Midnight Mutterings | Planning for cats

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

Planning for cats. is, at best, an oxymoron. As is the term ‘domesticated cat.’ I could have called this column ‘Oh no! Not cats again.’

One more thing before I start writing this: I’m in the ferry line at Orcas Landing, eventually headed for Bellingham where the cats are, I presume. Somehow, I can’t get online, either on my phone or Orcas Online’s free internet here at the Landing. That means there will likely be even more misspellings and bumbled syntax than usual, as I can’t look anything up. Oh well…

As for why I’m typing this in my car, it’s because I forgot, again, my Midnight deadline every other week (Friday midnight every fortnight if I’m feeling fancy). It also, why, if you’re not reading this, even by accident. Also, might be because I got fired by our esteemed editor whose patience if legion, cannot be infinite.

But back to the cats. We, my son and I got these two beautiful tabby kittens, born almost four (I think) years ago, from that Tupperware tub of seventeen babies. Cousins if not siblings in Mount Vernon. Tiny kittens became huge (but not gigantic) cats at 12 and 14 pounds, respectively.

The plan for the cats: Molly, Jay’s cat was to live with him in Bellingham. Rose, mine, would live with Molly and Jay, with stays on Orcas, sometimes alone and sometimes with Molly and Jay, depending what worked best at the time. And it meant, with my frequent Bellingham visits, we would all be together there and sometimes on Orcas. That is until they became adult, and each would have a primary home and get together sometimes. Yes, that was the plan, not that the cats ever signed on…

I assumed the cats would be good travelers like their predecessor Sybil-the-Cat.

Sybil was a stray, dropped off in front of neighbors’ house at Obstruction Pass as a mid-sized kitten.The neighbors (who are long gone in every sense of the word) took her in with the presumption of ‘pretty is, pretty does.’ Not! By the time Sybil (not her name then) was half grown, it was clear she was never going to treat her benefactors with respect and kindness; she earned the right to be taken to the Orcas Shelter. She was so badly behaved with staff, visitors and fellow inmates, she was returned within 24 hours. My neighbor Hal said that she couldn’t stay with them and if I didn’t take her she would have ‘to go swimming.’ I carried her the short distance to my house, bleeding, and named her ‘Psycho-Kitty.’

She was a nice most of the time, but would suddenly use her claws in a most unfriendly way, always with blood letting. I thought she might be occasionally in pain, which provoked her uncivilized behavior. I took her to the kindly vet (now also departed and sorely missed) where she opened his vein. He, along with with the help of his assistant and me, got her into a cat bag (a kind of strait jacket for cats) where he could examine her through various Velcro slits. Her blood test showed elevated creatine, which can be a sigh of inflammation, or muscle injury, that would explain her temper. She was hurting when touched. That meant that sometimes our gentle touch could be very painful.

Sybil and I reached an understanding in which she chose when we interacted physically. Still, she hated the cat carrier and the car, screaming all the way to and from the vet, which was the only travel I subjected her to. Eventually, she made her way through the number of helpful friends who were willing to feed her in my frequent absences during my daughter’s long illness.

Finally I had to stuff her into the carrier and toss her in the car. She screamed all the way to the ferry landing and the wait for boarding. However, once the boat began to move, Sybil sighed, indicating this was what she had been waiting for all her life. She loved the ferry so much that she forgot all about the horrors of the carrier and the car rides. She would get into her carrier and then stare at me like ‘Lets go! Time for a ferry ride.’ On her last trip to Bellingham, I could almost see her smiling as we headed for Bellingham, where she died in the vet’s office of mast cell tumors, while warmed with pheromone scented towels.

Molly and Rose are not good travelers. First of all, they are big and the regular size carriers are a tight fit. For a while we used a small dog carrier for the two of them, but that soon became too heavy to carry easily with two hefty cats. Not to mention that they get kitty carsick, especially after they treat their carriers as kitty potty boxes right away. Unlike Sybil, they are not soothed by the ferry ride.

That’s it for cat planning. And if you are reading this, it means Lin is, in fact, the most gracious of editors in spite of what her personal misgivings might be. It also means I have arrived in Bellingham, to tech civilization, and the cats, who see no value in my laptop and unopened cold bag presumably full of cat treats. Sigh.