Welcome! Doing my part to brighten this little corner of the net, it’s another effort from the keyboard.
But first, here’s a quote from an upcoming column:
“Items are my game. Items are stories boiled down to the bone. Some are pseudo-stories, the shorter the better. Somebody said something to somebody that sounded funny at the time. In cold type in the cold light of the morning of the cold cereal and the cold coffee, it doesn’t read funny. It lies there like the oat bran in the bowl. Maybe nobody will read it anyway, any way at all. The paper comes out and it vanishes. Forgotten by 10, dead by noon, pulped by dark. And there’s always tomorrow. That’s the hell of it. All these wonderful people slaving desperately to put out the paper each day, a prodigious achievement and by 11 a.m. you see it fluttering down the street. More clutter for litterbugs. Please use the trash container. Thank you.”
The guy who wrote this won a Pulitzer and I for one miss his efforts more and more every day.
But for this week:
I’m here to tell you… Cats do not have owners. They have servants.
As I’m writing this, my own master is sitting here staring at me with a look of utter disgust. A twitch of the tale, and a stern meow tells me he is not amused.
His name is Cruiser, and he’s an orange lump. A very complicated lump.
The story began in the summer of 1998 as we were moving into our new rented townhouse. As I am unlocking the door for the first time and getting ready to enter, up strolls this cat. Now at this time, you could call me a dog person. Not that I had anything against cats mind you.
But having grown up in a house with two German Shepherds and numerous Cocker Spaniels, I had a definite canine bias. The Spaniels were a hobby of my mother’s. At one time, there were many weekends spent on the dog show circuit. First there were obedience trials, and then it was the full show treatment. Later came breeding and raising them for fun and profit.
Our family has always loved Disney’s “Lady & The Tramp.” We always laughed as we watched young Lady and marveled at how accurately the artists had captured the puppy so completely.
Michele on the other hand came from a family that was decidedly feline. When I first met her, the home was almost a cat factory with several litters of kittens and generations of ancestors all present. I even gave her a kitten one year, much-favored Calico she named “Munchkin”. (That was one of a litter from another favored cat from the railway museum I was volunteering at during those years. Her mother was named “Chessie” after the famed cat used with great results by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to promote train travel for many years.)
So… When I opened the door, this orange cat walked right in just like he owned the place and thanks very much for letting him in. Michele had wanted to have a cat but previous rental agreements did not allow for one in the places that we had lived since we had been married. And truth be told, the rental agreement for this place didn’t either…
She shooed this cat back out the door and went about organizing things inside while I opened the garage door and went back out for another load, having left the door from the inside to the garage open. Less than 30 seconds later, the cat is back inside, having taken advantage of the opportunity presented.
This went on for the better part of the afternoon. She would help him out the door and he would come right back as soon as he got the chance, and it was a losing battle. While we were both amused, we didn’t expect that this would become a somewhat permanent arrangement.
As the weeks went by, we encountered that cat’s owner and learned more. Seems that the beast had a name. “Cruiser”. He was about two or three years old. When he was very young, he was found in a pile of debris out back of a sheet metal shop in pretty bad shape. He was the last one alive in a litter of feral kittens. His owner had taken him in and gotten him back to health. He got the name because he did just what it implied. He would cruise his territory, getting attention wherever he could find it, as well as any snacks he might encounter. While he was still somewhat feral, he also loved affection to the point of being an attention junkie.
Cruiser started becoming more and more a part of our lives. He would be there when we got home from work, ready to get petted and stroked. Somewhere along the way, we started feeding him on occasion, but he always went out for the night. A fairly intelligent beast, he was always letting us know when it was time to go outside, and never sprayed or spotted inside the townhouse.
About a year had passed when things changed somewhat and we noted that he wanted to stay in with us more often, and went home less and less. I’ll admit to taking pity on him late one very rainy night and letting him stay inside with us. After that, it became somewhat of a more usual thing to stay inside and even sleep with us on the bed from time to time.
It turns out that there was a reason why Cruiser did not go home. Seems that one of his owner’s roommates was cleaning a pistol one night and it went off in the townhouse. Cruiser was in at the time, and the noise scared him so that he rarely, if ever, went back inside after that. To this day, he still does not take well to any loud noises.
We took formal custody of Cruiser when his owner moved on to a rural location that wasn’t suited to a house cat. It became even more formal when we paid that first veterinary bill of over $100 after he got into a fight and developed an abscess on one of his ears. It was somewhat comical watching him wear this big e-collar until it healed. That also brought on his first full-time indoor stay, with the resulting purchase of the cat-box and kitty litter. He survived the indignation. We also decided to let him out a bit during this convalescence with the aid of a harness and leash. He tolerated it, but was happier doing supervised walks then not being out at all. Since then, he has grown so fond of walks with us that he will actually follow us on trips through his domain. If he’s in a really good mood, he will let someone other than Michele or I to take him for a walk, as Jeff found out one afternoon.
Several fights later, along with more big vet bills, we developed a curfew for him. So now after 8:00 p.m. he is in for the night. Along the way, he has become more of an indoor than an outdoor cat. Lately he’s been the target of some fairly big birds (ravens or crows, I think), so he tends to spend more time in the townhouse than out. If he does go out, he’s either ready to come back in short order or he sits down outside the front door, just far away from us to be outside but still within the arc of safety, just in case…
Now Michele and I don’t have children. I don’t remember when, but she has taken to calling him her “furry child”. Even my mother has gotten into the act by referring to him as a grandchild. So now when we send out greeting cards for various holidays and birthdays, we sign the card for him using a rubber stamp we found of a paw print. Earlier, we actually used a non-toxic stamp pad and used one of his own paws to do that. Using the rubber stamp is less traumatic, too.
Speaking of trauma, we all have had our share, thanks to the word “bath”. Cruiser came in one afternoon with a great smear of black across the top of his head, after a close encounter with the underside of an oil pan. So I decided to take matters in hand, and get out the cleaning supplies. Some universal hand cleaner with a citrus smell had worked for me, so why not the cat? And away I went. It did clean the oil out of his fur, but it needed to be rinsed out with water. Now as much as he likes to drink from the faucets, standing under a full flow of it is another story all together.
I still bear a good scar from that incident, and Michele has the mental scar from his mournful wailing during the torture of first being washed and then dried. He on the other hand, or paw as the case may be, has forgotten the whole thing.
I’ve given him two other baths since, once for fleas and another because he simply smelled so bad, that there was no alternative. Now we leave this task to the professionals. It’s safer for all of us that way.
If there is one thing that this cat does that simply infuriates my wife is that he will walk all over her just to get to me. She’s that cat person, and always was. If any cat should pay attention to anyone, it should be her, right? Not with this cat! Remember that his first owner was a man? So now, it’s me, the dog person, who Cruiser looks for attention from first. If I am not there, he will go to Michele. If I am, he walks right by or over her to get to see me. If we both are sitting on the couch, he will jump into my lap and get comfy without even noticing her. Talk about insulting!
If I’m lying down on the couch watching television, he routinely will jump up and find himself a comfy place to sit and sleep. Frequently, this is either on one of my knees or on top of my chest. I have pants that have been ruined by kitty claws digging contentedly. And my knees also have all the small scars to prove when I’ve been wearing shorts pants… Weighing in at 14 plus pounds at this time of year, it’s something of a shock to have this lump land on your chest unannounced!
The cat doesn’t have a tough life. He gets dry food (Iams) twice a day, and wet food (again Iams) on special occasions. While he used to drink water from the dripping bathtub faucet (not an option after the bathroom was renovated), he now has his own kitty fountain that offers a steady supply of running water twenty-four hours a day. Throw in a catnip mouse now and then, along with other kitty torture toys, and he’s got it pretty good. During our last few trips to Disneyland, he’s gone on vacations of his own, boarded at several different establishments. We think we found the best one, a feline medical center where he can bring his toys, food and blanket, so he has all the comforts of, if not the physical location of, home.
Michele and I are well trained. We talk to him frequently, and he’s more than happy to respond. We both have heard him clearly say “No!” on more than one occasion. If he wants to go out before curfew, we’re right there at the sound of our master’s voice.
So even though he started out to be just a visitor, now he’s a definite member of the family. Not bad for a lump…
Next week? Well, Roger has several projects in the wings including a joint effort on the wonderful world of sugar beets, a look at a genius of Southern California’s Car Kulture, the author of the quote at the top of this page and a big story about the railroad that got into the theme park business once upon a time. Stay tuned!
So? Like what you’ve been reading here in Roger’s columns? Well, here is one way to show your support! You can use his Amazon PayBox to keep him plugging along on more tales.