As many of you know, this last year has been more than a little stressful for me and my husband, The Packhorse. My 88-year-old father moved up here in January, which changed our lives drastically. My husband, who was just starting his nursing clinicals for his A.S.R.N. had to take a leave of absence to help get Dad settled in. At times, Dad seemed to be deliberately setting out to make life difficult for us, attempting to prove he was the Master of the Domain. It’s been a long road, but we are slowly making some headway, teaching him that we aren’t slaves to be ordered about at will, and that manners aren’t just for strangers and my mother-in-law—and that despite setting some limits, we do love him and want him here. He’s been in the hospital twice, so that made the autumn less than thrilling—but he’s home now, and he’s doing much better. Christmas Eve began badly—Dad was very confused and uncooperative, but by dinner time, after a pre-dinner martini, he was back to normal, and enjoyed having the neighbors over (and, natch, flirted with the two 20-somehing sisters). What started out to be the Holiday From Hell turned out pretty damned fine after all
In the midst of all this, we moved into the new house in a rural county of North Georgia. One of the first things we noticed was the number of stray cats who’d wander through our yard. Most were feral and wouldn’t allow you to get within twenty feet of them, but there was a skinny white female who appeared to have given birth at some point in the late spring. She wanted attention as much as food, and purred up a storm. We also saw a blue-eyed white half-grown kitten who looked like one of her offspring—we never got close enough to be certain, but my bet is that the kitten is deaf, as 50% of blue-eyed white cats are. We’d feed Mama Kitty when she showed up, and knew several others were also feeding her. She didn’t have a collar and there was no sign that she had an owner, although her affectionate behavior with people seemed to indicate that at one time she was someone’s pet. Unfortunately, down here, a lot of people don’t spay or neuter, and turn indoor pets into completely outdoor cats. Sometimes they move and just abandon them. I think Mama Kitty’s story was probably something similar. We decided that Mama needed a Forever Home, and were determined to catch her next time we saw her, and bring her to a no-kill shelter.
As we were driving home from one of our rare trips out to the store together (these days we can’t leave Dad alone, for safety reasons I’ll explain in another diary), we saw Mama Kitty—at least, we thought it was her. It was going to be an unseasonably cold night here in Barrow County, GA., for early December, perhaps even below freezing, and my husband decided he was going to do a snatch and grab. I drove the rest of the way home while he walked, carrying a shivering white kitty in his arms.
The cat, whom we named Guinevere, was delighted to be warm and thrilled to be fed, but she was happiest lying next to you and purring. She chirped and trilled, sounding more like a Maine Coon than a domestic shorthair. She seemed in remarkably good shape, pretty clean despite being outdoors, and she appeared to have gained some weight and grown a bit. She didn’t like being locked up in the bathroom, and desperately wanted to hang out with the other cats, as if being part of a family was important to her, so we let her out. You can guess the rest—within a week there was no possibility of her going anywhere, because her Forever Home was with us.
There was small catch. She turned out to be a he—probably one of Mama’s kittens. We tried Galahad, continuing the Arthurian theme (we already have a black cat named Morgana), but he’s far too silly for such a solemn name. Somehow I cannot imagine Galahad, the Perfect Knight of Arthurian legend, hanging headfirst off the couch with his front paws waving—and falling off onto his head, something this cat does rather often. He’s a remarkably silly boy. The little trills don’t help either. We figure he’s under a year old, and he’s still got the needle-sharp claws and teeth of a kitten, but he had enormous feet, so he is going to be a good sized cat when he reaches his full growth. So far, the four older cats mostly ignore him. Mike (Mee-kay), the Japanese bobtail, will play with him, allowing him to chase her and bat at her. Morgana, my four-year-old rescue black cat, is studiously ignoring him. She’s not fond of change even though she proudly wore an Obama button), and he is change in large, rowdy way. She’ll eventually get used to him, and she’ll finally have someone close to her age to tear through the house after.
And what did we name him? We called him Sasha after a Siberian white weretiger character I wrote in an interactive fiction list. In human form, Sasha is 6’6", white blonde and a security expert who was born into a Russian circus family of lion and tiger trainers. His unfortunate change into a shifter made him unable to work with the big cats, so he switched professions. Despite his formidable size, Sasha is actually very sweet (unless it’s time not to be), and more than a little silly. He loves Elvis, ‘50s rock’n’roll, and Hawaiian shirts or bowling shirts. And not unlike his smaller avatar, in tiger form he loves lying on his back for chin scratches and tummy rubs. The real furry, four-footed Sasha is, like his fictional counterpart, a constant reminder that laughter is soemthing we all need.
The Universe sent us a Yule gift, and he’s found his home. After all the sturm and drang of the last year, a silly white cat who falls on his head at least once a day is precisely what we needed. On the solstice, we thanked the Lord and the Lady for their Yule present. We’re an ecumenical household, so we celebrate Yule, the Solstice and Christmas. And Sasha was the entertainment at our annual open house on Christmas Eve—he had more people to play with than he knew what to do with, and, after the guests left, kinda hit the floor with a satisfied sigh, and slept for a solid hour without moving.
Oh, and last week we did finally find his mother, who is currently residing in our bathroom. After Christmas, we’ll arrange to bring her to man we know who runs a no-kill cat rescue, so she can find her permanent family. She’s a smaller version of Sasha, with the same chirpy little voice and large, slanting copper eyes, so we don’t feel so stupid about not checking to make sure of the sex of the cat we brought inside the first time! So the good news is that two lovely, adorable cats will have good homes, and we have a new fuzzy four-footed child who lives to entertain us.
Now I’m off to start making our Christmas dinner, wishing all Kossacks and their loved ones and friends a Good Yule, a Happy Solstice, Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, and Happy Festivus—or simply Happy Parting. May a Sasha in whatever form you need one, human or four-footed, year—we all need to laugh and remember not to take ourselves or life too seriously.