A Christmas Cat-astrophe!

A few weeks ago I received the glad tidings that my two daughters and their families wished to spend Christmas at our house this year. My husband and I were thrilled.We thought those days were over when they married and had children of their own.

However, I was also reminded of the last time we held Christmas at our house, about four years ago, and the memory was—shall we say—mixed. My eldest daughter, Julie, had just acquired two cats. Their names were Cinders and Ashes, drawn from swear words in a Harry Potter tome. That December, it was about time for the cats to be neutered and Julie looked into the cost of this operation. It was astronomical! She strongly suspected that the vets in suburban Northern Virginia had a higher overhead than those in urban Philadelphia. Their waiting rooms attested to this, providing piped-in music, wall-to-wall carpeting, and soft furnishings for both the animals and their owners. She decided a trip to her old family vet in Philadelphia would save a few bucks. His office was more down to earth, with no music, wooden chairs, and a cement floor that was hosed down every night after the last patient left. So Cinders and Ashes were packed into the van along with the presents.

The cats arrived in fine fettle. When released from their carry-alls, they prowled the house, examining every nook and cranny, as cats do, and then settled down for a nap. It was the day before Christmas and the rest of the family rushed around, attending to all the last minute chores – tree-trimming, cooking, present wrapping, etc. The number of bedrooms was limited and every one was occupied. I ended up on the living-room couch. Miraculously, we managed to finish everything by eleven pm and by midnight I was fast asleep. But not for long.

I woke with a start to the sound of running feet and strangled cries. What the h---? I sat up, and, by a shaft of moonlight, caught sight of two black bodies hurling up the front stairs. Seconds later, I heard feet pounding down the backstairs. I went to the bottom of the front stairs and looking up. Various sleepy-eyed family members stared down at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

With one accord, they shook their heads, their eyes wide with wonder. They couldn’t have been more astonished if St. Nick himself had showed up. Then my husband’s reasonable voice spoke in the darkness. “I think they’re in heat,” he said.

Sure enough, although brother and sister, and from the same litter, such distinctions mean little to cats. It seems, overnight, Cinders had developed a grand passion for Ashes. What to do? Christmas would be ruined if my family got no sleep. Something had to be done. And being the current hostess, the solution naturally fell to me. While everyone else went back to bed, I, flashlight in hand, girded myself for the hunt. I corralled Ashes first and deposited her in the only empty room left – the kitchen. Several long minutes later, I caught Cinders, and put him in the kitchen, too, and slammed the door. Peace at last. Hazily, I realized that it would have been better to place them in separate rooms, but such accommodations were not available. Besides, I was too sleepy. I found my way back to the couch. All was quiet upstairs. Surrounded by the smell of pine needles and the sound of church bells tolling a distant carol, I drifted back to sleep.

My alarm went off at six o’clock. I had set it early so I could make coffee and heat up some coffee cake for the early risers. No one sleeps late on Christmas morning if there are children in the house. Having forgotten the cats completely, I wondered briefly why the kitchen door was closed. I opened it.

Oh, my god!

If a dozen of Hell’s Angels had trashed the kitchen in an act of vengeance, it couldn’t have looked worse. Everything that could fall, had fallen; everything that could break, had broken. Canisters, boxes, bottles and jars were tumbled in a great gluey mess of cheerios, flour, honey, jam and coffee beans. The two miscreants made a bee-line for the open door, and disappeared in the upper reaches of the house.

I would have cried, if another impulse hadn’t been stronger. And that’s how my family found me that Christmas morning, collapsed on a kitchen chair laughing hysterically.

Robin Hathaway

The Loss of a Pet

by Thelma Jacqueline Straw


On August 9 it will be just one year since I sent my best little friend into that vast realm beyond recall. From which there is no tangible return.

It has been an eternity . . .

I'm a great believer in the nudging of what some people call Divine Providence. When I first thought about writing this for the year's remembrance of the death of Miss Priss, I was afraid readers would see it as too sentimental.

Suddenly on my screen appeared the moving piece by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC , on the recent death of his beloved golden retriever. Lucky died of an enlarged heart June 11, 2011.

I had my answer. Knew I could share Bob's and my thoughts about the passing of a cherished animal companion.

Bob's words:

"No one, nowhere, will ever love me like Lucky did."

"This kind of loss leaves you searching for answers..."

"There is just something about losing a dog, and either you know about it, or you don't."

"Another fellow will just wander up to your campfire when the time is right."

(Bob Sullivan/msnbc.com Bob Sullivan Blogroll)

The death of a beloved pet ranks right up there with the death of a loved human - a parent, a spouse, a child.

But there is a difference. There is a unique bond between a human and an animal. The unconditional love, the total dependence, complete forgiveness. People often write this about dogs, but no dog is closer than a precious feline companion.

I'd had cats all my life. About fifteen years ago my red Persian Paddy died and I looked all over the Tri-state area for another red Persian. But it was not kitten-time.

Finally, late one rainy day, I found one - at a run-down pet shop that had seen better days, on 2nd Avenue near Grand Central Station.

A tiny, bedraggled kitten peered at me from a filthy cage. She didn't make a sound - but my inner ear heard her beg.

She was a Persian and she was the color of copper and red-gold.

From the very first trip home she never talked. She made her wants known by swishing her gorgeous plumed tail. Or by staring me down with round, soulful eyes.

It was destined that her name would become Miss Priss.

Her sense of play and fun was unique - she delighted in racing down the length of the living room on her hind legs - laughing the whole way.( Noone ever saw her do this but me!)

She had a perfect sense of time. When Daylight Saving changed the clocks, her inner timetable remained the same - to the minute. She would appear silently, wherever I happened to be, and wait patiently until I jumped up to do her bidding!

She loved to go out in the neighborhood for rides in my grocery cart. And how she loved the frequent meetings and gatherings held in her home. My guests were her guests - the buzz of conversation was hers. She was The Hostess!

The only time I ever heard her yowl in all those years was the night I kept her from the party: On November 11, 2009, we threw a party in honor of Bob Knightly's new novel. Fearing Miss Priss might get out of the apartment, I shut her up in her carrier, in a room away from where the action was. After several hours of friendly talk and laughter by old friends of the author, a couple of us heard an unholy howl! The only one in fifteen years!!!

She was used to being the life of the party! She stood her isolation as long as she could - then let it all hang out!

Miss Priss and I were soul-mates. I often looked at her expressive face and thought: Who Are You?

Who Were You Before You Became a Cat?

In the spring of 2010 I knew the winds had shifted. She began to hibernate into her carrier, her special little cave, coming out only to eat a little and use her facilities.

She s-l-o-w-e-d down. Like a wonderful old car that just couldn't run any longer . . .

In the end, she was the delicate weight of a soft feather . . .

Miss Priss, may your special guardian angel always hold you.

And protect you.

Nothing can hurt you now.

You are safe.

And free.


May you rest in eternal peace, my beloved little friend . . .

Luna

Bob Knightly has no idea what a Pandora’s Box he opened with his “Cat Story.” As the old comedian, Jimmy Durante, used to say, “I’ve got a million of ‘em!”

When we were first married, my husband (also Bob) and I rented a tenant farmer’s house in rural Pennsylvania ($80 a month). We attracted animals the way animals attract fleas. Ducks, dogs, but mostly cats. People would drop their unwanted pets by the roadside and eventually they would make their way across the fields and through the woods to our house. And they were always welcome. The first arrival was the most dramatic.

We had been married barely a week when Bob had to attend a medical conference in another state, and I was home alone. It was December and there was a blizzard raging outside. Our little bungalow shook with the wind and to make matters worse whenever there was a lull in the storm I would hear a strange sound, like a child crying. Unable to stand it any longer, I opened the door a crack and looked out. The wind swept in, bringing a wave of snow and ice, and something else. A glob of snow that landed in the far corner of our small living room. As the snow melted, the glob revealed itself to be a black cat with amber eyes—fixed on me in terror.

We stared at each other, dumbly, for several minutes. Then slowly, giving the cat a wide berth, I made my way into the kitchen. I came back bearing two bowls, one with milk, the other with tuna fish. I set the bowls as near the cat and as far away from me as possible and sat down to wait. It wasn’t long before the cat padded warily over to the bowls and wolfed down their contents. A few minutes later everything came up again. As I cleaned the mess, I cursed my stupidity. A little warm milk would have been more sensible to give a starving animal.

The next day Bob returned and was introduced to the new tenant. Still wary, she stayed in her corner of the room and we stayed in ours. But even from that distance Bob noticed her distended belly. Being a physician (but not an obstetrician) he immediately diagnosed a tumor. Oh, dear. I was very upset. But gradually, as he observed her more closely, he changed his diagnosis to--pregnant. We decided to give her a name. Since she was as black as night and had one white mark on her forehead shaped like a crescent moon, we called her “Luna.”

Weeks went by and Luna kept to herself, accepting our food and shelter, but not our friendship. She would not let either of us touch her. No matter how gentle our approach, she would cower, sometimes snarl, and even—spit. We kept our distance. But as she grew bigger and I realized her due date was drawing near, I prepared a bed for her kittens. A lovely wooden box with a blanket, near the stove, the warmest spot in the house. I saw her examine the box, sniffing around it, and I thought it had passed inspection.

One day I was ironing in the kitchen. Something I rarely did. I was concentrating on erasing a wrinkle when Luna came up beside me and mewed. I paid no attention, absorbed in my work. But when she repeated this behavior, I looked down. She immediately ran to the cellar door, which was partially open. Finally catching on, I followed her down the cellar steps. Even in that dim light, I noticed Luna was much slimmer. She led me to the coal bin. There, tucked in one corner, was her brood of five kittens. She immediately lay down and began licking them, one by one. I watched in silence for a while, then went upstairs to call Bob.

That night, for the first time, Luna let us pet her.

Robin Hathaway

A Cat Story

I’m a cat man. I realize and freely admit it now. Wasn’t always so. I didn’t pick up my first cat (two, in fact) till 1990, the Fall of, I think. A girlfriend led me to the basement of the old Gouverneur Hospital on Water Street on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan to show me a clutch of kittens, new to the world and likely not long for it. I was at that time a Manhattan bachelor, newly installed in a one-bedroom apartment in Stuyvesant Town, that complex of 35 red brick buildings of lower-middle-class normalcy on 80 acres of the Eastside from 14^th to 23^rd Streets, First Avenue to the East River. Her idea was that I take one home. I was not sold on the idea.

As I walked into the basement, I saw four of them huddled together in a  cardboard box on the concrete floor. The mother sat sphinx like alongside the box like a chaperone. I just managed to avoid stepping on a tiny tiger-striped creature squeaking up at me as it scuttled back and forth seemingly intent on barring my forward progress. Its body looked bent at a 30% angle. Its mother remained an unconcerned, motionless observer.

So I picked it up—she—and as I held her in the palm of my hand, I swear she gave me that steady gaze of hopeful expectancy cats have mastered (I’ve noticed in the years since). I was sold. Went over to the box then and scooped up a dozing orange-and-white male, the biggest of the litter, to keep her company.

My first stop was the Vet. His verdict on my female’s bent spine?  “It’s either permanent or  she’ll straighten out in time.” So encouraging. But that’s what happened. After three or four days of  feeding my two cats by eyedropper as they rode around their new home on my shoulders, they settled in and ate from their respective bowls. I named her ‘Quasimoda’ (appropriately, I thought) and her brother, ‘Bullet’ (for Detective Frank Bullet in the Steve McQueen movie). He was a sweet-natured, slow-moving, bathwater-bewitched companion to his sister ‘Quasi’, who was  mercurial, inquisitive and fearless.  They were house cats who never ventured further than the hallway outside our apartment door, first in Manhattan then in Jackson Heights, Queens. (Cats, unlike dogs, do not like to travel.) We had Quasi  for 16 years and Bullet for one more year after.

What I remember?  Quasi sitting on the couch in our living room, opposite myself and Rose in our recliners, her head swiveling between us depending on who was talking. As I watched her listening, I  expected her to join in at any moment.

Cats are special people.

--Robert Knightly

Cats

You will recall that last week I put a trailer together for The Brink of Fame, the second book in the Emily Daggett Weiss mystery series, the one where our intrepid heroine is forced to go to pre-WWI Hollywood and search for a missing silent film star. To my eye, the trailer is charming and totally deserves to go viral. So far, however, the trailer has been viewed only twenty-four times, probably twenty of those times by me.

I went to a party last Saturday — a Burns Night party, awash with single-malt Scotch — and began to complain about my lack of exposure to anyone who would listen. "Does your trailer have cats in it?" someone said. "People like to look at cats on YouTube. You should put cats in your trailer."

"Cats! Brilliant! I'll take a pound of catnip and a video camera to Tabby's Place (a nearby shelter for sick and unwanted cats), get all the cats stoned, and take videos of them frolicking and romping!"

"Great. You can tell them you came to adopt a cat, but your husband is very choosy, and you have to photograph them so that he can look at them."

That would explain the camera. But the catnip — Wait. Would that be ethical, to take catnip to the animal shelter? Or would it be like taking a pound of marijuana to a juvenile home? Should people even give catnip to their own cats? Doesn't that make junkies out of them? Surely that would be wrong.

As I was pondering these issues, another of the party guests pointed out that some cats react badly to catnip, turn into mean drunks, as it were, and that many cats at Tabby's Place were on medications that might cause dangerous interactions.

"Oh, go ahead," my husband said. "Only make sure you take your cell phone, so that you can call me from jail."

Upon sober reflection I gave up the Tabby's Place idea. I'm still looking for goofy footage of cats, however. I have six months to get this book into the public eye. The Cat Trailer may well be my next step.

— Kate Gallison