(This
story title is an adaptation of the movie title, “You, Me and Dupree”)
It
takes a real cat-lover to love a cat.
More to the point, it takes a real cat-lover to put up with a cat
because, basically, a cat wants to own you.
A cat also wants to own everyone who lives with you, whether they are
cat-lovers or not. I have 3 people I
live with and 2 of them are neither crazy about cats nor Carrie-Lee in
particular. Not only that, a cat wants
to be the “master” or “mistress” of the home domain – that includes every room
in that home domain. And, the thing is –
there’s very little you can do about it, whether you are a cat-lover or
not. Cats own you; you never own
them. If they want to spend time with
you, they will find you when they want you.
You can never force a cat to spend time with you if he/she doesn’t want
to. Not only that, cats have
multi-faceted personalities, an idea which seems to appeal to me since I also
have a somewhat multi-faceted (or split?) personality. I suppose that’s why cats and I get along so
well.
When I first saw Carrie-Lee (shortened
to Carrie), she had just been born in April 1995, so she was only 6 weeks old
in June 1995. It was my son’s idea that
we get a cat. At the age of 6, he really
wanted a cat and he thought he would want to look after him/her too, but the
fact is he just wanted a pet cat – someone to love and cuddle when he was
lonely. I didn’t blame him for
that. I was sort of in favour of getting
a cat too, but not quite as enthusiastic as my son. Anyway, the long and the short of it is – we
got a chance to obtain a cute little kitten and we took it. The moment I laid eyes on Carrie, I fell in
love with her. She had this beautiful
face with a regal-looking nose and adorable big eyes that stared up at me. She had these long, delicate ears and her
coat was a deep, silky grey with longish fur (but not too long). I knew that, regardless of what my son
thought of her, she was the cat for me.
Being cat-lovers from way back in my
childhood, my family had always had cats around the house. Most of them were males and did their own
thing (like all cats do) and I didn’t always pay attention to them. As I said before, cats own their owners and
everyone who lives there; you don’t own them.
But, they can sure be funny when they want to be. Blacky was our pitch-black male cat who loved
to hunt outside in the nice weather, even though he was well-fed inside. It was more a game for him than a
necessity. He would stalk his prey quietly
through the long grass in the field behind our house and pounce on the poor
creature he was stalking at the most opportune moment. Then, he would carry his prize very carefully
back to the house in his mouth (after he’d killed it, of course) and lay it on
the front door step as if to say to my mother, “Look Ma, I got a great surprise
for you!” Blacky acted so proud of his
accomplishment. And, so he should. He was very good at hunting small creatures
and he knew it.
Another cat that we had, Tigger, who was
an orange colour, loved to play outside in winter in the snow. He loved being outside no matter what the
weather was like; but, when we let him back inside the next morning (he always
came home then), he would run in the front door, throw his back legs out from
under him to one side and flop down on the floor, panting. It was so funny seeing him do this so often.
Having Carrie around as a baby was a lot
of fun. And, I treated her just like she
was my baby. She was so tiny at first
that after she used her litter box, she would always get some of the wet cat
litter stuck to her feet. So, I would
pick her up lovingly and put her into a warm, shallow bath in the tub and gently
clean her feet off. Then, I would take a
big, fluffy towel from the closet (for her use only), wrap her up in it and
hold her until she’d dried off. After
that, she looked like she’d just been through the mild drying cycle of the
drier, with her fur standing up on end all over. I really think she loved being held in that big,
warm towel. Not that I think she liked
baths - she didn’t – but, she sure enjoyed the cuddling she received after I’d
bathed her. This became a normal ritual
for us and we both enjoyed it.
Another thing that Carrie did on a
regular basis was to race around the apartment at break-neck speed, bouncing
from one piece of furniture to another and racing around in this way until she
got tired and stopped. If I’d had a
video camera, I would have taken a video of Carrie doing this very thing. Man, it was funny! As a youngster, she had no fear of falling or
injuring herself.
However, one day, she did injure herself
accidently. Unfortunately, she’d seen a
very small, shiny object on the shag rug in the living room and had picked it
up in her mouth. Even more
unfortunately, she attempted to swallow this object, which turned out to be a
sewing needle. How a sewing needle got
onto the rug, I’ll never know, but I guess I’d been sewing something by hand
and it had fallen down. Carrie then
started to creep around the apartment, looking very distressed, and I had no
idea what was wrong with her; I just knew that something was very wrong. I picked her up and wrapped her up in a
towel, and with my roommate at the time, Dennis, we quickly drove over to the
local veterinarian’s office and were lucky enough to find him free to examine
her.
The vet could tell right away that she
was in big trouble and told us he had to keep her for a few days after
performing an emergency operation on her!
Apparently, the needle had lodged in her throat and gotten stuck there
and it was imperative that he operate as soon as possible to extract it, otherwise,
she would die! The way I felt when this
accident happened is the way I would have felt if Carrie were my human
baby. It was devastating to discover
that my baby was in such grave danger of losing her life! It didn’t matter that it cost me a few
hundred dollars that I really couldn’t afford to spend – since it was right at
Christmas time, after all – but I paid the required amount without
complaining. I just wanted Carrie back
in one piece and healthy again. Soon
after the operation, three days later, the vet said she could come home to
recuperate. He said that it was a good
thing she had not swallowed that needle.
I’ll tell you – I had been very
frightened by this accident and was relieved to find out she was now out of
danger. It was pretty uncomfortable for
her until the incision inside her throat healed, but she returned to completely
normal health after a couple of weeks. I
resolved to be much more careful from then on about leaving any small sharp
objects, like needles, around where they could be of danger to her.
One thing that she did on a regular
basis was done night when everyone was supposed to be asleep. She would roam around the apartment at night because,
after all, cats are nocturnal in nature.
She would find her way into my dark bedroom and somehow get up onto my
bed (not an easy feat for her, mind you) and then jump, full force, onto my
legs. I never knew when she was going to
do this. All I’d feel was this sudden
“thing” with sharp claws land on my legs!
If I didn’t already know that it was a cat, I would have thought it was
some big, hairy tarantula! It definitely
startled me and kept me from relaxing completely right away. (I’d always been somewhat of an insomniac
anyway – it took me a while longer to fall asleep than other people). Anyway, once she got tired of running around
and giving me a minor heart attack or two (by jumping onto my legs), she would
finally crawl into bed with me and lie down on my pillow. She would curl her little body around my head
and fall asleep. Curiously, that never
bothered me. I had supposedly developed
a mild allergy to cat fur some years ago, but so far, I had had no such
reaction to Carrie’s fur.
Something I liked to do, on occasion,
was to take pictures of Carrie with a disposable camera, which produced
surprisingly good quality pictures. I’d
thought a lot about getting a new digital camera for myself because I love to
take photographs of all kind of things, but I could never seem to afford a
digital camera of my own. Still, I
persisted in using either a regular pocket camera or a disposable camera (both
with a flash attached) and took lots of pictures of Carrie, whenever I had to
urge to do so. She happened to be very
photogenic and didn’t seem to mind it whenever I wanted to photograph her.
An interesting thing happened during the
time when the apartment building’s management was planning on replacing all of
the toilets (floor by floor) with these “low-flow” toilets that were supposed
to be more environmentally friendly. When
a floor of the building was having all of its toilets replaced, all of the
doors to the hallway of those apartments had to remain open so that the workmen
could come and go, unimpeded. During
this time, I didn’t think too much about where Carrie was. I knew that she was a homebody anyway and
would probably not go far from home.
But, as the work was proceeding, I suddenly realized that Carrie had
been missing for a while. I started
calling her name out in alarm, thinking that someone had taken her from
me. There was no answer from her and no
one else had seen her (or didn’t want to tell me that?). Anyway, I was getting more upset by the
moment when I decided to look under my bed.
There, in the deepest, darkest corner, I could see two bright eyes
looking out at me. I wanted to laugh and
cry at the same time – I was so relieved that she was here at home,
hiding. At least, she knew enough to
stay out of the way of the workmen.
As Carrie got older and became a senior
(15, in cat years), she started to become sick more often. She developed problems with her teeth, most
of which had to be extracted. She also
developed feline diabetes, which is very similar to human diabetes. Except for one thing – after 8 months of my
giving her injections of insulin twice daily, she suddenly recovered from it
completely. To this day, there is no
sign that she ever had diabetes – it’s gone for good. But, now she has developed another serious
problem: hyperthyroidism. This is a condition in which the pituitary
gland produces too much thyroid hormone.
It can speed up a cat’s heart and cause premature death as a result. The same thing can happen in humans with this
problem. So, I now have to give her some
medication twice a day called Methamazole, which is used to help regulate her thyroid
levels. Carrie looks pretty skinny to me
these days; she doesn’t digest her food very well either, even though it’s food
designed for senior cats. I guess I’m
going to lose her one day soon. And that
fact will break my heart. I really do
love her.
The thing is – cats love their owners
unconditionally, but people often don’t love other people, even those they live
with, unconditionally. With people,
there are always conditions attached to a love relationship. I understand that well because my own
relationships, particularly those with the opposite sex, were often like
that. Even my familial relationships were
like that. So, when I tell people that I
often prefer the company of my cat compared to that of most people, I really
mean it. It’s not that I don’t like to
be around people; I do. But, the fact is
– Carrie loves me and I love her and when the time comes to say good-bye to her
because her health is suffering too much, I will miss her very, very much. She has been, and continues to be, a very important
part of my life.
copyright 2014, Anne Shier. All rights reserved.
copyright 2014, Anne Shier. All rights reserved.
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