Extended Family

When my father married my mother, he brought with him a mostly-furnished house in San Francisco's Sunset District, a sweet mother, and a cat. By the time I met her, Kitty was an elderly brown tabby with a white face and kidney damage from eating some unspecified poison under the sink. Her diet was special cans of food from the vet. I assume she was named by the same young man—my father—as his boyhood dog, named Poochie.

Poochie

Kitty was queen of the roost, and nothing my well-bred mother could do would have made it any different. Mom could set the table with sterling silver and the good china, but Kitty would still sit in my father’s lap at the table. Not only that, if there was a piece of fat that he trimmed off his portion, it would find its way to the bottom of the plate, where a delicate paw would reach up and take it.

Kitty had a shabby Victorian overstuffed chair that was hers and hers alone. It sat along the long-windowed wall in our mid-century modern house in Saratoga, and afforded her sunshine the whole day. She tolerated us children during the day, but when Daddy came home, she was his shadow: in the kitchen, in the bedroom, mowing the lawn, pruning the orchard, napping in front of the TV.

Somewhere during this time, we got a second cat—a large grey tabby kitten, long and lithe, especially when compared to the matronly Kitty. My brother was responsible for naming her Tigger—the Disney movie had just come out and it did seem she had springs in her legs. Kitty did not like Tigger, and hissed at her every time they passed. Tigger was relegated to the sunbeams on the floor, even if the chair was unoccupied.

One evening, Kitty didn’t seem well, and in the morning, we learned that her kidneys had completely failed. As it was a weekend, taking her to the vet was not an option, so my father took her outdoors after we had gone to bed, and shot her. He was really broken up about it. He buried her behind the garage, next to his puttering shed. (Years later, an internet search of the property revealed the shed had made way for an ostentatious kitchen. In case the owners were wondering who they dug up.)

Tigger liked being an only cat and lived a long life. She moved to Redding with us and enjoyed the intense sun rays and the chair that had been Kitty’s. She even came camping with us in the summer—I don’t know how my parents managed to keep her near camp, as she never wore a leash, but there is a picture of a young me in my bathing suit holding Tigger. I still have the scar that came from holding her while Mom used her light meter to set up the picture.

One weekend, my mother and father went up to their rural acreage near Oak Run to putter, as was their habit. They chatted with the neighbor, who offered them a kitten from his calico litter. Mom took the most energetic girl, hoping she would help with the mouse problem in the cabin. The kitten promptly curled up behind the door and slept the entire afternoon away. And then she came home with them.

We kids were of course delighted—a kitten is so much fun! She played! We made toys from string and paper, and she chased us through the house. Tigger was not amused, but was marginally kinder to the young cat than Kitty had been with her. With such a tiny body, her purr was very loud, so she was named Butternut (after the brand of coffee they bought, and because she sounded like a coffee grinder)—by my mother.

As went many things in our family, my mother tried to maintain a sense of dignity and propriety, but it never really dovetailed with life with my father and her two feral children. Butternut became Butt-Butt, and eventually just plain Butt. Poor mom. Butt was a fun cat—never did any mousing!—but on hot days she would go for a dip in the pool in the morning. Because it was a Doughboy pool with a vinyl liner, my dad finally put in a permanent ladder so she wouldn’t damage the liner with her claws getting out.

I don’t recall when Tigger died, but it was a quiet slipping away, and she was buried in the family pet cemetery with a passel of goldfish and guinea pigs in the yard of our Redding house. Butt came with us in the move to Portland, Oregon, and quickly adjusted to being an only cat. Our new house had casement windows that cranked open, and we would leave the kitchen window ajar in fine weather, so we didn’t have to open and close doors for her. By now we kids were in high school, and there wasn’t always someone home to come to her beck and call.

Beginning in Redding, there was always a dog in our lives too (much to the cats’ disdain). One time in the hills east of Redding, we were heading home when Mom spotted a black nose in a three-foot snowbank by the side of the road. A shivering Australian shepherd had been abandoned, so we welcomed her into the back of the Scout. She promptly got sick all over us. A trip to the vet, flea combing and vaccines, and we had ourselves a dog--sweet and neurotic (clearly abused). Mom named her Scombre, telling us that it was the French verb for how she loved to plow through the snow with her nose. I have never verified this, nor do I want to.

Scombre was my father’s shadow, and he loved it. They were inseparable on weekends, exploring, swimming, mowing the lawn. We were her sheep, and she herded us in hallways of the house—she would even nip us if we didn’t behave. This prompted Mom to decide the dog needed obedience training. Scombre passed; our father failed. Scombre followed us to Portland, where she and Butt were joined by a chinchilla—a reject that my mother adopted from someone at church, and promptly named Reepicheep.

But nothing stays the same, and little sheep grow up. First, my brother went to college. Then it was my turn to head out. During my freshman year I picked up a boyfriend whose cat had had kittens. One of them was clearly defective, and his father was planning to drown it. The long-haired calico runt came home with me. She had palsy, which meant she couldn’t walk a straight line. But she was sweet and smart, and I kept her and dumped the boy when I moved out my sophomore year. I named her Boxer because she liked playing in boxes. By now you have noted our family is not talented in the naming pets department.

When I moved abroad, Boxer boarded with my parent’s menagerie. For a while, she had my father carrying her up and down stairs (going down was a painful experience for her and anyone watching). He finally stapled some industrial felt in a strip along the edge of the stairs so she could stop her falls with her claws.

Butt was NOT amused by this sweet creature and avoided her whenever possible. Scombre thought of her as another tiny sheep, and learned that if you herded it too hard, it would fall over.

The first to leave us was Butt. While I was in college, my parents came to a performance, and after it was over, let me know they had put her down. Boxer went out one day while I was abroad, and never came back. And then it was Scombre’s turn. Her hips were failing, and she was having trouble controlling her bladder. It was clear the time was near, so my father took a Friday afternoon off and took her to the vet to put her down. Daddy came home with an impossibly small cardboard box and buried her in the side yard under the forget-me-nots next to Butt.

I was home that weekend, and watched my father get up and make his coffee, put on his boots, and get the lawn mower. He did one round of the lawn and flopped down on the lawn to rest—as was his habit. But this time, there was no dog to play with while he drank his coffee and smoked his pipe. He got up, did another round, and flopped down. Then he got up, went inside, and poured himself a whiskey. I think Mom put the mower away later.

My parents went on to adopt other animals: Mollie, the lovely, sweet Aussie that was “Dog of the Week” in the newspaper in Portland—who was very pregnant and rewarded our altruism with seven puppies. When it was time for them to find homes, Daddy, freshly retired, would play with the puppies on the front lawn when the school bus dropped off kids. It worked the charm. Down to two puppies, a round Indian man, who was looking for a walking companion took the roundest of the puppies (Freckles) and we saw them walking the neighborhood for years. And the smallest, BD#2 (Brown Dog #2) stayed with her mama. Unfortunately, when we sent Mama Mollie to the vet for spaying, she bled out on the table.

BD#2 was re-dubbed Peggy after a woman in church that my father admired, though we could never tell her that. Peggy was their retirement dog, moving back down to California with them. When Peggy passed on, she was replaced by Nellie, another “Dog of the Week” from the newspaper--Redding this time. Nellie was a compact and gentle Aussie, and happily helped him explore the hills in rural Shasta County. She also patiently watched over him during his decline and delighted in the young grandchildren we provided to play with. She was a regular at church, quietly curling up under Daddy’s seat with his oxygen tank.

Daddy had also adopted a stray mama calico kitty who had moved her litter to under the portable building where he volunteered for the historical society. He spent a week feeding her and building trust, and then brought her home (her kittens went to the Humane Society). He named her Hester, as her litter was clearly the result of adultery.

Somewhere along the way, my mother adopted twin tabby boys, and they were dubbed Stan and Ollie. Essentially useless paperweights, they had to be locked up at night to prevent them from crowding my parents out of bed.

The winter my father died was the year of the tainted pet food: While Stan had died the year before, Nellie, Hester, and Ollie succumbed to the poison. Loosing so much was hard on my mother. She adopted a small, shy black cat who had been declawed. An indoor cat who was afraid of anybody but my mother, she was named Spook: quite inappropriate, but par for the course with an Alzheimer’s patient. Spook accompanied Mom into assisted living, and when she had to be put down because of a brain tumor, my mother was given a stuffed toy cat that filled the role.

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After Boxer, I spent several years overseas. On my return, we didn’t have the means to have a pet. But the year we both landed jobs and purchased our first (project) house, my Dear Husband surprised me with three birthday presents: a table saw, a pot of Shasta daisies, and a trip out to Monroe where he had reserved the last of the litter for me. A pure white short hair, we named her Milka after the German chocolate brand. She was small, affectionate and brave, and even treed a racoon when she was still a kitten. She was a great lap cat and deeply affected when we brought a baby boy home that displaced her from my lap. She finally got over it, and the boy learned to open a tuna can, he was acceptable. She slept in a red basket with a bright blue sweater, and it was there she passed away quietly in her sleep.

We lasted a few months without a cat, then the weekend after Thanksgiving, while everyone else was shopping for giant TVs, we headed to the Humane Society to see what was on offer. The boys were enthralled with a tuxedo kitten, and while they were playing, a quiet adult Siamese with impossibly blue eyes came and curled up on Alfred’s lap. She came home with us.

Hannah (the name given to her at the shelter) was a sensitive and direct cat with a checkered past. After the first few weeks, when she was making sure we wouldn’t leave her, she was always an arm’s distance from us—the corner of the bed, the other end of the sofa, and on her signature velvet pillow under the cedar trees on the deck, where she took her last breaths just this weekend.

Hannah