Cats Have Therapists, Too

“It’s all pretty far-out, Cat. You know what I mean?”

These are the kind of conversations you get around old people who have lived with a lot of cats.

The Cat stuck her face in the bowl and munched while I massaged her fluffy, thick back. Patting her was like patting a wide-beamed, long-haired Scottish sheep. The fur was sort of dry and oily at the same time. It left my hands smelling of the cast-off cellar rug, the one that my husband, as the one who promises Yes! Yes! I will vacuum it—but somehow never does—the rug that is an in-home super-fund site, redolent of fuel oil, cement dust, flea spray, cat hair and kitty litter, plus the assorted paints and chemicals which are stored down there. 

This icky basement is the place where our PTSD cat story began and is still the place to which it reboots whenever Kimi feels threatened. Even after six years of safety and kid gloves, she remains an anxious kitty. She’s blonde, and stuffed-toy-fluffy with a sweet doll’s face--but not the pushed in muzzle--of a Persian. She’s heavy and square, what, in the Cat Fancy is referred to as “cobby-bodied.”  She might be the offspring of some hobby breeder’s accident, a Ragdoll, or a Birman, and who knows what else, getting together. Anyhow, we’ve never had a cat like this one before, although, that’s what we say to all the special kitties who have come to live here over the years. She arrived through a friend, who found her, starving, tick infested, with a festering wound on one hip. She was terrified of human hands.

Kimi-Wah still has rules. There are rules about where she may be petted; rules about how she may be petted. Unlike most cats, she sometimes appreciates the sort of thumping you might bestow upon a small dog. She likes to have a blanket on the floor by the television. Here she sits and regards us from across the room as we couch-potato in the evening. Sometimes she calls to us with a plaintive little meow. Then one or the other of her people is supposed to get down on the floor with her and pat her—but only while she’s sitting on the fabric. You have to keep an eye on the tail. If that fluffy plume begins to flail, it’s time to stop.

Sometimes she calls for petting, but if she’s not on the rug, she’ll simply run away if you approach her. Sometimes she’ll run for her blanket and you will be allowed to pat her there, but, just as often as not, she’ll head to the cellar. Sometimes, I’ll follow her down there and hope to gather her up from the old flannel sheet that I’ve put down to keep her off that awful rug. I tell her “no one wants a basement cat.” I tell her that basement cats are almost as bad as ceiling cats, or under-the-couch cats—those top neurotics of the indoor cat world.

In six years, though, she has loosened up somewhat. She’s long-haired and needs daily grooming or she’ll mat and/or get sick from the hair-balls all that fur generates. I brush first and then gently comb. Initially, she had to be held down with all four hands available around here, even for the briefest beauty treatment. The whole time she’d snarl and growl and scream and try to slice us to ribbons with her needle claws.

These days, she’ll call to me while I’m at the computer—whiny meow after whiny meow—until I give up and fetch the brush and then head to the blanket. She’ll trot ahead of me, plumy tail waving and then lie down, all in anticipation of her beauty treatment. She’ll even let me hold her and trim her nails. Lately, she’s been getting up to couch-potato beside me in the evenings; she's even getting the hang of happy purrs.   

We didn't think she'd ever come round, but inch by inch, she has. It's been one of the longest lasting feline rehab projects we've ever undertaken, but in the end, her sweet sensitive self is beginning to reappear. 

A rare trip outside for the Wah

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

Books We Love Authors for more Sunday Snippets:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

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.

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.