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Once upon a time I had 6 wonderful cats: Charlie, Goblin, Tyler, Boodle, Belle, and Smrf. When they were about 5 years old, I adopted Jerousha, an 11 year old female who had lived with my Great Aunt Pearl (and a dog) until my great aunt died at age 98. About a year later, Jerousha wandered away while a sitter was taking care of the babies. This cat page is a history of my cats.
Charlie, the matriarch, adopted me in late fall 1984. I started out petting her, started letting her in the duplex (where I wasn't supposed to have pets), then bought a little food for her... Almost immediately after I started feeding her, she brought her several-month-old kitten to visit, too. "Look, baby, I found a sucker!"
That baby was Goblin, so named because she could get into and out of the house without me seeing her... despite standing at the door looking for her. She's a pastel tortoiseshell, a color I'd never seen until she adopted me. It took about a year before she would let anyone except me touch her, and then it was limited to my parents with whom she and 4 others lived for several months. According to my parents, she knew what time my father got home from work and would perch on a table looking out the window for his truck. Soon as she saw it, she would bounce over to the table by the front door where she would roll over, look cute, and stay until he gave her a good belly rub.
When I found out Charlie and Goblin were neighborhood cats, I decided I could really adopt them. But before I could get them to the vet to be spayed, they both got pregnant. Oops.
Charlie delivered a litter of 3--Tigger, Canoe, and Tyler, too. (Who knows what campaign slogan that's based on?) She was ready to deliver as I was on my way out the door. She followed me to the car and tried to get in with me. When I got back, she greeted me, slim and trim, and insisted that I follow her her under the house where I had put a big IBM PC box never dreaming she would actually use it. As I sat on the stoop just inside the crawl space, she went to the other side of the duplex and brought back the three kittens one by one, dropping them in the box I had prepared.
Canoe was adopted, and Tigger was killed by a car when he was about 6 months old. :'-( Tyler was the runt of the litter and stayed with me. The runt is now 15 pounds of muscle and, when standing on his hind legs, can put his front paws on my kitchen counter. What a runt. He's one of the most laid back cats I've ever known. He likes water and snow and, like most cats, sitting above the rest of us.
The real runt of the two litters was Boodle who was supposed to be the end of the kit 'n caboodle. She was Goblin's. Goblin delivered when she was less than a year old and only Boodle survived. For months, she would disappear on the roof of the duplex and I would be sure she must be dead from starvation. Finally, as she reappeared time and again, I realized Goblin was going up to feed the rascal. When she was finally weaned, she stopped disappearing for days at a time. Boodle (whose nickname is Bear--I have no idea why we came up with that) is about half Tyler's size and adores him. When I come home from work, if they're both outside, she'll run and round him up (literally) before coming inside. Boodle isn't much of a cuddler except when I'm in front of my computer at home. She thinks that's quality time meant for her and will lie in my lap for long periods of time. Before I got a screen saver, I would turn the monitor down when ready to get up. She knew exactly what it meant and would jump out of my lap as soon as I reached for the monitor. The screen saver has left her confused about when to get up. :-)
My procrastination meant Charlie got pregnant again before I got her spayed. The first litter wasn't even weaned when I noticed another was on the way. I took that litter of 6 to work with me when they were old enough to adopt out. 5 of the 6 were taken home, but one, Smrf, was returned the next day because she cried all night. (Wouldn't you cry at that age in a new, strange house?) For years afterwards, I would remind Smrf how glad I was that she had been returned. She was a truly sweet cat with big green eyes... a tortie who I began to call the Rotund One. She died in June 1993. :-( She was named Smrf as a contraction (of sorts) of "Small Fry." When she was little, she was a small fry.
Belle was the other who wasn't adopted, probably because I told everyone at work, "If nobody adopts this one, I'm going to keep her." She's a calico and beautiful. (Not that I'm biased.) If anyone has seen pictures of Leslie Ann Ivory's calico cat, that's Belle. (Not really, but they look like twins.) Belle is fairly cold-natured, and likes to sit by the fire.
Charlie, up until she disappeared at about age 15, ruled the roost. Goblin, who used to be second in command, is now at the top of the heirarchy. Boodle used to be as high up as she wanted, but for some reason is lower these days. Belle doesn't really care where she is in the heirarchy. When she gets tired of being swatted, she swats back and that's the end of it. When Tyler was with us, the only male and clearly the largest of the family, he was at the bottom of the heirarchy... he couldn't have cared less.
Kitty Sadnesses: In March 1996, Tyler (age almost 12) had a very large tumor develop across his shoulders. He had 2 hours of surgery to remove it. The vet told me after he'd healed that he never expected Tyler to survive the trauma. He did really well, though, and the biopsy seemed hopeful... the tumor was more likely to recur locally than to metastasize. For two months, his scabs continued to heal well and the tumor seemed gone. But in the last week of May, it reappeared and in a week was as bad as it had been in March before the surgery. The vet said surgery probably wouldn't do any good and that even though radiation therapy was a possibility, he didn't think that would anything other than possibly slow it down. So, on June 4, 1996, I had to have him euthanized.
Charlie disappeared the night of May 25, 1996. It was a tough spring.
Adoption Day! The Evans cats welcomed a new addition on March 10, 1997 when my younger niece, Kelly, and I brought back an unexpected pleasure from a trip to see my older niece, Amy, in Mississippi. Tupelo was about 6 months old. She's white with kind of tabby markings in a pattern similar to a Siamese pattern. (Although, as she's matured, her coloring has darkened and the tabby stripes have extended further.) In her first 2 days with me, she spent an hour and a half in a car driving from Vardaman (her home) to Tupelo where she was contraband for the night in the motel room's bathroom. The next day, Kelly, Tupelo, and I drove back from Mississippi to North Carolina--a trip that took us 16 hours (with stops). Tupelo was calm, snuggly, and incredibly cute. She used the litter box for the very first time in the back seat on the beltline aruond Atlanta! Kelly gave a play-by-play of the action, interspersed with "Good girl, Tupelo!" from both of us. :-) At home, she was met with an unenthusiastic gallery of three older cats. But she refused to act aggressively, and so is now tolerated. In fact, I think Belle and Goblin actually like her, although they refuse to admit it. Tupelo has been much more playful than my others from the very beginning. As she accumulated toys, it became clear that she needed a toy box. So, I took a photocopy paper box, cut some holes in it, and threw everything in it. I periodically do that, and one by one, the toys reappear throughout the house. Like all cats I've ever had, Tupelo like to look out the window. As a card I have says, "It's like cat T.V."
In late October 1997, Boodle got very sick very suddenly. A trip to the vet showed that her temperature was three degrees below normal, and her kidney was "hard as a rock" and enlarged. The vet was convinced she had a malignancy. She'd had infections in May and September and her weight was down from 6 lbs to 4.5 lbs. In the course of one day, she went from OK to very, very bad. The vet's recommendation, when asked what he would do if she were his kitty, was he would "send her to Heaven." So, I did.
Tupelo went in with me when I took Boodle in. She had a recurring case of cystitis and needed oral antibiotics instead of pills. She is an expert at not taking pills. (And I'm pretty good at giving them.) I made the mistake of leaving her in her cat carrier while the vet and I were talking about Boodle. By the time I tried to take her out of her carrier, describing her as the friendly one, she was pretty upset. I had to pull her out of the carrier, and she hissed at the vet twice. She tends to be very sensitive to my moods. She must have figured that the vet was the only reason I could be so upset, so he was The Enemy.
The good news is that with fireplace season, Tupelo and Belle have found a common interest. They both love fires. Belle has always come right over as soon as she sees I'm going to make a fire. Now, they both come over, and as the heat builds, they lie down side-by-side. I've even seen Tupelo grooming Belle on several occasions. Belle seems to like it. Real progress in the world of kitty living...
And in the continuing saga of geriatric kitty life and death, Belle died while I was on a camping trip in the mountains June 5, 1998--almost 2 years to the day from when Tyler died. She would have been 14 on August 1. My poor kitty sitter found her when she and her boyfriend came to check on the babies that Friday night. Another friend, who also serves as a kitty sitter took Belle to the vet Saturday morning to have her cremated. It feels funny to have only 2 feline fuzzies, but should Goblin, at the age of almost 15 be subjected to yet another family addition? She and Tupelo are getting along really well. They play with their shoestrings together and alone. They don't snuggle, but they do lie within a foot or two of each other quietly. I guess I figure Tupelo came to us by fate. If fate stares me in the face again, I hope I recognize it. Until then, the Evans household is a 2 cat one.
Fate Strikes Again
Goblin was diagnosed with a nasal cavity tumor in spring 2000 as I was recovering from foot surgery. Unfortunately, it progressed very quickly and at the end of June, I had to have her put to sleep. She would have been 17 in September. I had hoped she would make it to our new house. So, Tupelo became an only child. She did OK until we moved into the new house. She had a lot more space, everything was different, and she was not a secure kitty. Everywhere I went, she had to be with me. If I happened to move out of a room when she wasn't paying attention, she would cry and cry and cry until I called her to come join me. She dragged her shoestrings around constantly, crying the whole time. I knew I wanted to get more cats, but didn't want to find any until I had the big open house planned for early September for folks to see the house I'd talked about for years. I was afraid a kitten would be stepped on or would panic from so many people.
Then in the evening after our bicycle club's annual big ride, a friend called to say a stray kitten had arrived at her home. A group of us were going to dinner to celebrate the ride's success, and Marie wondered if I wanted to come by her house afterwards to see the kitten. What could I say? Of course I would meet the kitten. All it took was one look. He was about 6 months old, very friendly, rubbed up against my legs, rolled all the ground to have his back and stomach rubbed, and generally stole my heart. Another friend who was there suggested that I name him Spot when we saw the mark on his belly. But I knew that wasn't a simple spot; it was a Star.
I didn't have a cat carrier with me, but I put Star in my lap for the drive home. He was remarkably well-behaved and calm--in retrospect, perhaps the only calm time he had in his first 3 years. :-) The next two nights, I isolated him in a bathroom until I could get him checked out by a vet. Everytime I went in, he was beside himself... purring, rubbing, jumping in my lap, rolling on the floor. At the vet, Dr. Pshyk gave him the all-clear, administered his first shots, advised me to wait until he had developed a little more muscle before having him neutered, and Star and I returned to the house to introduce him to Tupelo. Having introduced new cats to the household before, I wasn't really looking forward to their first meeting. Boy, was I surprised! I opened the cat carrier, Tupelo came forward to check out what was in it, Star came out, they touched noses, and that was the start of their friendship. Not a single growl, hiss, or laid-back ear. To this day, they're buddies. They fight, and sometimes Tupelo gets very upset with Star when he wants to play and she doesn't. She *does* growl during their play sessions Star is about 4 years old, and I still have never heard him growl. But, Tupelo also takes her turn as aggressor, so it all seems fine. They don't snuggle constantly, but sometimes they do. They seem to have a happy mix of independence and companionship. They're comfortable with each other. I'd actually like to add another one or two, but the mix between Star and Tupelo is so good, I don't want to do anything to change it.
A local restaurant had a haiku contest in May 2004. I entered two poems. One was a tribute to Tupelo. I like it much better of the two I entered, but the other one I entered won a prize, not the Tupelo tribute. So, here it is, as a tribute to Tupelo:
Moving sun wakes her.
Half-closed eyes of sapphire blue,
Resting cat stretches.
Poetry composed from a magnetic cat poetry set