CAT TALE #2 - Chasing Mice Cubes

In response the writing prompt on Mama’a Losin’ It blog: 

Tell us about a stray animal you took in.

        We had moved in June that year. The previous homeowner had a green thumb and a large flower garden. We had moved from a city home with no yard to a small town and a house with a huge yard. So that first summer, while I was on break from teaching, I tried my hand at gardening. It seemed like I spent all of my time pulling weeds.
        One day, as I was working near the driveway, a tortoise-shell kitten came from under my car and immediately sauntered up to me to rub her face on my leg. She was petite and had beautiful amber eyes. 
        As I explained in Cat Tale #1, my husband is a cat magnet, but he was at work in the city during the day. However, when he arrived home, the kitten went right to him.
        We already had three cats, so we certainly didn’t want a fourth. We figured she would find her way home, so we didn’t feed her. But every day, there she would be in the yard when I went out to work in the garden. And, of course, being suckers for a furry face, soon we were feeding her ---and then she adopted us. The other cats had all been mine before I had met my husband, so this one became his baby.

        We took her to the vet for a check up and her shots.

        Next we had to decide what to name her. I had named the first two cats: Sterling and Stormy. The third cat was offered to me by someone moving to an apartment that wouldn’t accept pets. I had refused until I found out the cat’s name was Stinky ---I figured he’d fit right in. 

        My husband was interested in antique and classic automobiles, so I asked if there were any car names that started with S-T.  At first he said he didn’t think Studebaker or Stingray would be good names for a cat. After a few more minutes he suggested Stutz Bearcat. So Stutzie became our fourth pet.

        One day my husband dropped an ice cube on the kitchen linoleum. Stutzie immediately started to bat it around the floor and chase it like a hockey puck. My husband said, “She misunderstood us. She thought we called it a ‘mice cube.’” Thereafter, we put ‘mice cubes’ on the floor for her nearly every day.
        We always kept our cats indoors, but Stutzie would bolt out the back door sometimes when we were entering or exiting the house. She immediately headed for the wild garlic that popped up in our lawn. When we finally caught up to her, my husband would call her ‘Stutzarelli’ because she smelled like a bad Italian restaurant.
        She liked bouncing down a few basement steps until she arrived at the one that had a hook with a clothes line attached to it. Then she would try to walk on the clothes line, as if it were a tight rope. Then she became ‘The Amazing Stutzenda.’
        One day, we couldn’t find her. We thought she had escaped the house or was hiding in the basement or the attic. After we had given up looking for her, a movement caught my eye. She was on top of the kitchen cabinets looking down at us. I swear she was smirking. I imagine she wondered what the two human idiots were doing, running up and down the stairs looking for her, when she was right there all along. Later we saw how she did it. She hopped to a kitchen chair, then to the table. From there, she floated over to the countertop, then jumped to the microwave on top of a high rolling cart, and finally leaped to the top of the cabinets.

     

         Meanwhile, our oldest cat, Sterling, developed kidney problems. He was the first pet that had been my very own, before I met my husband, so he held a special place in my heart. I cried for days after he died.

        About two years later, when Stutzie was about 4, she started to limp. When we took her to the vet, he determined she had a tumor in her left rear leg, and after a biopsy, discovered it was malignant. He said that instead of removing the tumor and Stutzie having a useless leg, most cats got along quite well on three legs, so he suggested he amputate it. Reluctantly, we agreed.
        Before our vet proceeded with the surgery, he decided to perform one more test. Sadly, Stutzie had feline leukemia. He said she probably already had it when she was a kitten. At that point, he decided not to do the surgery.
        We took our baby home with instructions to bring her back if she stopped eating or seemed to be in pain. Although we had a strict rule in the house, that the cats were not allowed in the bedroom, we placed an extra litter box, food and water in the room and Stutzie shared our bed with us. Within days, she stopped eating, but she still cuddled up to us and purred loudly, lulling us to sleep.
        After a few days, she became weak and listless and still wouldn't eat. We decided to end her suffering.
        I thought I’d never love a cat as much as I loved Sterling, but Stutzie was so young that it was even sadder to lose her. She had been smart and funny. She amazed us with her antics and always made us laugh. She had given us four years of love and joy.
        I hope we returned the favor.

(Photographs of Stutzie and text ©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

CAT TALE #1 - Like the Moon

I was able to fulfill two writing prompts with this one story:

In response to a writing prompt on Mama's Losin' It: Tell us about your pet.

Laura Jayne's prompt at Pictures, Poetry & Prose was to tell a Kitty Tale.

We wouldn't spoil a pet. Never. Honest.

My husband and I walk almost every night. He had an in-home business while I taught school, so in the summer, we walked late at night when it was cool. After midnight, most houses along the way were dark and we rarely saw a person or a car except on Main Street.
My husband loves animals. What’s more, animals adore him. Normally cats don’t approach strangers, but along our walks, cats often pussy-footed right up to him and rubbed against his leg. He is a cat magnet.
One summer, a black and white kitty came from between two houses to greet us. This happened nearly every night for several weeks. Then one night, she started to follow us, but when we turned down the street parallel to the one where she met us, she headed back toward the place where we originally saw her.
As the days went on, the tuxedo cat continued to walk behind us and finally she was tailing us back to our house. We hopped in the car with her and released her near the area where we met her. This went on every night for several more weeks.
One morning, the cat was on our back porch. This cat looked cared for and well fed, so we were sure it was someone’s pet, not a stray, so we drove her back to her neighborhood. She followed us again that night and we drove her home. She was at our back door the next morning. The cat was stalking us.
We tried walking a different route, but there she would be in the morning. We were concerned because the cat had to walk nearly a mile to our house and needed to cross Main Street which was also a well-used state route. We posted signs and left fliers in doors near where we had found her. No one called.
One morning the cat showed up with a huge gash in her side, with a large piece of loose skin and lots of blood on her fur. We took her to our vet. He stitched her and gave us antibiotics. He could tell from a scar on her tummy, that she had been neutered. Since that indicated some care, we thought she probably had her shots, but since we didn’t know, he gave her the usual series of innoculations. The bill was over $100.
After paying her vet bill and receiving no response from our fliers, we decided she was ours. My husband came up with her new name. He chose it because we first met her under the moonlight.

Lunette was very small when she adopted us.

Lunette soon moved into the house with our other three cats, but as the years went by the older ones died off, so she is now, what she always wanted to be, an only child.

Lunette loves paper and cardboard. We cannot leave a letter on the table or a cardboard box lying about, or else we come home to shredded pieces spread all over the room.

She loves water. Outside our basement shower stall, she will lap up the water that sprays onto the floor ---water that must taste of soap and shampoo. She also likes to lick face cream, hand lotion and after shave from our skin.

Lunette is very vocal. When she wants attention, she lets us know with loud meows. One night we were watching TV and it seemed like every two minutes a commercial would be on for Verizon Wireless. My husband hated the commercials. When another one came on, I said, “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” just to annoy him. He responded with, “Can you hear ‘Meow’? That’s all I hear all day long.”
If we ignore Lunette’s meows, she will knock a mug off the kitchen counter or dig her claws into one’s leg. She refuses to be ignored.

Early on, we discovered she disliked canned cat food. We placed it in front of her and it was as if it wasn’t even food. She wouldn’t sniff it or taste it, just walked away. The only cat food she ate was dry Kitten Chow. But soon she stopped eating that and the only food she ate was people tuna in water. She turned up her nose at tuna packed in oil.

Now she eats Temptations snacks, which are rather expensive, and canned tuna, but only if it is nice and moist. If it has been sitting a while, we have to moisten it with warm water. Occasionally, she will eat deli turkey, you know, the kind that costs $6.00 a pound.
Lunette will sit on my lap for a few minutes, then move to my husband’s ---her favorite place to be. If his lap is unavailable, she will take over his desk chair. He often sits on an uncomfortable stool so as not to disturb her nap. Lunette goes to bed with him, but when I crawl into bed, she usually sleeps on my thighs for a while, but eventually heads downstairs to nibble on Temptations, use the litter box, and sleep on one of her two heated mats.

Lunette is about half black and half white. Her personality also has a light and dark side. She can be sweet, loving and adorable (mostly when she is napping, which is nearly all the time.) Her dark side shows up when she is clawing one's leg, shredding important papers, or demanding attention. Dark and light, she is truly like the moon.

But she’s not spoiled. Not at all. Really.

(Photos and text ©2008, C.J. Peiffer)

September 2009 update: After a vet visit, Lunette has been on a diet for several months. Now she no longer eats Temptations or people tuna, but eats Sheba ---which if it were sold by the pound would cost about $8/lb. We also make our own cat food, mostly with roasted or boiled chicken. We mix special vitamins with it, along with an egg yolk and salmon oil. It took us a while to find the right combination to create something she would eat, but she has gone from 13 to about 10.5 lbs. That doesn't sound like much but that is like a person who used to weigh 130 lb. now weighing 105. Lunette has lost her big tummy and is looking slim, trim, and more beautiful than ever.


June 2010 update: Lunette is now down to 9.6 lbs. and has kept at that weight for about 6 month. She seemed healthier and livelier than ever on her new diet. However, sadly we just learned that Lunette has a cancerous tumor between the shoulder blades where most cats get their vaccinations. It is a very aggressive form of cancer. Surgery and/or radiation treatments are possibilities but the prognosis is not good with or without treatment. To learn how to reduce your cat's risk of this cancer, click on this link: Vaccine-Associated Feline Sarcoma Task Force


February 2011 update:  We had opted to forego what would surely have been painful and invasive surgery that would probably not prolong Lunette's life, deciding she would let us know when it was time to let her go. Although Lunette's tumor grew from marble sized to the size if a tennis ball and was soon accompanied by a second tumor, she seemed to be doing quite well for many months.  She was eating and drinking normally. She wanted to be held. But she was slowing down and seemed to always need to be in a warm spot. For a while, she would disappear for hours on end. We finally realized she was crawling behind the refrigerator where she would nap for about 23 hours a day. A month or so ago, we noticed she was having difficulty walking ---her back legs didn't  function well. We surmised that the tumors on her back were affecting her spinal cord, resulting in partial paralysis. But she was able to get from her warm spot behind the refrigerator to the litter box and her food bowls.  A few days ago, she flopped to her side and couldn't get up by herself, but once I placed her on her feet, she could stagger around. The next day she seemed a little better. The following day, she was trying to walk but her back legs were splayed out to the sides as she pawed the floor with her front paws to move across the kitchen linoleum. So---we decided it was time to let her go. On 2/16/11, we took her to the vet to have her put down,
        After knowing she was dying for so many months, I didn't think it would be so hard. But I cried and I'm crying now as I write this two days later. My husband was terribly affected by having to let her go. Lunette had chosen him, not the other way around. If she were outside and he was headed toward the house, she would walk up to him, wanting to be picked up. And when he bent down to lift her, she would jump to his shoulder. He's the one who fed her and cleaned her litter box, She loved sleeping on his lap, snuggling up to him in bed, and vocalizing every need to him.
        She was unique. She was loved. And she will be missed.