40 years of cats

 

We’ve always had cats in our lives.   We got married 40 years ago and within months of being married we got our first cat.  Back then you could look in the paper for free pet ads and we responded to one out on a farm and picked out this little orange tabby.  We got his sex wrong at first and named him Tina until the vet told us otherwise.  So, we named him Merlin because Chris was reading Mary Stewart books at the time.   During the first few years of marriage, we moved from place to place, and he was used to riding in a U-Haul or car.  He would sleep in the seat next to us and love going for a ride.   I used to roughhouse with him a lot and taught him to play rough, so he tended to be a bit aggressive to people who didn’t know him.  We even taught him to play catch with wadded up paper balls.   He lived to almost 20 and I swear the last few years were because of the love he felt.

Our 2^nd cat Muffy was a beautiful grey Persian we rehomed as an adult a few years later.   She never really liked Merlin, but they got along.   She got out once and got pregnant and had a single kitten litter in our closet.   We gave the calico kitten to friends.  

The next cat that came into our lives Chris brought home from work.  She was found at the side of the road and the vet said she might not make it.  We got her cleaned up and defleaed.   She had a tear in one of her eyes the probably happened from a fight, but she seemed to see ok.   We named her Maddie after Cybill Shepard’s character on Moonlighting.  Merlin was getting a little older when she came into our lives, and it was like she knew he needed a friend to play with and she made him act like a kitten again. Those two loved to play and run around the house together.    Muffy on the other hand did not like having another female cat in the house and never like having her around.   Muffy would pee on the floor outside the litterbox all the time just to let us know.  

After we had lost Merlin and Muffy to kidney disease we were down to just Maddie.  And while she was going through her failing kidney’s and getting weekly fluids at the vet, they had a cage in the lobby with a small grey female and a back and white male named Dorie and Mason.  Mason would come to the cage and all he wanted was for you to pet him.  His sister was timid and hid in the corner.   The sign on the cage said Free: Dorie and Mason must take them both.  I told Chris about them and asked if she wanted to meet them.   She said ‘just bring them home” so I did. 

It was a challenge dealing with 2 kittens and an aging pet in the house, but we managed.   Once Dorie and Mason got a little older, we had the next cat come into our lives.   During our annual Halloween season a stray black and white tuxedo started showing up on the patio and would hang with us by the fireplace and sleep on a blanket we left for him.  After the season was over, I just let him into the house.   He was grateful to have a warm place to sleep and food and water always available.  We named him Hal (short for Halloween Cat).  The following spring, we went on a trip while our house was on a garden tour.  Chris’ sister was watching the house when our neighbors came by and saw Hal, but they called him Abe.  Apparently, they were feeding him too.  Little moocher was going back and forth between houses until someone let him in.  Hal came into my life when I got laid off and took a year off, so I was home all the time with him.  I treated him like a dog, and he would follow me around and come when I called.   He would sit near me and hang out with me in the shop even with loud power tools.   Since he had survived on his own in the neighborhood, we were comfortable letting him outside during the day (he stayed inside at night).  He was the only cat we let go outside because we would stay close, and he let you know when he wanted back in. Shortly after Hal had been living with us we lost Maddie but for a short while we had 4 cats!  When Hal was 13, we noticed him wincing when we jumped up on the bed.  We took him to the vet, and they did an ultrasound and found he had cancer with several tumors internally.   Within a week he was gone.   First and last time we will ever have an at home service.

After losing Hal.   We lost Dorie a few years later.  She had several medical issues throughout her life that we dealt with and in the end of her life, we lost her at home in a tragic and unfortunate way.  With just Mason left at home by himself we thought we should get him some younger cats to lift his spirits.  We found a brother/sister pair of beautiful tabby’s online named Toaster and Strudel.   We just knew they were for us.   But we found out that Strudel had got sick while in the kennel and was being treated at a vet. Until he was cleared to come home, we couldn’t adopt them.  Took a few weeks but Toaster fully recovered, and we adopted them both and brought them home.   Toaster and Strudel did not get along with Mason right away.  It took a long time for them to stop hissing at each other.  They never became good friends, which made us feel bad about our decision.    As the “kittens” got older and Mason started to age they pretty much left him alone and in the end he just wanted to hang with us and wanted nothing to do with them.    Mason slowly started to get pickier and pickier about eating food.   He was totally healthy but just didn’t feel like eating and then one day he just stopped eating and after several weeks of agonizingly watch him wither away to nothing we knew it was time.   Losing that loving cat was tough.    Now we are down to just two.  I know there will be more cats in our lives in the future.   But for now, we are just going to settle down with Toaster and Strudel for a while.  It has been a wild 40yrs.