Tag: Rescue Cat

The Cat Who Thought He Was a Dog

The Cat Who Wanted to Stay has finally left me, departing to dwell in the everlasting grainfields of the Egyptian afterlife, Amenti. There he’s taken up residence in the great city of cats, Bubastis, no doubt lolling at the feet of the Goddess Bastet. 

In March, 2021, when the docs said Puffy would die, he rakishly flipped them a claw, giving me another 15 months of the joy of being his human. Every day I had with him was a gift. In his honor, I am rerunning this column from 2018.

I am owned by a big orange tomcat who somehow missed that memo about cats having staff. He approaches his contact with humans using a very different mindset. I think perhaps he believes he is a dog. Although he hasn’t yet learned to wag his tail, he has totally perfected the doglike stance of sitting in front of people and staring up at them adoringly. Added to this is his propensity for licking. Fingers, hands, cheeks, noses—he literally rains kisses upon any human who will sit still for his affectionately rough tongue. When a friend sat in my home crying one day, he climbed up her lap and licked a few tears from her cheeks. Finding that it wasn’t helping, he began to kiss her nose repeatedly until she finally collapsed into helpless giggles, exclaiming “I think he’s trying to turn off the tap!”

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Puff (full name, Puffy Socks Dragon, Esquire) is a “porch rescue”. Thrown out at the tender age of one year by a despicable owner who moved away and left him to fend for himself, he survived four years on his own in a harsh environment that included the second hottest summer on record in the state of Indiana, and one of the worst snowstorms ever to grace a January landscape. I honestly don’t know how he did it. If anything, I attribute Puff’s survival during those harsh four years to his ability to sweet-talk and manipulate strangers into caring for him by worshipping them.

I became aware of Puff’s existence when, as I babysat my then-four-year-old twin great niece and nephew, he began to come visiting.

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It was they who graced him with his unusual name, deciding that he resembled cats owned by their grandparents (Puff) and great aunt (Socks). “Dragon” was tacked on as a caveat to their favorite song, Puff the Magic Dragon, while I, feeling that “a little more made no never mind”, added the Esquire (in British form) to indicate his status as a gentleman cat.

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In any case, every Wednesday that summer the twins would arrive at my home and we’d head out to the back porch, since they (unlike so many of their counterparts) could not get enough of the great outdoors. And Puff would hear them and come running. I mean running! “The twins are here!” At that time, he’d made a den beneath the minibarn of the neighbor whose backyard abutted mine. I would hear the telltale rattle of lumber that the neighbors kept stored outside the mini-barn, and then Puff would appear, dramatically leaping their stockade fence, Superman-style. All he lacked was a little red cape. He would then rush to the twins and twine around and about them as they held and petted him in a mutual display of affection and admiration.

When summer ended and the twins went home, I caved. After an abortive attempt to find Big Orange another home, I brought him inside and commenced the frustrating challenge of introducing him to my already-overcatted household. “The Girls”—Zoe, Bella and Lilith Cats–did not take kindly to the male interloper in their midst. There followed a number of interesting months, but with patience (and a lot of yelling) Puffy Socks finally became a member of the household.

I would say that I have never regretted it for a moment, but there are times when, looking at the tatters of my formerly favorite curtains, I threaten Puff the Claw with a return to his friendless open-air existence. But then I sit down, and the big old orange guy climbs up my chest and, purring like a little engine, begins to kiss my nose. And I crumble.

As a child, my family always owned dogs. Dachshunds, beagles—we were dog people. I still adore dogs. I constantly buy new toys for my daughter’s Husky.

But, I have to admit, a Cat Who Thinks He Is a Dog, while he may not win a blue ribbon in the Dog of the Year contest, places pretty close—especially in my heart.

Puffy Socks Dragon, Esquire
July 10, 2022

You might also enjoy “The Cat Who Wanted to Stay”, which you may locate in the Archives, below, from March 23, 2022.

The Cat Who Wanted to Stay

If you don’t believe in animal communication, I don’t expect this essay to convince you.

In March of 2021, my sweet big tomcat fell ill unexpectedly.

Now, as any cat owner will tell you, a cat who barfs all over the carpet (the carpet exclusively; never the linoleum or vinyl. A cat will walk half a block to avoid throwing up on any easy-to-clean surface)—anyway, a cat who throws up is nothing extraordinary. Cats are barf machines. So when, early one Sunday morning, Puffy Socks refused his breakfast and vomited, I thought nothing of it. I rubbed some hairball medicine on his paw, earning as dirty a look as any cat owner can be awarded.

But he stopped eating, and, more frighteningly, stopped drinking.

I had encountered this sort of problem before. A nauseated cat will not eat or drink, but failure to stay hydrated can kill the animal quickly.

So I forced water into my poor sick little guy, dropper by dropperful. I tempted him with fresh, cold bottled water poured into a tumbler—don’t ask me why, but cats often prefer drinking from a tall tumbler rather than stooping to drink from a water dish. But Puff grew worse, and finally desperation found me packing him into his carrier at 4:30 in the morning and racing down the road to an emergency veterinary office.

Hundreds of dollars later, all I knew was that he was a very sick animal. He had been hydrated, given anti-nausea meds, prodded and poked and X-rayed. I learned only that Puff, once a feral, had suffered a broken leg at some point, and that he had only one functioning kidney—bad news for a cat who had stopped willingly drinking water.

More trips to my regular veterinary practice followed, with very little change in either his illness or a diagnosis. When I refused an unaffordable CT scan, the veterinarian—the one I didn’t like at the practice, since the vet I usually saw was off work—washed her hands of us. She warned me that Puff probably would not last the month, but refused to even prescribe pain meds, so that my poor little cat would at least not be miserable.

The next night, holding my sick pet cuddled on my shoulder, I stroked him and told him what I thought he needed to hear: “It’s okay if you want to go, sweetie. Mommy will miss you. But you don’t have to stay. You can go if you want to.”

And then came the moment which you may choose not to believe. For, as clearly as if he had spoken the words aloud into my ear, I heard him answer, “I want to stay.”

I could have doubted the reality of what I had just experienced. I could have told myself that I had experienced an auditory hallucination. But I did not. Instead, I took a deep, shuddering breath, hugged his little orange-furred self closer, and answered, “Okay, Big Boy. If that’s what you want, we’re going to do everything we can so you can stay with me.”

I won’t pretend that suddenly everything turned around; that Puff abruptly began to heal; that the despicable vet relented on his treatment; that we didn’t experience more episodes of terrible illness; that I didn’t rack up nearly $2,000 in bills, or make another rushed trip to an emergency office. But from that moment on, both my little cat and I were working toward a different goal: not to let him leave, easily, but to get him better.

A Reiki master for several years, I did not practice the art much, but I had never used it as regularly as I did now on my sick little cat. It didn’t seem to be making much difference, but…Reiki goes where it’s needed, my own Reiki Master Teacher had instructed me. So on Easter afternoon, driving home from my Dad’s house, I suddenly, urgently, knew that I must stop at the nearby pet store. I walked back to the cat food aisle, wondering if I could find a food that would not cause my little cat nausea.

And I did.

Within a few weeks, the cat whom I had been told would be gone in a month or less was recovering.

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He ate without vomiting; gained some weight; began to sun himself and scratch evilly at my carpet once more. He was definitely not as robust and strong as he had once been, but he was no longer at death’s door.

Reiki goes where it’s needed. My little cat needed a food he could digest. I needed to find that food.

My preferred veterinarian returned to work and prescribed medications that I could keep on hand for any return bouts of Puff’s still-undiagnosed illness, warning me that it could recur at any time. I accepted that I might not have this sweet animal’s company for a long lifetime. But I knew now just how strong our bond was, and how much I would do to help him—and how much he wanted to be with me.

It’s been a year now since I was told that my big orange boy hadn’t long to live. It’s not all been smooth sailing, but he is still here; still eating his special food, still scratching my carpet, still cuddling on my shoulder to purr; still kissing the faces of favored friends.

The Cat Who Wanted to Stay is still part of my life. Every day I have with him is a gift. And for that I am unimaginably grateful.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like “The Cat Who Thinks He is a Dog”, which you can locate in the Archives, below, dated June 15, 2018.

Belladonna Night Moon

I invite everyone reading this essay to tell me, in the Comments section, about their own very best pet ever…because our beloved fur friends deserve to be remembered.

On a wall of my upstairs hallway hangs a framed poster from the 57th Annual Halloween Festival in Irvington, Indiana.

Irvington is a most unusual place.  Named for writer Washington Irving, author of  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, the entire town is one large historical district.  Among its many claims to fame are the home where Sojourner Truth once spent a week as a guest; the building that housed a pharmacy which John Dillinger robbed; a stop along the route of the Lincoln Ghost Train; and the house where America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes, dismembered and buried a 10-year-old child.

With these and a dozen other tales of ghosts and fame and antiquities, Irvington, with some justification, goes a little bit nuts at Halloween.  Even during pandemic, Irvington’s famed Ghost Walks were held—somewhat subdued, but ending, as always, at the Lincoln Ghost Train corner.  And each year the festival sponsors a contest for artists to design the official Halloween poster.

Before it, regrettably, became a banal chain pancake house, I’d eaten at Dufours, the Dillinger-robbed-pharmacy-turned-café, and seen these Halloween posters adorning the walls.  All were marvelous, but my unquestioned favorite was the almost-photographic likeness of a black cat peering out from a background of orange-red sky and leafless black trees. Poster (3) It caught my attention because my own cat, Belladonna Night Moon, might have modeled for the painting, so much did she resemble the cat in the poster.  I yearned to own it, but the Halloween poster prints were always of a very limited run, expensive and rarely available.

But one spring my sister-in-law declared her preference for a birthday afternoon spent combing the fascinating small shops of Irvington.  In the midst of that expedition, I came across one of the last framed posters of the black cat.  With some trepidation, I asked the price.  Forty dollars.  Forty dollars?!  How could I justify spending that much money? I didn’t even have a place to hang it! But…it looked just like Bella.  My precious Bella, my best cat ever.  And the poster was a collector’s item.  How could I not buy it?  Fighting a swiftly-losing battle with the remnants of my common sense, I slapped down my credit card.

Hauling my prize home, I discovered the perfect space waiting in my upstairs hallway, and proudly hung what I now thought of as Bella’s portrait.

The real Belladonna Night Moon had come to me as a porch rescue: a half-starved, lost kitten found by a friend one cold November night.  After some minimal arm-twisting, I agreed to take the kitten.  It was a decision I would never regret.  Although not the brightest bulb in the shedBellMimi (2) (“The only thing she knows is, My name is Bella,” my daughter joked), Bella brimmed with good nature and sweetness…unless she was angry with me.  Then she would jump up on her back feet, and, displaying ‘jazz hands’, smack me on either side of my knee and run like hell.

She was a cat who came when called; who saw me to the door in the mornings and met me there when I came home at night.  When I could not sleep, she would lay stretched out beside me, my hand gently stroking her fat little tummy, until we both drifted off to dreams.  Despite her lack of brainpower, she ruled my other three cats as alpha, and they all but bowed to her.

But as time went on, it was obvious my little black cat wasn’t completely well.  Repeated bouts of respiratory infection and pneumonia robbed her of her meow; “Gak!” was the best she could manage.  Eye infections followed, and anorexia.  At last I received a diagnosis: FHV.  Feline herpes virus.  A disease which would flare any time the animal was stressed.  A disease for which there was no treatment, and no cure.

But I was not about to give up on my best baby cat, not without a fight.  Nursing her through repeated bouts of the virus, tempting her with exotic foods for the anorexia, we struggled on together for close to 18 years.  But thyroid disease and renal failure compounded her ailments.  Time after time in the final two years of her existence, I was sure that I had lost her.  Each time, valiant, determined, she rallied to experience months, then weeks, and finally days, of seeming wellness.  But at last, her strength failing, I knew it was time to give my sweet little friend rest.

I knelt beside her as, at the hands of an experienced and kind veterinarian, Bella went ever so gently across the Bridge. To the Ancient Egyptian afterworld of Amenti, I whispered to her, stroking her mink-soft fur; to the great Golden City of the Cats, Bubastis, where she would rest at the feet of the Goddess Bastet.

The next morning, heartbroken, I stood before my familiar Irvington Halloween poster and, perhaps for the first time, noted the date at the bottom of the print.  October 25, 2003.  Fifteen days before a starving kitten struggled onto a friend’s porch, and so into my life.  Perhaps the very day that she became lost—or went in search of me.

For any animal lover, there is always that one special pet who holds our heart cupped within their little paws.  On my wall, then, painted by the hand of an artist who never knew her, hangs a portrait of my little soul-mate cat, Bella.  Belladonna Night Moon, who sits at the feet of Goddess Bastet in the everlasting grainfields of Amenti.

Belladonna Night Moon
2003 – 2020

Again, I invite you to tell me in the Comments about YOUR best pet ever.  And if you enjoyed this post, you might also like “The Cat Who Thinks He Is a Dog”, which can be found in the archives from June 15, 2018.