Me and Cats

“The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.” (William Burroughs)

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to have cats.

I learned how to love cats by watching my mother. I recall our home always being filled with the soft padding of feline paws, the purring lullabies at night, and the playful swipes during our daily routines. My mother’s affection for our pets was demonstrative and mutual. As a child, I followed her example.

One of my very earliest memories, at age 4, is that of an argument with my older brother, who was 11. Our family was having a photographic portrait made (a big deal then) and I insisted that I be one of two ceremonial cat-holders. I wanted to hold Felix, while my sister held Inky. My brother dismissed me with a sneer. He simply wasn’t going to entertain any foolishness.

“Well, for one thing, you’re not big enough to hold him.”
“Yes, I am too.”
”No, you are NOT.”
”Yes.”
”No.”

Some regrettably abrasive things were said on both sides. [NOTE: This pattern has repeated itself flawlessly for the 66 years since then.] Despite his challenge, I won and here’s the resulting picture.

Now, two things here:

1. The sun was blindingly bright and,

2. “omg Felix weighs like eleventy-nine pounds…he's…so…heavy…must…not…drop…him…”

Fast forward

I’m in college now. I adopted Lucille, a Torty.

One summer I lived in an old farmhouse with some friends. Lucille was pregnant – of course she hadn’t been spayed (not a ubiquitous procedure like it is now) – and she chose the sheltered enclave beneath our front porch steps to birth her kittens. And Oh. My god. They were tiny: All five fit in the palm of my hand. It was truly a wonderment.

With a heart full of good intentions, I relocated her kittens, thinking they’d be safer in the barn. However, Lucille, with her maternal instincts, swiftly relocated them back to her chosen spot. It was a gentle yet firm assertion of a mother's wisdom.

Fast forward

I married someone with a with an extreme feline allergy. I promised I wouldn’t bring any cats into our home. Turns out our kids developed the same allergy. So for the first time in my life, I was without the companionship of cats. My mother the cat whisperer understood what this meant to me. She gifted me a blue ceramic cat as a memento of the days of future passed.

Fast forward…nearly 18 years

I came to a fork in the road. My ex-wife went her way and I went mine.

Fast forward

I met, fell in love with, and married someone who loved cats as much I did. And over the next two decades, we welcomed six very different cats, each bringing their unique charm and personality to our home.

The first among this number were littermates Itchy, a tabby, and Scratchy who had a velvet-black coat. Scratchy was the alpha-male but his life was tragically cut short when he was hit by a car. Itchy, on the other hand, lived a long happy life, becoming a fixture in our home for years to come.

I came to appreciate Itchy’s personality. He was like the Godfather’s legendary hitman, Luca Brasi: Quiet, steadfast and faithful, with the heart of a killer.

Whenever he got teased or harassed by his brother he’d just go outside and kill a squirrel. I should be more specific: He’d kill the squirrel, dismember it, and often bring the remains indoors. Once, in loving tribute, Itchy crawled under our bed and placed there a decapitated squirrel.

Fast forward

We adopted another black cat: Shmuley. He was sleek like a panther. At dusk, he could walk under the dining room table and melt into the darkness.

One night Shmuley came home, having barely survived some sort of near fatal battle with god knows what — a dog, another cat, a car, a coyote, whatnot. He was bleeding and had a broken leg. He cashed in several of his nine lives that night and it got him home safe.

The vet patched him up at the all-night Animal ER, shaving his back legs in order to treat his wounds. We used to tease Shmuley about walking around with no pants on.

Weirdly enough, when the hair grew back he had a tell-tale white streak on his left flank where he had sustained one particularly gruesome wound. We called it his Harry Potter scar.

Very early most mornings, Shmuley would jump on our bed and bite my fingers to get me going. I’d follow him down the hallway, his tail curved in the air like a question mark, me emerging into the kitchen to greet the morning’s early light streaming through the window.

Fast forward

One afternoon we lost him. A neighbor found his body curled up on her front lawn as though he had taken a nap. We buried him in our back yard under a flowering bush that offered him some shade.

Itchy, who had always played second fiddle to his more charismatic adopted brother Shmuley, was now the sole survivor…again. But this time was different than with Scratchy. Itchy had lived over a decade with Shmuley. They had reached a détente. They had even become friendly, sharing a patch of sunlight near the patio.

Now with Shmuley gone, Itchy was confused and lost. He'd spend countless hours doing those things that used to bring his brother out to play. He'd break into a run behind the couch, clattering the vertical blinds and then wait to be joined.

But as the years passed, that slowly faded.

Now a lion in winter, Itchy slept most of the day and took to sitting on my lap or Julie's for warmth and attention. I'm convinced he went to the end of his days simply waiting for his lost brothers to come home.

He was a survivor, taking nearly 18 years to finally use the last of his nine lives. One day, his feral brain sensing he was too weak to properly protect himself from larger predators, he left the house, setting off to find a hidden place in the wild to hunker down until it was safe to cross the rainbow bridge. We never saw him again.

It felt like the end of an era. By then, the boys had grown up and begun their lives. So for the first time, we were alone in the house.

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