Schuyler RIP

We lost a cat recently. He was one of the "legendary" one. Every lover of the domestic feline knows what I mean by "legendary." These are the cats who who have strong personalities and compelling backstories--rather like the best kind of character.



Cat owners usually have at least a pair of the furry dominators in residence, and this is because "You can't have just one" is as true of cats as it is of potato chips. The standouts aren't common. You may only host two or three of these in a lifetime of pet parenthood. It isn't just that these special cats are sociable, interested in the doings of their owners and in keeping them company. These cats possess an elusive, almost mythical aura.

Schuyler came off the hard streets of an adjacent semi-dead steel town. He was about two years old when we found him at that Humane Society, with a tail broken in two places and a bad hip. He called to us, then reached through the cage bars to hook my sleeve. It didn't take my husband and I long to realize he was the one. We learned that he had been dropped off by some people who couldn't keep him, but thought well enough of him to try this last resort method of finding him a home. I was in a Revolutionary War writing period, and already had a "Hamilton," so he was named another favorite character: "Major General Philip Schuyler."

When we got him, he was skinny and roman-nosed. He would always favor one back leg, but when our Vet first checked him out, she said he was basically healthy. "Just feed him up, and he'll be fine," she said.

There were three other cats here when he came, but he quickly promoted himself to what the German's call "Furst" a/k/a Top Cat. I don't remember much fighting, but his long Tom-Cat-hood and streetfighting experience probably gave him the ability to psych out his new mates. Schuyler quickly became my husband's favorite. He spent most of his fourteen years at our house either in Chris' lap or curled up beside him. He greeted Chris when he came home from work, and said good-bye, too, every morning. He stayed with his human tirelessly while my husband endured a slow recovery from cancer surgery.

He was a pretty cat, the kind you'd expect to see in a Flemish painting, curled on a bench in a black-and-white tiled kitchen scene. He had pink paws and a pink nose and shell pink ears. One of my online friends, seeing his picture, observed that he had "TES." I had never heard of TES, but she explained that her cat also had this condition. She said it meant "translucent ear syndrome."

Sky was a hunter, as you'd expect from an ex-stray, and merciless to mousies and voles. Many mornings we found them laid as offerings on our front steps. He had a musical purr. He also had a great fondness for doughnuts. We quickly learned that we had to hide these inside the cupboard, because if we simply laid them on the counter, they'd be on the floor in the next second, the bag torn open, the contents spilled and hastily gobbled. So much for the notion that cats don't enjoy sugar!


Sadly, he's with his mates now, out in our pet necropolis. This autumn, I'll plant daffodils on his grave. RIP Schuyler, who had every reason in the world to dislike humans, but who, through his innately generous nature, always gave us the benefit of the doubt.

One Cat Over the Line, Sweet Jesus!

Like the 70’s song, I fear, our house has reached capacity. In fact, as of Thanksgiving, we’ve got one too many cats.

This all began when our beloved resident ex-stray and tough guy, Bob, disappeared in wintry weather. Four days passed. It was very cold, and he did not return. I’d rather keep him in like the others, but there was no way Bob would submit to being a full time housecat, so my husband and I had made the best of his wandering. Now we mourned for him, thinking that even his superior street smarts hadn’t kept him safe. In fact, I was so worried I checked in at the township police station, even though I knew a wandering cat was “in violation of township regulation” and subject to a fine.

Into this emotional turmoil came my best buddy, Patti, who feeds a few of the local strays. Onto her porch, in the twilight, had come a starving orange kitten, attracted by the dish of Purina she put out every night. She could count every rib, every bump in her little kitty spine. The kitten looked up at her with golden eyes and chirruped sweetly. Patti knew she had to rescue her.

The next day, Patti came to me with this sad little creature in a carrier. She was, Patti said, to fill the hole in our house left by the death of Bob. My husband wasn’t thrilled, but Patti bravely offered to pay all the vet bills, and to get her tested for all the kitty plagues. The first thing was to flea treat her because she was polluted. I made a place for her in one room, with box, food, bedding and water. I sat down cross-legged, and the kitten promptly climbed onto my knee, purring. She proved to not only have fleas, but a host of dog ticks which had to be removed. Later I’d discover an infected wound on her left flank. When my other cats looked in at her, she hissed and growled, imitating, I think, the meanest cat she knew, the one who had bitten her. Integration of this fierce little mite into the existing peaceful feline kingdom inside our home was going to be difficult.

As people with a multi-cat household know, behavior problems erupt if there are changes of any kind, particularly at the introduction of a new cat. Hissing and fighting—even between cats that were friends—happens. It’s “the new baby” problem in spades, with jealous “siblings” and the added difficulty of interspecies communication. (I try, but sometimes I just can’t think like they do.) Now I had the new kitty—a semi-feral survivor with a septic wound and PTS who needed lots of special handling—as well as the other three who were undergoing an emotional adjustment to the new reality in the house.

Of course, you can guess what happened next. One day after the arrival of the kitten, I opened the front door and Bob walked in, with his customary loud “MA-WOW, MA-WOW.” He rubbed against my legs, and then headed toward the communal food dish. As I watched his striped backside recede, I spoke aloud. “You didn’t call. You didn’t write. WHERE the hell have you been?”

Of course, I’ll never get an answer, but I’m too darn glad to see him to be cross. I sat down beside him and patted him while he chowed noisily, dropping food all over the floor and purring like mad. I figure he lost some lives, and I sincerely hope he will be more careful of –whatever—in future!
So things continue here with one more cat than I can easily handle. The kitten has been very sick, and to the vet for surgery. She’s begun to grow nicely, but she’s still paranoid and hissing. My days are full. I’m a little old lady cat patter, vet tech, and feline psychiatrist. The patting I’ve got down pretty well. That’s a pleasure. The rest takes time. The refrain of the old song goes round and round in my head while I scrub water bowls and cat boxes. We’re “one cat over the line.”

Serial Bob

We have a bulkhead next to a small extension at the back of our house. Between bulkhead and laundry is about a foot and half of pavement. This has become the place where our local serial killer lays out his victims. I tend to let cats in and out at this back door, where I’m sort of tucked inside, facing the patio and a fence. This is often the first view of my yard I have in the morning, but I’ve learned not to look around the door at the area between the bulkhead and the house until well after I’ve had my coffee.

Our ex-stray cat has decided that this is the place to leave displays of his night’s work. Right now, fortunately, he’s apparently on hiatus, but earlier this spring when everything was young, tender, and frisking with joy, he was busy. The “work” that always impresses us most is the squirrels, full grown ones that he lugs in for us to admire. He used to eat them whole back when he was on the lam, but now just the head seems to be satisfactory. What’s the zombie joke? “Brainssssss!”

Anyway, he caught four squirrels this spring, great big plush grown-ups who should have known better. I don’t feel too sorry about them, because we’ve got a ton of squirrels who are up to no good with my bulbs and gardens. I do mourn the bunnies and chipmunks he catches, but what purely I hate, what I yell about, are the song birds.

Worst and most heinous of all his crimes, he ate my adorable jazz-master catbird in his fine, gray Wall Street suit. He crunched house finches around the bird feeder like potato chips, so that I gave up putting seeds into it. He brought me a darling Carolina Wren in his mouth, held so carefully that when I coaxed it away from him, the wren took flight straight from my hand. I hope very much that his/her rattling little bold scolding self survived the ordeal. This cat of mine could give Sylvester a bad name!
Web Site: Juliet Waldron

Kat Hurl

It is spring now, so let’s just say that cats take a little extra work. This is because they groom themselves, and swallow what they groom. To make a bad situation worse, they shed their winter coats. This leads to internalization of large wads of cat fur, hence to vomiting.

There are also their eating/sporting habits. Cats are like owls. When they eat a mouse or tender young rabbit, they eat every bit. This means they swallow fur and bones. All that stuff has to go somewhere, either out the back or out the front. Often, it’s easier for cats to hork, so that’s what they do. Then Cat Mom has a cleanup job of which she is not particularly fond.

This morning, sitting in front of the computer, waiting for it to boot up, I happened to glance out the window. I never saw farther than the sill, however, because I could see that some rotten feline had thrown up all over. There were kitty crunchies swimming in a light sauce of tummy juice, spilling over the edge and oozing down the wall. When I got my bucket with hot water and white vinegar, rags, paper towels, my gloves, etc., ready, and pulled back the horizontal blinds, I discovered that the window, too, was involved. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat execute the classic drunk’s forward splash maneuver before, but there’s always a first time. Another trip was required, for more paper towels and the glass cleaner.

We who love cats have all endured the awful cold squish between the toes during a darkened, sleepy nighttime trip to the bathroom. We all have our “Epic” puke stories. I think mine was back in the 80’s, when one of my kitties (I suspect it was Stanzi Marie Pussycat, a lovely tri-color patched tabby,) barfed fulsomely into my trusty dot matrix printer over night. I didn’t discover this until I went to turn it on.

Cussing, I carried the poor little machine outside and shook it heartily, upside down, knowing that even if the printer wasn’t totaled, this was just the beginning of a lengthy cleanup. As I watched the stuff fall out, I actually had a moment of wondering why I loved these cats so much.

It didn’t last long, though.