Cat Tales

[Jack Rabbit]

CAT TALES
By Jack Rabbit

In the spring of 2006, my wife and I saw a small kitten wandering on the porch of our run down mobile home where we had moved to share poverty and old age. She was a very pretty kitty with long hair, though definitely not a Persian, mostly white with large gray spots randomly splattered on her back and sides like the coat of a of a pinto pony.

It was not the best of times for us. My psychologist had given me a diagnosis of major depression. It is something that I’ve had for most of my life, but something that was mostly under control until the summer of 2004 when my sister suddenly died of heart failure. She simply went to bed one night and didn’t wake up. No warning, no chance to say good bye. I sent her an e-mail one morning and found out later that afternoon that she was found dead by her grown sons about mid-morning.

That day, the music went out of my life. My sister was ten years older than I, but we were close. Our childhood relationship was a nurturing one where she served as a kind of auxiliary parent. I fondly remember her taking me cross town to Disney movies on the bus when she was 14 and I was 4. In the late fifties and early sixties, she infected me with a love of folk music. Just as she was listening the Kingston Trio and all her friends were listening to Elvis Presley, so I kept on listening to Joan Baez just as all my friends were listening to the Rolling Stones. I learned from that to stick to my own views and not to fall into to what was popular and above all to pay no attention to any silly man on the TV or the radio telling me what it is I want.

To make matters worse, my job was going to hell in a hand basket. I had worked for the student loan division of a sub-prime lender since 1995 and found it to be a dream job. I was a computer programmer and was encouraged to seek out bugs and fix them. This I did, and for this I received favor and high praises. The sub-prime lender was then bought out by a Fortune 500 bank which proceeded to run it into the ground and laid off about 1500 workers in an afternoon. They were the lucky ones. The bank took the student loan division under its own wing and imposed its own corporate culture on it. The very same people who used to give me enthusiastic attaboys for hard work and initiative were now putting obstacles in the way of getting the job done. No work could be done unless it was approved first by three or four levels of bureaucrats, a process that delayed a few minutes worth or work for weeks. This same experience happened to be once before and I didn’t like it one bit, became outspoken in my critique of corporate red tape and lost my job. Now, caught in the Bush administration’s cycle of recessions followed by jobless recoveries, I could do little but watch in horror as my personal history repeated itself.

After my sister died, I simply stopped caring. If my bosses and their bosses and their bosses on the east coast didn’t care whether student loans got out the door, why should I? When the big wigs became concerned that figures in surveys of customer satisfaction were dropping and they acted like they didn’t know what to do about it, I suggested in team meetings that the idiots should get out of the way and the peons do their jobs. I have an old-fashioned view about business: produce a good product, bust your ass to provide good customer service and the bottom line will take care of itself. Today’s Harvard MBAs seem to think there’s something terribly naive and outdated about such ideas. Nowadays, there are fewer competitors, so businesses, especially big ones, don’t need to compete to make money. If any little guy builds a better mousetrap, just buy him out or squeeze him out. Business, according to today’s best and brightest business leaders, is oriented to the purpose of returning the shareholders’ investments. That is its reason for being. Silly me. I thought it was the production of goods and services. The idea is to attract investors by increasing profits by cutting costs, which means paying workers less, eliminating benefits, jobs and cutting corners in production. Again, I was stupid to think that the idea was to attract customers by building a better mousetrap.

I allowed frustration and depression again to take over my entire being and for the second time, lost a job that I had held for ten years. This time, I couldn’t get off the ground once I hit it. What was the point of getting another job in the profession I had worked for 25 years? Even if I found a good job in a company that would just allow me work and fix bugs and write better code, it would only be bought out by one of this giant corporations that was so big that it’s brain couldn’t pass instructions to its ass in time to prevent bowel disease from setting in.

Depression is a little like drunkenness. The porter in Macbeth says that drink provokes three things – nose painting, sleep and urine – while he adds:

Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.

As drink is to lechery so is depression to suicide. It plants such thoughts into one’s mind, but one is in such a malaise that it is impossible to act. Such thoughts are frightening, but the idea of death as an escape or release is not totally unappealing. At one point I told my therapist that I didn’t think I’d actually kill myself, but if I were crossing the street and a Mac truck were headed straight at me, I wasn’t sure I could be bothered to get out of the way.

The malaise is a complete, total, existential malaise. Yes, one knows one should do something, but the spirit is not there to move toward action. This is true for any task, great or small.

In the summer of 2006 my wife took a job moved out of town. I was living alone with depression and a house cat named Ike. Ike is a black cat with medium long hair. He is four years old and has been a strictly indoor cat since he was two, developing a case of inflammatory bowel disorder and an idiosyncratic disorder (a fancy term meaning the vet doesn’t really know what it is) that was probably an inner ear infection causing eye twitching, loss of balance and for one scary evening paralysis in a hind leg. Like any cat, he thinks he’s the reincarnation of an Egyptian god. Of all God’s creatures, he is the only one who gives me unconditional love for about thirty seconds at a time when he graciously lets me hold him.

After my wife moved out, my sister came to visit. I was glad to see her again after two years, although as one who does not believe in ghosts I found the visit disconcerting. She sat on the couch across the room from my chair while I was reading. I asked her what she was doing, put the book down and she was gone when I looked up again. She said nothing.

After she left, I began to wonder if she was actually dead. A few days later, she appeared again on the couch, told me she was in fact dead, got up and transformed into a little girl, looking the way I had only seen her look in pictures. She skipped toward the door where she disappeared behind the bookcase.

More visitors came. My grandfather, dead forty years, called me a bum. He was a construction worker in life and one who believed in and practiced the virtues of hard work. It was upsetting to hear him speak harshly to me, since he never once did in life. I felt the presence of my mother now and then. After Christmas, while I was reading news on the computer, I felt my mother’s presence again. “So, they’re going to hang Saddam Hussein in the morning?” she said. It was her voice, the question intoned exactly as she would have in life and a question she would have asked. “It sure looks like it,” I said. I saw a shadowy figure out of the corner of my eye over my left shoulder, but she was gone in an instant.

The only real visitors I had were Jorge and Trudi. They would come around to visit and invite me to join their group of humanists in Red Bluff for a barbecue once a month. That’s my contact with humanity.

In the fall, my wife contacted an attorney to get me started with applying for social security disability. That ball was slowly and haphazardly rolling. My malaise was been going up and down, but mostly showing little improvement. Since I could never stand to be personally dirty, it was no problem to take a shower at brush my teeth in the morning. However, laundry goes undone for weeks at a time; my diet consists of things that require no more cooking than a few minute in the microware; I eat with plastic ware and off paper plates to avoid doing dishes; and even poor Ike’s little box was neglected. I just didn’t care. The house was not clean. If Ike got hold of a newspaper and clawed it to shreds in the living room, it would not get picked up. Mail could go for a month without being collected and, once collected, would be brought into the house and not opened. I had a ritual of paying my phone bill whenever my DSL service was suspended (about every other month) and I would call and put it on my credit card. That got paid when I went to the bank and cashed a monthly check from my nephew that keeps me from going homeless. I just didn’t care.

I just didn’t care and I needed something to care about.

In the spring I began seeing a feral cat more frequently. She would come and lounge on the porch. If I stepped outside, he would run, hiding under the stairs. She was the same kitten my wife and I had seen the year before. She had grown into a beautiful young adult. She still had medium long white hair with large gray spots. Not being certain of the feral’s gender, I started calling the cat Pinto. When Pinto started acting amorously toward Ike, I started calling her Pinta.

I was a bit amused that Pinta would behave in this way toward Ike, who had a simple surgical procedural performed on him when he was a year old that made him ill equipped for such advances. She would rub against the screen of the patio door while Ike would lay down in front of it.. Passing herself in front of Ike, like a flirtatious teenager, rubbing erotically against the screen.

“Pinta,” I said, “if you ever get hold of him, you’re going to be very disappointed.”

Later, Pinta was on the porch rubbing noses with a neighborhood tom cat whose presence I usually discouraged. He was a short haired cat, mostly black with some scattered white markings. On this occasion I let him stay. Pinta was not to be denied.

I made the observation that Pinta seemed to be comfortable under the house and that I had never seen a mouse in the house. I decided there was a connection and began feeding Pinta. While Ike has been on a special diet since his bout with inflammatory disease (cat food purchased at the vet’s office for $30 for a 6 pound bag), I went to the grocery store and bought Pinta a 3 pound bag of Purina cat chow, which was on sale for $5.

I used a tuna can to provide Pinta her food and another for water. I may have a small can of tuna for lunch or a snack and then let Ike lick the can clean after I’m done with it, something Ike is more than happy to do. I also took to giving Ike a little in an old tuna can before I start, just so he won’t rush me while I’m eating.

Ironically, starting to feed Pinta brought mice into my house. I put the cat food under the kitchen sink at first. One day, I opened the cabinet and saw a mouse running around inside. Ike was standing right beside me and tried to draw his attention to the mouse, but he seemed preoccupied with something else. Nevertheless, a few days later, I saw Ike in the hallway playing with a toy, except that it didn’t look like any toy I remembered getting for him. I looked closer and saw that it wasn’t a toy at all. Ike had become an official mouser. I tried to encourage him to eat the darned thing, but he would not. I was a toy. After a few days, I finally threw it away.

At first I would give Pinta her supper about sundown. As spring became summer, she began getting it earlier in the evening, usually between five and six o’clock. Sometime I would be involved in writing on the computer and forget until later and sometimes I might be away and not feed her at all. When I feed her, I also put food in Ike’s dish, even if it’s just putting some more of his cat food on top what’s already there.

Pinta has revealed herself to be a very committed feral. When I open the door to give her food, she backs away and hisses at me. She’s clearly telling me that she’s no one’s pet and wants to keep it that way. One day I decided to coax her into the house to see what she would do. Ike was on top of the bookcase by the door where his dish is kept, quietly eating it. Instead of setting Pinta’s tuna can full of cat food outside, I opened the door and set it down about a cat’s length inside. To my surprise, she was not the least bit reluctant to come in to eat. I closed the screen behind her. I shouldn’t have done that. she starting darting about the living room and then back toward the door. She tried to run through the screen, but that didn’t work very well. Still looking for a way out, she tried to jump up the book case. It was a little too tall for her to land on it, but somehow she managed to get a forepaw on top. As she came back down to the floor, Ike’s supper dish came crashing down after her. I opened the door and out she went. I calmly put her supper in its usual place and closed the screen door, resolving never to repeat that experiment again. Then I picked up Ike’s dish and refilled it with his expensive cat food, and tried to salvage what I could of the nuggets of what was to be his supper from the floor.

About a month ago, Pinta showed up for dinner with two kittens. If I had any further doubts that Pinta was a female, they were dispelled then and there.

“Well, what have we here?” I said.

They were two kittens of almost solid color. One was black with some white on its face and neck, a white under belly and white feet, The other looked just like the first, only he was charcoal gray where the first was black, a gray a little darker than the spots on its mother’s coat.

I immediately got them some supper. Then I went to the computer to e-mail some friends about it.

The next morning I looked out on the front porch to find Pinta standing there with four kittens. There were the two that accompanied their mother the night before and two more black and white spotted kittens. All of the kittens had long tails with short hair, which gave me a good idea that the father was same tom with whom Pinta was flirting some weeks earlier. This time I put out a total of four tuna cans: two of cat food and two of water.

I replaced the tuna cans with a large cereal bowl for water and a smaller plastic bowl for food. I also started buying cat food in the 7 pound bags, which costs about $8. It may be cheaper by the unit, but they go through it faster. To make sure they’re getting enough, I feed them twice a day, once in the morning and once at night.

The kittens are not yet weaned, but they are old enough for Pinta to teach to hunt and forage. Foraging is what they do when they show up at my door. For activity, the kittens like wrestling with each other. For the last week, they have taken up lounging on my porch in the afternoon, stretched out and sleeping.

The kittens seem to have developed a pecking order. By now I have given them names.

The black cat is clearly the dominate male of the litter. For this reason, he is called the Boss. He gets the first peck after Pinta. One evening was eating out of the plastic bowl when one of his brothers or sisters started eating out of the other end. The Boss stretched his forearm across the bowl, slamming his paw on the far rim right in front of the other’s face and looked right at it. “What do you think you’re doing?” was what he seemed to say. This is all mine until I’ve had enough, then you can have yours.” He also asserts his privilege by pushing his brothers or sisters out of the way. The Boss’s place seems well established. He is seldom seen wrestling with the others.

The charcoal cat, simply called Charkie, appears to be next in line but is not terribly aggressive when it comes to asserting its rights at the supper dish. Instead, he prefers wrestling with one of the two spotted cats.

One day after they first made their appearance, Charkie was wrestling with one of the spotted cats. It looked like the spotted one had a cut lip, but looking more closely I saw that it was only a tuft of black hair under its white mouth and upper lip. Later, the tuft of hair looked kike black lipstick, so this cat is named the Goth. The Goth is more black than white. It is Charkie’s rival in the pecking order. Watching them eat, one might expect the Goth to win out, but Charkie gets the best of the Goth wrestling.

The runt of the litter is the one whose coat patterns that most resemble Pinta’s. For that reason, this kitty has been given the traditional pet name Spot. Spot is clever and well adapted to being the runt. Last week, Pinta knocked a tuna can full of food out of my hand as I was pouring it into the supper bowl. This caused most of the food to scatter over the welcome mat. While the other cats gathered around the bowl, Spot cleaned up on the scattered nuggets of cat food.

A few weeks ago, Jorge spent an afternoon helping me pick up my living room. We picked up the scraps of paper that Ike made, old pieces of unopened mail, some of it moths old and even found where Ike did his business when he thought his litter box was too much neglected. I’ve taken the hood off Ike’s litter box to serve as a better reminder to me to clean it out when it needs it.

Watching the kittens has been a delight. For them, the feral life is the good life, in spite of its uncertainties. They are free and happy kitties, the noble savages of cats. They have a life before them of freedom and adventure. One should contemplate that such is a life worthwhile.

This have they taught me. From that lesson, I will recover the will to live.

California
August 18, 2007

[bridgit]

1. life, grace, sorrow & wonder filled words, JR, and i thank you for them...

:hug:

[Lithos]

2. Cats are amazing creatures

Very in tune with life and the simple, carefree joys. I've been fortunate to have shared a fair portion of my life with them.

L-

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Update

First of all, I once again have a functioning computer. My old hard drive died in September, which explains my long absence fro DU and elsewhere in cyberspace. I thank my adult son for putting together a new PC from old parts.

In mid-September, I coaxed Spot and Charkie into the house. They finally found their way to the back bedroom where they were confined for an intensive program of domestic training. In early October, Goth and the Boss were brought into the house and likewise directed to the back room.

As it turned out, Goth was the one who most quickly got the idea. One day, when he was backed into a corner, he ate out of my hand and let me pet him. After that he would come to my lap, purr, lick my fingers and turn over on his back. For me, it was like falling in love again. On Halloween, Goth was taken to the vet to be vaccinated. He adopted me and is now an officially domesticated cat. As part of this rite of passage, he was renamed Buccaneer, although I call him Buckie or Buck most of the time, reserving Buccaneer for those moments when he is into too much mischief.

Spot, who is the only female of the litter, was been vaccinated after Christmas. Her new name is Spitfire. She is the one who is most likely to give me a hissyspit when I approach. Then I offer her my finger and she touches it with her nose. Then I slide some food under her face, which she eats and allows me to pet her. I'm still trying to give her away, but she will have a home with me, Ike and Buckie if I can't.

The Boss and Charkie have been more difficult. The Boss has only begun allowing me to touch him in the last few days, while Charkie still runs away even if I offer him some tuna. I still have hopes for the Boss, but Charkie may be a lost cause.

[Lithos]

4. Good work!

Many cats have been my friends over my life. I think you are lucky to have found such friends. I like to say that I was raised by several cats.

My wife and I took in neighborhood ferals for many years. Household is full now, but as a result, I've had more than a bit of luck dealing with ferals up to a few years of age. Patience, luck, and of course working with them on their schedule is of tantamount importance. Usually, it's more learning how to teach yourself how to adopt to their ways more than anything else.

Congratulations and good to see you back!

L-

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Another update

Please click here.