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.
+++
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
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