vet and stitches for her. We do not have a mouse problem between Bobbi and the chickens, but if it were left to Bobbi, we would not have chickens either.
    And now we are in puppy discussions. Everyone is potty trained, a neighbor has a perfectly lovely Great Dane, two years old and excellent manners, and the breeder lives not-too-far away. This would be a good summer for a puppy.

    Like

    1. One of the challenges of walking my tube dogs is that dachshunds have absolutely no sense of their own smallness. This is a problem when the dachshund is as territorial as Laci is and want to go after every other dog encountered on the walking trail. (She’ mostly okay with people.)

      The other challenge is that Suki is a lazy sausage of a dog. She wants to take a long walk, but when we get, oh, about a half mile from home or so, she kind of sits down in the middle of the trail and looks up at me and says (nonverbally.) “Gee, I’m pooped. Carry me back home?” At least I get some first-rate exercise that way. And I can’t be too mad at her, since I worry her heart is not doing well. (She had a nasty heartworm infestation when we acquired her, which was cured using nasty arsenicals.)

      The neighbor has a big goofus of a dog named Chaco. Chaco is a Labradoodle that is normally very well behaved, but on one of their walks they ran into some coyotes raiding the town, and Chaco thought it would be swell to play with them. He was Conan the Dogbarian for a couple of weeks after that, if you follow me, to keep him from chewing all the stitches.

      Like

      1. Ah, fearless dachsies . . . a fellow grad student had a mini Dach (Huey the Long) who tried to defend the student from a mastiff. The mastiff had no interest in the human until the Dachsie began barking up a storm. Grad Student ended up carrying Huey into the house held, barking and wiggling ferociously, up over the student’s head to keep Huey away from the “slightly” larger, phlegmatic but curious neighbor dog.

        Like

    2. I’d only ever had big dogs since picking up a couple of Rhodesian ridgebacks about 30 years ago–my first dogs. Lately I’ve been experiencing a downsizing trend. First a lovely little 50-pound mutt got ditched nearby 4-5 years ago; how could I resist? Then a homeless guy briefly visited our community with a little 20-pound noodle dog about eleven years of age, and left her behind when he reluctantly concluded he’d have to return to the big city and move into a shelter. I’ve never before had a dog I had to worry about stepping on. She holds her own with the 50-pounder and the larger lab, though of course they leave her in the dust on a straightaway.

      Like

      1. Small dogs – in their heart of doggy hearts, they are 200 pounds, eight feet tall and bullet-proof. The 14-pound malti-poo thinks he is all that plus bag o’ chips, while the 90-pound boxer-pit mix is actually a shy and retiring sort. Don’t get me started on the terrier mix who thinks he is a cat…

        Like

        1. Ever read Barbara Hambly’s _Bride of the Rat God_? (Don’t be put off by the blurb or cover).

          In it, three Pekes transform into Lion Sized Dogs to battle the “Rat God”. [Very Big Grin]

          Like

          1. Oh, yes – I’ve read Bride of the Rat God. It was delicious, for having the little fearless Pekes transformed into the fearless warriors that they believed they were – and also for being set in 20’s So-Cal and the 1920s silent movie era.
            I have a not-so-secret indulgence in my own books – I put my pets into them. Calla the boxer-pit bull is in To Truckee’s Trail (with a size and intelligence transplant, naturally), the late lamented Spike the Shi-Tzu is in The Harvesting as Magda’s lap-dog Mouse, and the next book will have one of the current dogs. I think I will call him Nipper, and he will be a fearsomely clever, devoted, but cold-hating terrier – just like the original. (Who’s name is Nemo, because we found him.)

            Like

            1. Our 60 pound fellow thinks he’s a little puppy.

              On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 7:37 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

              > emily61 commented: “Our 12 lb terrier/poodle thinks he’s a dire wolf.” >

              Like

  28. My most memorable cats (aside from the big grey that tolerated my toddler attempts at eating his face with infinite patience) were Mr Pickles and Sofie.

    Pickles my first a kitten. He became an outside cat by his unrelenting enthusiasm for butter and bread. He had the stealth ability to open bread box and covered butter dish. Within fifteen minutes of being let in he would gorge himself on butter and have taken little bites out of each slice of bread. He wound up being our winter cat, proffering to live off the land in summer and eat and sleep in the basement mud room in the winter. We’d rarely see him Before November except when he’d join us on family walks or if he got hurt. The thing that impressed me about this cat was that he survived like this for almost ten years and he never lost his tameness. Never even scratched except that one time I tried to carry him into an open field and he panicked.

    Sofie on the other hand was spoiled rotten. She was a long haired black and white. Mosly fluff even when fyll grown. One of those cats that started out as a hyperactive goofball and ended her life as the dainty queen of all (even when she got a pot belly she never exeded 7 pounds). Though she never tired of chasing our 90 ib Bernese around the yard for sport.

    She brought us a lot of laughter when my dad was sick from cancer. From leaping into an empty paper bag at the top of the stairs and being unable to find her way out when she hit bottom to hilariously miscalculated sneak attacks, she made his last years better. Despite her prickly personality, the damage she did to our house when she didn’t get her way and all those claw scars I can’t say we would have been better off without her.

    I’m in a bachelor apartment now in a building with no ventilation. When I’m in a better place, if the right cat comes along I won’t turn him down. But he should know that I have a big shrine to the gods of the allround farm dog: the old scotch collie, the English shepherd and the Swiss and bernese mountain dogs.

    Like

  30. Ah, cat stories. *grin*

    Datsun must have known from the start he was not long for this world. Born in the back seat of the car of the same name, he came out first and fast. Big for a kitten, biggest of the litter and the only male, he was also trouble from the start.

    Still in his kittenhood, his first attempt at death was the dryer. Somehow he hopped in and hid until it got turned on. “MREOWW!” Big lungs for a big kitten. We snatched the door open and *thump!* out he fell, wobbled back upright, purring a tiny diesel engine purr. He loved the dryer. Even though he never went in it again, he’d be found lying atop it, all four legs up, enjoying the warmth and the vibration every time we did clothes.

    Dat Cat grew up to be a big, solid, blocky looking cat. Kitty fullback. He terrorized the neighborhood with unrelenting energy every time he escaped to the great outdoors. I made the mistake of telling him what a mighty hunter he was after he brought us a dead rat once (not a mouse- a rat, almost as big as he was).

    Every day, new dead thing. Once a half dozen moles. Rabbits several times. Once some kind of bird he dragged from three yards away (there was a feathery gore trail- dang bird was at least three times his size). He challenged skunks several times and won, until they learned to avoid the briar patch west of the house. I think he liked the tomato sauce whateveritwas we dipped him in to kill the smell. I swear he was eying the whitetail and thinking “someday… just you wait!”

    DC also loved cars. Well, my truck, anyways. When I would leave for school, *thump!* cat in the bed of my truck. He’d jump out at the stop sign at the end of the road. If he missed the truck, he’d race it to that stop sign, and if you let him win, he’d turn around and look at you like “C’mon slowpoke!” *chuckle*

    He didn’t win every fight. A pack of feral dogs with some wolf in them came through and killed a few pets in the neighborhood once. This was a cat neighborhood you understand, dozens of the little furry terrors. We did find two dead cats and five dead dogs later, six cats went to the vet after (including my little murder machine, and boy did he hate vets- ever seen a cat punch his way clear through a triple wrapped towel?). Feral dog problem seemed to go away after that.

    For five years that cat zipped through our lives like a psychotic pinball, ricocheting from one disaster to another. He probably sired nearly every litter in the neighborhood one summer, because there was a definite preponderance of little gray and white kittens that year. DC got fixed that fall, much to his eternal dismay.

    I’m fairly certain he died, but we never did find his body. Dat Cat was faithful about one thing, and that was claiming ownership of the food bowl every morning. He might eat only two bites (mighty hunter he, no need for handouts), but it was an appearance thing. One day, no DC. Weeks went by, no DC.

    Later on, we heard about a rather large accident that had happened on the country road paralleling the house. That winter, probably an eight car pileup just over the ridge. Nobody bad hurt, just slick roads and bad tires, too much speed.

    My guess is, Datsun finally hunted him a car. *shakes head* Stupid cat.

    Haven’t had one since. I get along with the neighbor cats, but they’re not mine, I’m not theirs. Kittens and puppies, I have too little time to give them the attention they deserve. Maybe once the house is done. We shall see.

    But there was only one Dat Cat. And that is how it shall always be.

    Like

  31. Oh Gods, reading this, I want a cat again. I also want a chatty, cuddly little parrotlet and a warm little bantam chook to sit on my lap while I write. But Rhys, though he adores cats, is allergic to them. He still wants one though.

    My first cat was Rhiow, a gorgeous black gal with a tail as long as her body. She had a game with my mom where ‘whoever got to the bed/couch/chair first, CLAIMS that spot!’ My mom professed to dislike cats (she loved pet birds, and cats eat birds!) but that slinky beauty softened her heart to cats forevermore. I came home once to see both my mom and Rhi sprawled on my mother’s bed with identical poses. Rhi was also a wonderful mouser, and her presence kept the larger river-rats away. She also allowed our baby chicks to sit on her and feared their mothers. She was quite the interactive girl; and she knew to wake me from my after-school siesta, whether it was six pm or sundown, whichever came first. Rhi would climb up the ladder of my loft-bed, meow three times, and wait. If that didn’t work, she would climb into the bed and put her front paws on my leg, and meow three times more. If not, she would climb up my back, repeating the meows and wait process, till she’d stick her face into mine and I’d wake from the horrible cat-breath. Then she would climb back down, meowing to my mother that I was up and ready for dinner. At least, that’s what it seemed like to both of us. She enjoyed getting pets from my daughter, and would follow and guard her where-ever she crawled or toddled in the house – if she went outside into the yard, that was Happy’s area of protection. They were very good at baby-sitting!

    Rhiow died of old age and for a long time, we had no cat, for no cat would stay for long, be more like passers-by. We were given plenty of other pets though – birds, a large, football-sized red-eared turtle that the village security guard thought belonged to us, stray puppies and cats that did not stay long, chickens to add to our already burgeoning flock. I’m mildly surprised that nobody tried to bring us a goat, a pig or a cow. While we were still a-courting, Rhys was visiting me in the Philippines, and we were Out In The Mountains buying orchids for my garden. The gardener had kittens, and I asked if any of the adorable and wild bundles of fur were for sale. He said if we could catch one, we could take it home. “It breaks my heart when they get run over on the road,” he said.

    Half an hour or so later, while we were negotiating on the price of a certain night-blooming tree with the gardener, Rhys walks up to us, hands behind his back. “You wanted the black kitten, right?”

    “Yes,” I said. “It’s the blackest kitten I’ve seen in a long, long time!”

    “Oh, good,” he brings his hands forward. “Otherwise, this would have been a problem.” And around Rhys’ fist, claws and fangs sunk into his knuckles and wrist and hands, is the black kitten he carefully picked up for me, a rash already forming on his pale skin. He named her Val (for Valor, I think, or something like); we took her home, and Rhys got cortisol rubbed all over his hands for a couple of days. When our son was born, Val became his cat. She would curl up with him, forgave being kicked, drooled on, and being used as a pillow, while she used her tail to keep flies and mosquitos away. Once he started walking, our cat tolerated Vincent carrying her around the way one would a Tigger stuffed toy. I guess Val thought the hugs and cuddles were worth it. My mom liked Val, for Val was an affectionate sweetheart and was very behaved, never snatching cooked food from the table. Instead, she would sit by your chair and politely meow. She was a talky thing, and before long my mother found herself answering back. Val also never bothered her birds, for by then we were raising cockatiels and African lovebirds. Instead, she would purr at them – so much so that one of the cockatiels learned to purr right back. Sadly, she died after the 2009 Typhoon Ketsana, which submerged Metro Manila for four days. After surviving the typhoon, trapped up a tree, a roving, starving dog killed and ate her.

    The Cat Gods have not yet sent us a cat, and even now there is no cat back in the house in the Philippines. But when we are to have a cat for our home, I’m sure the Cat Gods will send us one. Our housemate is also a former cat-…owner? and is somewhat surprised that he misses having a cat around. He asked for a few days if we were going to get a cat, after Rhys and I visited a pet store to look at some birds, and spent a while cooing over several adorable balls of black, white and gray fur.

    Like

    1. Okay, Cornish Rexes are NOT hypoallergenic, however if you train them to allow you to bathe them once or twice a week (easy if you start from baby) they’re pretty close. We’re both allergic (oh, hush you! If we ONLY did what’s good for us, life would be sad.) and when we only had Miranda Cat the Cornish Rex Princess in the house, we had no issues.

      Like

        2. It seems to me that I have read that what sets off most people’s cat allergies is the spittle from their grooming. Likely an insoluble problem, that.

          Like

        3. I’m severely allergic to certain cats, and for me it seems to depend more on the cat than anything else. I do really well with Coon cats as a class. Not everyone will do well with coon cats, though.

          Like

          1. Yep. some people are only allergic to SOME cats. My FIL who thought he was allergic to ALL cats did fine with our fluffy orange marmelade (Pixie) but had issues with our black short hair (Pete.) OTOH many people are okay with Cornish Rex, if washed now and then. (The Rex not the people. Well,t he people too.)

            Like

      2. I think I may be very mildly allergic to cats. At least, I sleep fairly poorly if I let Angel (aka Ming the Merciless) head-butt me before retiring. Which she is sometimes in the mood for, and sometimes not, because Cat.

        Like

  32. Clyde (full name Clytemnestra) was prone to tucking me in at night. She would curl between my knees whilst I read, and when book went on nightstand and light went off she would stalk up my torso and nuzzle me before settling on my chest.

    Clyde was never my cat; I was her person and she tolerated my bringing home strays, such as Beloved Spouse and tended to observe the Daughtorial Unit with a sniff and a sneer, as if she couldn’t expect us to do well at training our kittens but had had hopes we would do better.

    Like

Comments are closed.