- Long cat post incoming -
It is not lost on me that I’m doing an entire post about cats right here as I close in on my thirty-sixth birthday. While I’ve never seen any realistic reasons to scoff at a “cat lady”, the closer I become to earning the title, the more concerned I am that I’m not seeing what’s happening, that perhaps there is some strange reality to “cat ladies” and I’m falling into that fuzzy, comforting pit. But maybe my concern neutralizes the cats? Awareness counts for something, right?
This is all to say that we’ve acquired a third house cat. Now to recap, we never set out to have any house cats. Did we both grow up with plural numbers of cats in our homes? Yes. Do we both enjoy a biscuit-making, fuzzy friend? Of course! Did I secretly want one around? Absolutely. But I’m reiterating that we were normal.
Then we bought our house and found sickly Ferguson in the bushes.
The progression of thoughts was:
We can’t feed him.
Ok, we can feed him but he can’t come inside.
Fine, he can come inside but he’s not staying the night.
He can stay the night but we aren’t getting a litter box.
He was neutered and treated for fleas shortly after. Not long into his tenure as a house cat, he brought his girlfriend around. We know her now as Nora. Nora was a nervous wreck so we didn’t have to have conversations about her coming in, because she wouldn’t get anywhere close to me.
Six months later she was sleeping inside.
Then Brett went out and bought a litter box because Nora tinkled on a pile of dirty laundry. I saw it as a one-off accident and was not ready to commit to a litter box but those cats immediately loved the sandy digging opportunities and then we couldn’t take it away. He won’t acknowledge it, but the litter box is Brett’s fault. Ferguson and Nora go on to become and bonded pair and it is genuinely wonderful to watch them care for each other. Brett won’t acknowledge it, but he hustles over when I say, “Quick, go look at the cats!”
Meanwhile, outside, Ned showed up.
The broken arm made us sad so we fed him. He also had fleas and a sizable head wound - we thought he was going to die soon, so it was the least we could do. Ned would show up with a new life threatening injury every week or so and we marveled at his ability to beat the odds. Then he brought his girl, Clara, around.
We wouldn’t have fed her but she caught us feeding Ned once and then sat on the stoop and waited for her plateful. When it didn’t come, she began arriving with Ned so that she could eat his breakfast. He needed the fuel to recover, so fine, we put out a second scoop.
And then somehow, this other cat, Stacy, found out about the sweet deal taking place in the driveway and she just pushed right on in. She was bossy about it too.
At this point, Brett and I had to have a family meeting. “We can’t feed anymore cats. They are multiplying.”
“I agree.”
“Good.”
“But…”
“No.”
“It’s too late. They’re expecting it. How to you look them in their little faces and tell them to starve!?”
We agreed that Stacy was the last cat I could feed. Brett even had the nerve sometimes to not feed any of them even though they showed up on time for breakfast and dinner everyday. Not too long into her tenure as a driveway grifter, I found Stacy dead in the backyard. Stacy was my favorite of the strays but the upside was that we seemed
one-less-cat crazy.
Just as we settled into our two indoor and two outdoor cat reality, Ned and Clara had to go start a family, and that’s how we wound up with Cameron and Barkley.
Look at the family having breakfast.
Back inside the house, Ferguson and Nora were living the dream. I’m honored to say that both of them sleep next to me (Ferguson usually on my head) and come to me for cuddles and love-time. Earning trust from Nora is one of the more satisfying accomplishments in my life. (No need to read into that.) The two of them would play together after breakfast, nap in the sunbeams on the floor in our bedroom, and then spend the afternoon outside, before coming back in for dinner and cuddles.
Clara kept Cameron and Barkley tucked away for months and when she finally brought them around to see us, they'd all stay out of petting range. At some point, maybe a few months, Barkley stopped turning up with the rest of the family. We have assumed the worst based on his status as a tiny kitten. Again, sad, but one less cat? At about six months old, Cameron’s curiosity about me got the better of him and he and I became friends. Clara watched all of our interactions from a safe distance. Six or seven more months of driveway meals brings us to present day.
In a positive turn of events regarding our neighborhood status as “that house with all the cats”, Ned, Clara, and Cam began showing up for meals sporadically. They’d leave for a few days and maybe one or two of them would come by for breakfast, or often no one at all. Two weeks passed without seeing any members of the driveway clan. A lady down the street told me they’d been hanging around her house. She was feeding them.
It seemed to us that we finally shook off the opportunists and had a perfectly respectable number of pet cats in the house. Another week passed. “I think we’ve done it!” A month went by. “We’re normal.”
Then one morning Brett shook me awake. “Cam is here. He doesn’t look good.” There on the stoop was my littlest friend. He was way too skinny, had patches of missing fur, was covered in fleas, and was barely using either of his back legs.
Here, a 4-5 day saga of finding vets to help him took place. I got a referral from one place. X-rays at another. He was turned away at a third, and finally admitted to a fourth. In the interim time he was living in our hall bathroom and purring about pets and gobbling up any plates of food he could drag himself up to.
The diagnosis - he was likely hit by a car. He has a broken femur on one side, a broken hip on the other, and a crack or two in the pelvis. The one vet said amputating the broken leg after a surgery on the hip might be the best way to go. “You can keep him inside right? He can't go out anymore. He won’t survive.” I had never considered having a third cat, let alone one that never left.
“I was actually wondering if the best thing to do would be to put him to sleep.” I sheepishly admitted.
“Oh no, he’ll be fine. Lots of kitties live long healthy lives as tripods. He's so young. He'll recover.”
My precious, secret-softy husband accepted the news immediately.
While the threat of amputation lingers, Cam is back home under a “strict bed-rest” to see if parts of his bones knit back together. He goes back in six weeks for new x-rays. Meanwhile he’s hopped up on drugs and is living his best life. He follows me from room to room with his John Wayne/ Dancing Elvis saunter, sleeps on his back with all his legs akimbo, and heartily partakes in three meals a day while we try to put some weight on him. He spends mornings and evenings lounging on the screen porch and recently discovered the (slightly more sedentary) thrill of a Skitter Critter. This seems sweet doesn’t it?
Well Ferguson and Nora are furious.
Not only is that grifter inside but he’s drinking from our water bowl!
Ferguson growls and hisses at Cam whenever he staggers by. Cam tries to sniff and submit but Ferg isn’t having it. Ferg often runs away grunting. Meanwhile, Nora is somewhat tolerant of Cam (mostly ignores him) and is being surprisingly mean to me. She will not let me pet her. She will not come into the house. She took a retaliatory dump in our closest. She turns away when I call her name. Sometimes Ferg turns on me when he sees Nora being mean and suddenly remembers that he is mad about the interloper.
In fact, Nora has spent so many of the last nights outside, that she came in yesterday with a huge, open wound on her back. (We’re too exhausted to take her to the vet. It will heal on its own, right?) (I go to the vet so often they joked about putting me on the work schedule.)
As of today - two weeks of Cam living in the house - Ferguson will mostly ignore him, so this is good progress. Nora will let Brett pet her and will sometimes come in, but only if Brett is the one who opens the door. I’m shocked that sweet precious Nora is capable of vindictive thinking. Pippa, by the way, is entirely indifferent about the new cat and has even patiently worked around the fact that Cam took over her preferred dog bed.
But the bit that bothers me is that Cam is always off by himself. Imagine living a wild, adventurous life outdoors with your family, and then you get kidnapped and kept inside and suddenly have no friends. I know he's lonely. Do you think he's sad? I'm also put-off by the idea that he might "fall asleep" one day and wake up without one of his legs. How do you explain that to cat?
Anyways. We have three house cats now. But no driveway cats - Ned and Clara haven't been seen in two months. Ned may have finally made it through that ninth life.
So there goes Cam's family. We're happy to be his new family (We got him some little stairs so he can get onto the couch with us.) (I know.) but we can't compete with the sociable, intrepid life he was living. A Skitter Critter can only do so much.
Current Cat Status:
