In the following profiles, b = born, a = adopted, d = deceased. Birth dates are approximate unless noted as actual.
Present
Seven cats constitute the current nonhuman household. In chronological order, oldest to youngest, they are Java, Maisie!, Oscar, Chloe, Triple A, Murray and Freddie.
At the shelter, Java dunked his head in his water dish not just once, but twice, winning us then and there. His comment card characterized his personality as “a real sweetie!” complete with a drawing of a heart.
His number one feat, with a myriad of variations, is screwing up his head and yelling in joy, then promptly flopping and rolling to have his belly rubbed. He loves having his belly rubbed as much as any dog, prompting the staff at the pet allergy clinic to ask in delighted amazement, “Is he always like that?” Pretty much, we replied. (Fortunately, after two years on allergy serum, his allergies settled down and he’s been shot-free some time.)
Java has taken up the startle-the-people-at-the-refrigerator slack left by Catullus and added his own twist. He enjoys snoozing in the cabinet over the refrigerator, then when we’re in the fridge or kitchen, suddenly emerges from the cabinet, yelling.
Maisie! came from a litter of kittens nearly identical in all key regards: appearance, activity level, intelligence. Her long torso and tail, coupled with the medium-long fur and hind pantaloons, are offset, in terms of dignity, by her short legs. She is wont to roll on her back and wave her paws like an overturned beetle. This, combined with her tortoise coloring, has given rise to the nickname Wooly Bear, given her resemblance to an autumnal caterpillar. She enjoys belly rubs.
She’s highly self-possessed – until she decides she needs love, and she needs it NOW. Suddenly, a timer in her goes off and she launches herself at one of us – in the living room, in bed, wherever – and kneads, purrs and drools with great abandon. One other cue for play: the minute the sticky mat for yoga comes out, she’s on it. Playtime!
Oscar has never met anyone or any creature he didn’t like, and his mellowness and gregarious nature are legendary: once we even had to identify ourselves on the phone to an occasional handyman as “Oscar’s people.” “Oh! And how is Oscar?” he immediately exclaimed. Oscar shared his toys as a kitten, and when RuLu joined the family 14 months later, he walked right up to RuLu and greeted the newcomer without the traditional posturing. He checks out every visitor to the house, and generally offers supervisory assistance. He stayed in the kitchen during remodeling, keeping an eye on the tear-out, and left only briefly in the finishing stages when the tile cutting and finishing was going on. Nowadays, he often watches over John’s laptop, napping atop it when closed, sleeping beside it when John’s working, and Hortonesque, on the keyboard when it's been left unattended.
All this from a cat whose life itself is a miracle: his very pregnant mother showed up on the doorstep of a volunteer of a local rescue agency, who took her in. Mama cat had leukemia, but somehow, none of her four kittens contracted it.
He’s okay with rolling on Shabbas.
Chloe joined the household because I forgot paint. It was Saturday, and the painter was coming first thing Monday. We had several projects, and I had carefully gone over the list and picked up everything needed earlier that day – everything, that is, except the color needed for the first walls. Next to the paint store is our nice little independent pet supply store, which features pets from nonprofit rescue and humane organizations on a rotating basis. There was the beautiful Chloe, trying to get her cage mate to play, in vain. Rebuffed, she posed, poised. We fell in love.
Chloe came with the name Baby Girl, which we thought rather unimaginative, but is in fact who she is. Among cats, she’s exceptionally fastidious. She’s also a flirt of the highest order, and still generally succeeds daily in getting Java to clean her. Before they died, RuLu and Teddy doted on her. She’ll never win a Nobel, but she’s a doll.
In early 2008 she started to experience brief periods of stress-induced diabetes and asthma. We desperately want her to remain with us, but in the interest of her health, we have put the word out that if the right home came along — one or two other social, neutered male cats close to her in age — we would part with her.
Trips came to us via a particularly circuitous route. Our catsitter learned of a mellow fellow needing a home who sounded like a good fit for our household. We called his foster parent, but happily for the cat, his owner's circumstances changed so she could keep him. But we had shifted into adoption mode, so the foster parent told us about her vet, who adopts out healthy cats acquired from local rescue groups. We stopped by the clinic and fell in love with a tiny adult momcat with a lopped-off ear: Bettina.
The seven-pound, 3-ounce Bettina — soon rechristened Triple A, or AAA, for her small size but great energy — hid in the basement the first few days, then emerged, anointed herself queen and embarked on a campaign to impose her rule. She intimidated Oscar, nearly three times her size, as well as the others. Feral in origin,for several months she was determined to assert her position at the top of the feline pecking order. But her zest for life is contagious — she wakes us up by chasing her tail on the bed and delights in every aspect of living — and she is exceptionally loving toward people and has turned into a total lap cat. Except when she sneaks past us and flies outside (momentarily).
Oh — about the ear. John and I had a bet on this: I blamed a dog attack, and John thought it resulted from severe mites. We were both wrong. The Feral Cat Coalition clips the ears of females it has captured and spayed so that, in case the cat remains wild and gets recaptured, the team will know it has been altered.
Murray the Manx got his name from a silly bit on the television show Scrubs that happened to air shortly after he joined us. Far from being a cranky old man, however, he is one of the sweetest, dearest and most totally NUTS cats ever to grace this or any household.
We hadn't planned on getting another cat at the time we got him, immediately on the heels of Teddy's death, but independently, John and I had come to the conclusion that Trips needed a playmate. We checked out the shelters and looked at many, many cats and kittens. No one clicked. We were about to leave when we simultaneously espied Murray. He was sharing a cage with a grump, and when we saw how Murray nonskittishly backed off from hostility, that told us he would fit into a multicat household just fine. He engages with his fellow felines and humans equally, wrestling and playing hide-and-go-seek with the former and fetching and cuddling with the latter. He has an instapurr, chirps a blue streak and is king of the Silent Meow. He's perfectly content to entertain himself, too, when everyone else is napping, and will wake up a Furby or play soccer in the dining room. He and Freddie became fast friends nearly the moment she joined us.
He's a thief, too. It started with small items (doesn't it always?), miniature Babe giveaways from McDonald's. He graduated to small, then mid-size stuffed animals. Then to my synthetic boiled wool-texture slippers, which he dutifully carried down the stairs, one at a time, from the bedroom to the living room. He has now worked his way up to my foam neck roll, which he drags lengthwise into the IKEA cat tent or even upstairs — to stash under my desk. He's also chewed through one keyboard-and-mouse cable set and nuked my PC power cable. (We finally found a solution - see Toys! Not Toys!)
One night my sister left her office in the Hollywood district of NE Portland, drove to the post office at the airport to get out a mailing, proceeded to Costco, then on to the grocery store and finally home in north NE Portland. As she returned to the car for another load to schlep, she heard a mewing coming from the car. Swoop? Rover? No, they were in the house. Her partner grabbed a flashlight and they scoured around and under the car until they finally located a scrawny, terrified kitten inside the front dam. The black-and-white beauty was immediately christened Freddie: Freddie Fender. One of my sister's co-workers, later hearing the tale, described Freddie to a T — and said she'd noticed the kitten in the office parking lot the day of her Wild Ride. So Freddie had hung on for dear life for at least 25 miles.
Alas for their househ0ld, my sisters' cats did not cotton to the smelly, distraught Freddie. The shelters were full, as it was late summer. Was there any chance we could take her? So I picked up the skinny, filthy, flea-y, wormy cat — who immediately wormed her way into our hearts and those of our gang. Especially Murray's.
Now healthy, growing and glowing, Freddie's short-haired, long-legged frame contrasts hilariously with that of her best friend Murray's long-haired, cobby build. They chase, wrestle, sleep and just plain hang together.
It is clear, however, that Freddie either was born feral or received precious little human contact early on: she is highly distrustful of people, but gets along famously with all the other cats. But she does want to be handled by people, and purrs and cuddles when held and spends much of her time close to us. At present, she can only be touched when drowsy and totally relaxed, but this is changing as she grows into her exuberant presence.
Past
Gone but certainly not forgotten, those no longer with us are introduced in order of demise, most recent last. Alphabetically, they are Angelica, Asta, Bestine, Blanche, Catullus, Dorian, Joan, Mr. Boffo, Mufasa, Raku, RuLu and Teddy.
Joan started it all. She was named for Joan of Arc: as a kitten, she raced about in circles then abruptly stopped and gazed skyward, seeking guidance. She had been with John for several years when he and I got together. She saved John’s life and proved his rock during rough times, and she remains atop the pantheon of Great Cats.
When we were dating, Joan displayed rare approval of me in that she did not soil my shoes, as she generally did to those of John’s overnight guests. When I was wretchedly ill following our wedding, she stayed at my side nonstop, leaving only momentarily to greet John, eat and drink. She died the day after our second wedding anniversary, but remains very much in our hearts.
Asta didn’t have fur so much as she had a pelt. It was thick, soft and luxuriant, and her tail could have circled the globe. Her voice was truly musical, and her emerald eyes mesmerized.
All this after wretched beginnings: in her first two adoptive households, other pets picked on the small, sickly Asta. When John brought her home, she was filthy, smelly and ill. On the drive back from the coast she crawled into the space between the car seat and the small of John’s back to stay warm. I was baffled as to why my husband had brought this stinky, weak cat home.
John bathed her that first night, and she purred loudly as debris floated out of her fur and her scent improved. Our vet fell in love with her even as he injected her and cautioned us about her chances. She took her amoxicillin like a champ, and within a few days her mouth had healed to the point she could eat crunchies. At a follow-up appointment, the vet beamed with amazement at her magnificence, “White cats are special.”
Asta’s best bud was Mr. Boffo: he watched over her when she was young, and as she grew strong and healthy, she looked after him. The cats paraded into the neighbor’s field of a yard with Bestine leading, followed by Mr. Boffo and, keeping a watchful eye over everyone, Asta.
She died just shy of her second birthday. The street had been closed for work for three months, during which time the formerly car-smart cats crossed it with abandon. Once traffic resumed, the cats didn’t adjust quickly enough. [It was many years later before we committed to keeping the gang indoors.]
Dorian, we barely knew ’e. We do know he was a sweet, gentle soul and best friend to Teddy. We also know he evoked bunny rabbits – wild bunnies of the gentle suburban how’d-I-get-here? type – in life and afterward.
The first association of Dorian with bunnies occurred in our backyard one spring morning. I looked out the kitchen window to see Dorian, Catullus and Teddy sitting in a circle, focused on a common – something. I watched, and when only one of their heads moved slightly, I went out to investigate. In their midst sat a small, DoDo-grey baby rabbit; our too-domestic cats were (thankfully) clueless as to the proper disposal of rodents. We quickly kenneled the terrified rabbit and released him in the likely vicinity of his brethren.
Within a day or two of DoDo’s death, we saw several grey rabbits at the roadside near our home. A short time later, John was in southern California. His mother had just died, and he took a predawn drive up Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Near the crest, he pulled over to watch the sunrise. As he sipped his coffee, several wild white rabbits hopped across the roadway. John hadn’t smiled, inside or out, in days. He beamed.
Mr. Boffo’s given name, according to his information card, was Sparky. As we admired this gorgeous but decidedly mellow, quiet fellow, another visitor bespoke our thoughts: “Sparky, huh?” We assigned the B-Man a birthday of Labor Day in honor of his awesome indolence: many was the evening we returned home from work to find the healthy, robust B-Man in precisely the same spot, in the same pose, he’d been nine hours earlier. He was a steadfast companion to Joan, and provided the elder cat with needed relief from the insane, hyperactive Bestine. To the latter, he was a source of embarrassment when, lolling on the back deck, he rolled right off and dropped eight feet to the ground below. As he walked on the ground to the deck stairs, Bestine – on the deck – traced his steps from above and stared at him, thunderstruck.
He loved visitors, and bonded particularly with our friend John P., who often came to holiday dinners. As our cat population expanded, unfortunately, Boffo did not adjust well. After J.P. lost his own beloved cat and went into a depression of several months’ duration, we suggested he try out the B-Man in his home. He and Mr. Boffo thereupon headed into a blissful, opera-filled sunset.
Boffo eventually developed diabetes, and was quick to remind J.P. when was time for his pill (in lieu of injected insulin). J.P., who had always traveled extensively, ceased his travels after Mr. Boffo’s diabetes diagnosis and died a year after the B-Man passed.
All cats are funny, but Raku was hysterical. (See The Smartest, Funniest Cat We’re Likely Ever to Know.) From the moment he walked into our home at 8 weeks of age, he was in charge. As a two-pound kitten, he caused the mature, confident Asta to hyperventilate simply by walking by her. He was neutered promptly, but still ended up with notches in his ears.
A mutt as are all our cats, his red-tinged fur nonetheless had the distinctive ticking characteristic of the Abyssinian, with the downiest, softest undercoat imaginable. He loved water, and he tunneled with delight in a rare deep-enough snow. And he was lightning quick: When Catullus, Dorian and Teddy – all younger – cornered him in the kitchen, he sprang and backflipped over them, then gave them a single, broad all-inclusive swat. Moe, Larry and Curly Joe had come to call, and we didn't stop laughing for days.
When Angelica joined the family, Raku bonded with her immediately: he was Thing 1, and Angelica, Thing 2. When she disappeared – temporarily, it turned out – he searched for her in vain, then lost the bond. We eventually lost him to a car. [We were slow to learn this lesson.]
“A Roman cat!” joyfully proclaimed our priest when we presented Catullus at the annual St. Francis Day Blessing of the Animals. This guy, let’s face it, was a brat: his nickname for a while was Crapullus owing to his tendency to take a dump in the dining room if we didn’t let him outside within five minutes of our arrival home from work. This habit, fortunately for all, stopped the moment Teddy entered the house.
Catullus was our first fetching cat, and was so in love with the sport and bonded to me that I found his glitter balls in my shoes, and woke up one morning with one sparkling in my open palm. As bratty as he could be, he loved me fiercely and I, him.
Although a kitten when we got him, he was already a seasoned dumpster diver and had acquired an extraordinary openness to new foods. One night, as we ate a spaghetti supper in the living room, we heard a crash in the kitchen. Not a bad one, but it needed checking out. There was Catullus in the middle of the kitchen floor, the colander of spaghetti noodles atop his head. His dilemma: to swat at and play with the noodles, or to eat them? He tried doing both, more or less simultaneously. He sampled new foodstuffs expressively: particularly if he was unimpressed, he’d chew comically and rhythmically with his mouth way open, as if more air would improve or somehow clarify the flavor.
He delighted in startling the bejeepers out of John. John starts his day out, pre-official getting up, with a glass of cold coffee from the fridge. He would be drowsily pouring himself a glass at the open fridge when a languid orange paw would suddenly droop from atop the fridge right into John’s line of sight. We have a spill rug there to this day.
Catullus tended to wander, so we tried installing an underground shock fence, which was a disaster. He would bear the shock to break out of its confines, but would be scared to reenter, even with it turned off. So we had the cruel and ineffective fencing removed – and, sadly, eventually, Catullus became the fourth and last cat we lost to a car.
Bestine was the first cat John and I got together, and the first kitten I’d had in responsible adulthood. She was nearly the last. The shelter’s personality notes on Bestine, a Manx, noted her activity level as “normal – active.” In fact, she did not stop moving for the nearly a full year, and well into her teens defied the literature by being fully awake and active 16 hours a day and sleeping for eight.
About her third night with us Bestine decided my head was the perfect sleeping spot. I tried to dissuade her from this by removing her to the floor – repeatedly. Consistency, John assured me, would win out. Fourteen times later, in tears, I gave up. And that’s where she slept for most of the rest of her nearly 17 years. To be honest, after a month or so, I couldn’t sleep without her being wrapped around my head. (Of course, there were times she’d get agitated and would clamp herself to my head and kick it like a soccer ball. John laughed, which I didn’t much like.)
Bestine loved people and detested other cats: they were stupid. Outdoors, she assiduously avoided conflict and removed herself from face-offs with unparalleled stealth and discretion. Indoors, however, although she generally ignored the others, she would occasionally start a fracas – then, when the other cat retaliated – she’d turn to us piteously: “Why me?” She growled in the middle of the night, while we ate, while she ate. Much given to nuzzling and ear-snorting, she was one of the most loving cats ever.
Mufasa caught John’s eye during an out-of-town litter run (we were on our way home), and I discouraged his adoption because, with Teddy and Angelica ill, and having just lost Bestine, I wanted to see the next two through their time unstressed. That was Sunday. Later that week, repeated references to The Lion King cropped up (Mufasa was Simba’s father, remember), and a little over a week later, I admitted he was still on my mind. He was still available, so we drove south and adopted him. For the rest of his story, see Mufasa’s Daphne. This site is dedicated to him.
Angelica showed up, courtesy of one of John’s co-workers, two days after Asta died. She seemed an unremarkable, shy, rather plain silver tabby. Her large, green eyes and personality reminded us of Captain Beefheart’s Big-Eyed Beans from Venus, hence her nickname. She also featured an insta-purr feature so loud that one of our vets once bellowed, "Turn that thing down! I can't hear your heartbeat!"
She grew into a slender, wiry Thing 2 to Raku’s Thing 1; her other nickname was Destructo Kitty. She was also the first, and still the most persistent, in a line of sink-strainer thieves. She also holds the all-time record for tree climbing, having beat three cats in pursuit up the plum tree and racing back down, head first, before the others reached the top. And she did a fabulous meerkat, standing erect on her hind legs — on the bed.
When Blanche joined the household, Angelica wandered off and got shut into the neighbor’s garage. We searched the neighborhood frantically, littered it with posters. She returned, a bit dehydrated and hungry but well, a week later. But the bond between her and Raku had been broken, and she embarked upon her next persona: The Strange Ranger. She was the cat who went into semihibernation in an unchecked closet, who stared at the wall in search of signals perceptible only to her. And she purred incessantly next to my head.
In spring 2006 she headed into kidney failure. Regular hydration and Epakitin kept her going a few months beyond diagnosis, but finally, it was clear her quality of life was too compromised. See Bye-Bye, Bean.
In a houseful of loving critters, RuLu stood out for his deep, serene sweetness. He was one of those cats you had to get to know, a still-waters-run-deep personality. He had the loudest purr of any cat we've ever known; among his many nicknames was Little Sir Roars-a-Lot. He was the cat who trotted out to greet us in the middle of the night, purring at full volume; the cat who whuffled and affectionately nibbled fingers; the cat who'd bring a glitter puff ball to me in the study to get me to play fetch with him in the hallway; the cat who lay on his side in the hallway with his forepaws bent in relaxed trust. I've heard that Buddhists believe white cats are ascended Zen masters. RuLu's calm, simultaneous lightheartedness and gravitas made me a believer.
He came to us by way of friends who were concerned he would end up with more dog than cat behaviors. Snap, the resident sled dog, was already in the habit of carrying RuLu and, when done playing, setting the cat on a bookshelf for quick reference later. Our friends also thought Cat was a girl.
RuLu’s first veterinary visit ended up with him in a kitty straitjacket and muzzled. Ever after, he was a perfect gentleman — which tractability proved particularly valuable when he developed diabetes at age 5. He was a good patient who didn't mind the twice-daily injections and reluctantly tolerated ear-poking for glucose curves. We often joked that the reason he became diabetic was because he was simply too sweet and his pancreas couldn't handle it.
RuLu was a great buddy to Oscar, Teddy and Chloe – and us. We had anticipated he would take over Teddy's role singing, “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night,” but he ended up being the celestial watchman. See Farewell, Sweetness.
