Pet stories, ya want pet stories? I’ve got 5 cats, and lots of stories!
First I’ll tell you about Olli. He’s the youngest at 3 years old, a short-hair black-n-white. I used to work for a vet, he was a stray that had been hit by a car. He was about 4-6 weeks old at the time- my first view of him was just a pair of HUGE eyes at the back of the cage. His back legs were broken, and his lower half was paralyzed. He had no, er, sphincter control, and the poop just fell out of his butt and caked on his tail (which he couldn’t lift). The person who brought him in said she’d take him if he survived. We just cleaned him, fed him, and kept him in a small cage. We x-rayed his legs, and talked about putting him to sleep. Then one day my boss came in with a bag of kitten chow, and I said, relieved, “So we’re not going to put the kitten to sleep?” And my boss replied, “Heck no, this little guy is a survivor!” About 6-8 weeks later, I came in to work and he was crawling up the cage door! I said to myself, “I guess he doesn’t need cage rest anymore!” I used to take him out of his cage and let him run around in the surgery room while I was cleaning up. The woman who’d brought him in stopped returning our phone calls, so my co-workers said I should take him since I’d lost a cat a few months before. He is very cute, and he’s only about the size of a six-month-old cat. It’s like all his energy went into healing his legs instead of growing. I’m not sure if he’s brain-damaged, he acts like a spaz sometimes. He loves to play with plastic drinking straws, and will carry one around the house in his mouth. He is scared of a lot of things, including my husband, but that’s probably because he was isolated in a cage during the period when he should have been socialized. We have just discovered that he is afraid of Louis Armstrong’s speaking voice. I was playing “Mack the Knife”, and it starts with Louis saying, “Dig, man, there goes Mack the Knife!” and Olli’s eyes got all big and he ran away! I named him Olli because when I brought him home, I was feeding him a combo of canned and dry food, and he figured out that the canned food lived in the fridge. Whenever I’d go into the fridge for anything, he thought it was feeding time, and he’d sit by the fridge and meow pitifully. It made me think of, “Please sir, can I have some more?”, so I named him after Oliver Twist.
I had a cat called Nimue, I got her from an animal rescue place while I worked at the vet’s. She was with me for six years, and then I came home from work one day to find her dead on the sofa. It turned out that she had a bad heart and basically died of a heart attack. I had no idea. She was one of the friendliest cats I have ever known, despite growing up on the streets and being hand-shy when I first got her (she’d flinch when I reached towards her). She followed me around my apartment, and was very talkative. She liked to burrow between the sheets and comforter, and spend the day sleeping there. Once I had a party, and most of my other cats hid. She sat on the sofa between two of my friends, occasionally talking and they’d feed her bits of stuff. She liked to curl up next to me on the sofa, and I’d reach over and pet her. Then I’d stop, and she’d reach over with her paw and touch my leg, and her claws would come out just the slightest bit, as if she was saying, 'Don’t stop petting me!" I still miss her, and sometimes I dream that she has come back to life.
My cat Twinkle is my baby. Someone found her and brought her in- she was two weeks old, and fit into the palm of my hand! I said I would take her and raise her until she was old enough to be adopted out, but OF COURSE I fell in love with her! I fed her with a bottle, and burped her, and had to rub her butt with a damp washcloth to stimulate her to have a b.m. (the mommy cat does this by licking the kitten, and then she eats the mess- talk about recycling!). I kept her in a carrier during the day, with a heating pad, and then at one point I noticed that when I’d open the carrier, and she’d see me, she’d start purring. She learned how to run, and stalk (walking backwards at first), and turn, and stop. Teaching her to eat solid food was messy and fun. I moistened kitten chow and let it absorb the water, then put the mush on a large plate, on top of a towel. I put a little blob on my finger and let her lick it off, then guided her face to the plate. She would get IN the plate with her food, and the food would get everywhere, in her ears, in her toes, in her armpits! It was like having a baby, and I loved it. There was a closet in my livingroom with sliding doors, and I put down a large piece of plastic and put the litterboxes in there so that cats would have privacy. My oldest cat is somewhat fussy, and when the litterbox is too dirty for her liking, she lets me know by pooping next to the litterbox. I came home from work one day, and heard a skittering noise. Twinkle was in the closet, batting a dried piece of poop around! I taught her very quickly that poop hockey is not allowed! She was best buddies with Nimue, and when Nimue died, Twinkle went into mourning as well. She didn’t play for about three months, just laid around looking depressed, and she started doing things that Nimue used to do (burowing in the covers and siting in the bathroom sink). When I noticed her moping, I would pick her up and hold her, and that strengthened our bond too. When I finally started letting her out at night (when she was big enough to not get stuck under/behind things), she would crawl up my comforter and sleep on the pillow next to my head. I would wake up in the middle of the night, at the very edge of my pillow, with her all stretched out next to my head, her feet in my face, purring. And now, I think I’ll go to bed. Enjoy!
