If you know me at all you'll know that I love cats but, you won't know that I was about twenty one years old when I first found that out. I honestly never even knew a cat, been with a cat or wanted to be. Frankly, cats scared me as I had no experience with them and all those pro-dog/anti-cat people convinced me that cats were kinda scary and evil and would never be like a dog, all loyal and goofy and loving. Cats were too hoity toity and unpredictable and no, you cannot control them but perhaps that says a whole lot more about us hoomans than it does the nature of a cat, just sayin'.
Then I met Pooky, my in-laws chonky ole' grey beauty. I only would get to see her when we would go to Calgary to for a visit. You really never knew Pooky was even in the house. She just layed about, as cats are wont to do, occasionally appearing as though from the ether in search of her dinner or a wee scritch. You often could feel a presence behind you. The neck hairs would tingle and a force compelled you to turn around only to find her mesmerizing yellow eyes penetrating into your soul and begging the most profound of questions, "where's my dinner?" I shouldn't say begging, cats do not beg, they silently command. I didn't get to know Pooky well but she lived a relatively long and well loved life before heading to kitty heaven.
Dogs I knew. Our first dog was a german shepard named Ringo. Apprapo for the day as the Beatles were all the rage at the time. I don't remember Ringo and only know him from photos. I was very young and when we moved across country at the age of four, Ringo went off to live life with another family.
Our next dog was Dusty. Boy, I loved that little mutt and she loved my Dad. She always knew when Dad was coming home. She would run into the living room, hop on the couch and stare out the window. Her tail would wag in circles like a Whirling Dervish and sure enough, moments later, Dad would be pulling into the driveway.
Dusty was a Heinz 57, a little of everything, knee-high, about twenty five pounds of pure energy, short reddish brown hair, gorgeous brown eyes, perky and pretty and smart as a whip. The only thing she never learned to do was to stay in the yard. Dusty had a penchant for running away so we hooked her up to the outdoor laundry line on a massively long rope and when she had to go out we knew she wouldn't take off. Now, before ya'll go getting the animal cruelty folk involved, this was in the 70's and we never left her out there if we weren't home. Besides, she loved having the run of the backyard and us five crazy kids who adored her.
I was about eight, maybe nine years old when Dusty found herself in a family way and I remember those puppies being born like it was yesterday. Mom was amazing. She stayed with Dusty through the night helping her birth five little ones and we little people got to watch. It was fascinating and gross all at once. One pup died that first day but the rest grew to be pawdorable little puppers. I specifically remember a blonde ball of fur my Dad named Torag, a scottish word for rascal. "Ach, your just a wee torag yew are" is what he would say.
Sadly, when Dusty was eleven she was diagnosed with cancer and one cold winter's day she managed to get out of the house. We searched long and hard, we cried an awful lot but we never found her. My parents said she went off to die by herself, that's what animals do. I like to believe that was true. As a kid you can't comprehend it and really, no matter, it hurt like hell.
There were a number of animal free years between Dusty and our next lot. School, traveling, dating and then marriage. Who had time for pets? Apparently the universe said we did when a gorgeous little tabby cat appeared three days after our wedding. Miss. Kitty showed up as we were loading our suitcases into the car for our honeymoon. She had a note on her collar asking whoever found her to give her a loving home. We fed her and left with the note intact and five days later returned home at which point we found ourselves newly wed and newly parenting our first cat baby. Fourty years later we are still living under Cat House Rules.
Yup, those feline conjurerers got me. They stole my heart, hypnotized me into acting as their wait staff and changed my cat judgement into cat love forever. It's like they are Yoda in cat's clothing. Christine, "may the felines be with you."
In between Miss. Kitty and our now resident Diva we were blessed with Skitters who came to us six months after Miss Kitty. He was freezing, starving, mite invested, living under our back porch and very skitterish. Yes, we named him Skitters and then my Dad told us that's a scottish word for the poops. Who knew unless you were from Scotland? It didn't matter, Skitters it was and let me tell you, his gut lived up to his name those first few days we had him. Peeeeeyooooo!!!
Hubby spent about two hours with the back door open in freezing temperatures luring him in with a ham trail. Eventually, hunger overrode fear and he ate his way into the loving and warm cat whisperer lap that is my husband. Skitters and Miss. Kitty had quite the relationship. She was young and energetic and cheeky and he was older and wiser and would get so annoyed with her childish ways but they loved the heck out of each other.
After those two little minkies had long made it over the rainbow bridge we made the incredibly questionable decision to adopt a six month old black lab/shepard cross and not one but two cats, mother and daughter, from the SPCA, all at the same time. We were three months back in Canada after four years in Hong Kong, I was home alone two weeks out of every month with a two year old and a seven year old in a ginormous house on an acre of land in a town I wasn't familiar with, not knowing a soul and ya, sure, what a good idea, let's take on more sentient beings to care for. I'm good with that.
Daisy...she was a depressed hunk of brown eyes and pure heartache in that SPCA pen. She bore into our hearts in about 2.7 seconds and Missy and Nibbles, the tuxedo mom and baby, stared out of their cage with those "how adorable are we" cat eyes and you guessed it. The kids were over the moon when we said yes to all three and the drive home was akin to a Disney ride gone bad.
Daisy turned from her Eeyore the Donkey whoa is me persona into the happiest, wildest ADHD dog one could imagine the moment we took her out of the building. Her Jekyll and Hyde transformation was comical and horrifying all at the same time. Meanwhile, Mom and baby wanted nothing to do with any of us. They curled up in their carrier, as far back as they could get, spewing seriously judgemental looks as if to say, "why would you bring that mongrel with us?" Two days later Hubby was off on a trip and four days later I stood in our driveway crying and telling the kids the animals were going back. I was balling, they were balling. It was not my finest parenting moment, let me tell you.
As with all new pets, adjusting to them and they to us took time and those three became our most beloved fur babies. Throughout those years we also had two lovely ginger cats, Sir. Chester J. McGillacatty the 1st and Copper. We loved those two but, they were wanderers and their wandering spirits had them move on to discover other worlds not long after we gave them a home and our hearts. At least that's what I tell myself because I don't like thinking of what else could have happened to them.
I was done in after Daisy, Nibbles and Missy passed and I swore I would never have another pet, it was just too hard to say goodbye. Wellllll, so much for that short lived proclamation. Along came Maggie.
Maggie is a Brooklyn born street cat that roamed the borough in a feral gang and was found at about seven months old and pregnant. At the same time my daughter was living in Brooklyn and decided it was time to become a fur Mom. When their respective green eyes met, the stars aligned, Maggie tiptoed into her arms and a love story was born. Maggie also happens to be the incarnation of our cat Nibbles, who was our daughter's soul kitty. It was meant to be when she and Maggie found each other and just when they both needed to.
I've actually written and illustrated a children's book called "The Littlest Kitty with the Biggest Heart" which is all about Maggie and her early life. Maggie also has a cameo appearance in my book "Gilbert and the Kitties of Court Street" which is where Maggie and my daughter lived all those years ago.
Maggie has endured much in her life. She’s thirteen now and she's had an enlarged heart, lost hearing in one ear, only has three teeth due to dental reabsorption disease and has a detached lens so is blind in one eye. She's had numerous procedures and suffers the indignity of getting daily eye drops and yet, she is the sweetest, most gentle soul one could imagine in a cat. She's also an amazing mouser which we put down to her extraordinarily long whiskers. She may not hear or see well but they do the work for her.
Maggie is a bit of a lone wolf, (she shudders at the thought of being referred to in canine terms and the fact that her only cousin is a DOG! Kaito is our son's fur baby, a gorgeous blue point shepard) and she does not play well with other cats. Our porch cat Teegray is a case in point. She will tolerate him/her? through the window glass but if they come nose to nose, watch out.
Maggie may have a sweet disposition and demeanour but occasionally her Majesty reigns above as she looks down upon us mere peasantry. As Marie Catoinette said, "let them eat Whiskas!" Maggie only eats pure chicken and turkey products due to her allergies don't you know? She also doesn't eat peas and funnily enough neither did our Daisy. How they manage to eat everything in the bowl and spit out just the peas is a mystery and seriously, cat food with peas in it, really?
Our pets are magical, mysterious, marvelous, creatures. We are totally fine walking them, armed with poop bags and willing to scoop up said poop and spend hours hauling that bag around until we find a garbage can. We spend mini fortunes on toys and yet, for a cat, the box is the thing. Just ask any cat, box or balls and they pick the box, every time. Try lining it with packing paper and it’s a forever bed. Ask any dog, box or balls and they pick the balls, chase them, chew them, lose them and bury them, every time, and we keep buying more.
We buy them beds and blankies and dishes and leashes and collars and neckerchiefs and coats and shoes and scratching posts and automatic litter boxes and pet monitors, all the paraphanalia that goes into their creature comforts, sometimes sacrificing our own to provide for them.
Now, don't get me started on how much pet food costs as we proceed to provide a buffet of choices and then there's the vet bills, which is a whole new level of financial ruin, and yet we pay it, because we can't imagine not doing everything we can to help our fur babies when they need it.
We have pet trainers and pet walkers and pet sitters and pet day care and pet psychologists and pet nannies and pet buses and pet spas and pet hotels, many that rival the human equivalents. The pet industry is a hundred and fifty billion dollar business to date and with less children of the homosapien variety being born, I believe pets are filling those voids. It seems to me there are more pets living the good life than there are people.
We simply love our animals. They are unconditional love. They are angels that walk and leap and fly among us. They bring us joy and teach us things we never knew we needed to learn. They guide us, save our lives, give us purpose, connect us, provide support, help us exercise, dole out affection and lick our wounds, literally and figuratively.
They are sentient beings that survived on instincts and now we've domesticated them so they can only thrive with our care. When we earn their trust, when they accept us as their person, it is our responsibility to treat them the best we can and give them the respect and love they so deserve.
Some of us dress our pets up. Some let them kiss our faces after they, well, you know. We sleep with them, eat with them, ride with them, fly with them, play with them, cry with them and it just doesn't matter that they take our time or our money, that is of little to no consequence.
What matters is when they take our hearts all the other stuff falls by the wayside. They are so worth all we have and then some because, what they do for us is far and away so much more than what we do for them and we do it, all for the love of pets.
Love, Kiki
xoxo
"When I look into the eyes of an animal, I do not see an animal. I see a living being. I see a friend. I feel a soul." -- A.D.Williams
Maggie and Me
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