When we first noticed the cat, she was limping pretty bad. I've come to believe that's an instinctive "scam" cats use sometimes to look less threatening to other cats. It's a happy coincidence that it pushes the human sympathy button. There's a chunk missing from her left ear. She was just passing by.
My father-in-law (I'll just call him Dad) hadn't been doing well. Parkinson's. Intestinal problems. At least intestinal problems can potentially be fixed, depending on exactly what's wrong. Colonoscopies weren't providing a diagnosis and Dad was fed up with them, so he found another doctor. I took him to see his new doctor a few weeks ago. When he came out he told me he was going to have some gallstones removed.
About that time, we ran into the cat again. She was walking past just as my wife and I got home from somewhere. My wife said hi to her. She meowed back. My wife bent down and asked if she wanted to c'mere. The cat walked right up her and enjoyed a purrful petting. There are some feral cats around, but it turned out this one was just homeless. She was sneezing. And pregnant.
our beloved Petie
We lost our beautiful, beloved Petie to illness in June, and we weren't prepared to risk our two cats, or our hearts, on a sick cat. We put out food to give her kittens a better chance and left it at that. Continued below the fold...
Even though we'd decided not to get close to this cat, we started getting to know her. She's gray with black stripes. She has copper highlights on her face and ears, and beautiful sapphire-jade eyes. She likes it when I stroke her under her chin. Somebody loved her. I don't know why she was abandoned, but I know hard times can lead to hard choices. She set up a den under the trailor next door.
Dad had those gallstones out. No surgery, they just ran a trochar or something down his throat, past the stomach, and plucked ’em out. I talked to him afterward and he was fine, but they had scheduled him for surgery to remove his gallbladder on September 10th. Our cats started sneezing, even thought we always washed our hands after petting the outside cat.
The surgery was supposed to be an outpatient procedure, keyhole surgery, two hours in and out. It wasn't. Dad's had abdominal surgery before, more than once, and the result was a lot of adhesions. His organs were pulled and twisted all over the pace. Even the hepatic arteries were abnormal, though he was born that way. It was a hard surgery, with a lot of cutting. He was in there for five hours. We went to see him that evening, and he was alert and oriented, but in a lot of pain. That was... last Tuesday? Yeah. The 10th. We knew he was going to need some time to recuperate.
Back at the home front, our cats had stopped sneezing. With nothing to spend their energy on except getting goofy on catnip, they had shaken that harmless kitty cold a lot quicker than the outside cat. The next time she came to the porch we opened the door and asked if she wanted to come in. She wasn't sure, but she wanted to explore the possibility. Our cats gave her a poor welcome, though we refereed as best we could. One was in heat and didn't want another female around. The other one's just a bitch. (Unless you're human. If you're human, any human, she's sweet as a bowl of pudding.) The outside cat handled this with impressive aplomb, never offering a hiss or raising a paw at the insults. But in the end, instinct told her she did not want to have her kittens here. She asked to leave and we respected her decision. We did try again, a couple of days later. She was tempted, we could tell, but in the end the verdict was the same.
Dad's blood pressure dropped through the floor on Friday. Sometimes he would know who we were, sometimes not. He saw a biplane fly down the hall past his new room in the critical care unit. He'd stepped into the twilight zone.
Saturday is laundry day. Sometimes, when there's nothing you can do about the big things, you do the little things, and you do the hell out of them. My wife was gonna do the hell out of the laundry on Saturday. I drove out to the hospital, stopping on the way for some chocolate chip cookies to see if I couldn't tempt some calories into him. When I got there I found that his condition had worsened considerably.
While I was out things had been happening at home. When my wife stepped outside to feed the cat, she didn't want to eat. She wanted my wife come into her den. Now, if you've never really known any cats very well, you might be thinking that this was just fanciful anthropomorphizing or projecting by a distraught mind, but any cat owner will verify that cats can communicate "c'mere" every bit as well as we can. This pregnant kitty was begging my wife to join her under the neighbor's trailor. One more time, my wife invited her in. Nothing doing.
We've known many cats very well, and my wife knew exactly what was going on. There was a good-sized cardboard box in the kitchen, with a snug-fitting styrofoam container inside that didn't want to come out. She called for our son to get some rags or old clothes while she demolished the unfortunate styrofoam. Nothing personal, styrofoam, you were just in the way. The boy delivered the nesting material like a champ and my wife took the newly made delivery room outside. Literally twenty seconds after she had put
2 down, 2 to go
the cat in, the first snow-white kitten was born. Now that the new mother was in no position to argue, my wife brought the box inside. I love that woman. The second kitten, a gray tabby like her mom, was born just before I got home.
There were four in all, plump, healthy kittens. I got bigger box, much bigger, from the U-Haul place nearby. It's got new, soft bedding and a cat-sized door (with a lip so no kitties flop out before they can see what they're doing). It's in our bedroom so she doesn't have to worry about the other cats, but she comes out to explore and they're all getting used to each other. She has a home again, and a new name. Misty.
kittie pile!
Dad's improving. I wanted to say that now, because I'm not trying to mess with people's emotions. A couple of days after the kittens were born we were told that if there were family members who wanted to say goodby to Dad they should come soon. It was time to start making final arrangements. At a time like that it's hugely comforting to be able to slip away when you get overwhelmed and spend a few minutes with some actual warm fuzzies.
Dad's still in the twilight zone, and things are still uncertain, but he's heading in the right direction.
Back towards us.