Cody’s blog

Our first family cat was Snap. Technically, I think he was my brother’s cat, but we all loved him. He was a sturdy black tabby tomcat. In those days, we didn’t think about neutering our pets or keeping them indoors. He would go out every spring and be gone for about a week, romancing all the lady cats he could find and fighting with other toms.

Here I am with Snap, in a photo dated May, 1963. I would have been around 11. I have no idea how old Snap would have been. I can’t really remember when or how we got him, it just seems like he was always there.

Whiskers was my first cat. This picture was also taken in May, 1963. Yes, that is a poodle skirt I’m wearing.

I got Kitty somewhere around 6th to 8th grade, I don’t remember exactly. A classmate asked if anyone wanted a kitten. I said I did. Presumably there was some conversation between our parents. All I remember is my friend and her mother driving up to our house, handing me a kitten, saying, “Here’s your cat,” and driving away. She told us the kitten was purebred Siamese, but not registered. Presumably not show quality, or she wouldn’t have been free, but I never cared about that. I loved her to bits! She was a fussy little diva, typical Siamese, very opinionated and talkative. She was my best friend throughout junior high and high school and beyond.

She always had to be the center of attention.

After I graduated from high school, I bummed around for about a year before returning home to go to community college. Somewhere along the way, someone gave me a tiny little orange ball of energy we named O.J. He grew up to be this behemoth, sixteen pounds of muscle and fur. Note how broad his chest is.

O.J. was the sweetest, friendliest cat ever. He loved everything and everybody: people, other cats, rabbits, dogs, horses. He had a purr you could hear from across the room, and a tiny, squeaky little meow. When I moved back home I brought O.J. with me. Kitty was appalled and offended. He ran right up to her to try to make friends. She hissed and growled and retreated under the bed and wouldn’t come out until O.J. had been banished to the garage. He was content to be the outdoor kitty while she ruled the house.

When I moved away to go to university, I left Kitty and O.J. at home with my parents. O.J. died a year or so later, the victim of someone who was poisoning neighborhood cats. Kitty lived on to be around 16 years old, always happy to see me when I came home on breaks. My mom said Kitty would start waiting by the door a couple of days before I arrived, somehow knowing I would be home soon. She always greeted me like the old friend she was.

Living cat-free at university, I discovered that the constant runny nose and cough I’d been suffering for years was a severe allergy to cats I’d developed. I didn’t have another cat until I moved to Tehachapi over twenty years later, and found that a cat came with the house I’d bought on the mountain. My allergies had gotten better over the years, and I was very happy to be able to have cats again.

Miss Jerry, April 15, 2006 – March 6, 2018

Jerry came to live with me in September, 2006, when she was just shy of five months old. She was one of the many kittens born on my brother’s ranch to their various barn cats. My first post about her was New Kitty!, on September 4. At that time, we still thought she was a boy (hence the name Jerry).

At first, she stayed outside on the porch in a kitten cage, and brought her in the house a few hours at a time to gradually introduce her to the other cats. The plan was for her to be a companion for my tuxedo kitty, Socks, who was living in the back bedroom by herself to keep her from being terrorized by the big orange bully, Spot.

Jerry was a happy, friendly little kitten who would purr if you so much as looked at her. She wanted to be friends with everyone. She proved to be an excellent hunter, as well. Several times I went out onto the porch in the morning and found a dead mouse in her cage — they would come in to try to get her food, and she would kill them. Her cage was only maybe 2 x 3 feet, but in that small space she was able to catch mice.

She was a scrappy-looking little thing at first, her fur being mostly undercoat with sparse longer hairs sticking out. (My mom, who was also thinking of getting a kitten at the time, rejected Jerry, saying she didn’t want that funny-looking cat. So I took her, and mom ended up taking a two-month-old kitten, which was way more than my then-86-year-old mother could handle, and she soon returned the kitten to the ranch.)

But Jerry had the most gorgeous deep orange-amber eyes, which eventually faded to pale gold.

That October, I went on a two-week vacation, while mom stayed with the cats. When I came home, Jerry’s long hair had come in, and she looked like a completely different cat! By this time, I had also pretty much figured out that she was female, since she was old enough to have developed boy parts if she was going to. I liked to joke that when I left on vacation, I had a fuzzy little short-haired boy cat, and came home to a fluffy long-haired girl kitty!

She had a funny way of walking, with her hind legs splayed. She rarely ran anywhere, preferring a sort of determined, quick stride, head down, looking straight ahead. She could jump when she wanted to, and liked to climb to the top of the cat tree, but she wasn’t particularly graceful at it.

Jerry was a sweet kitty, but frankly, not very bright. She’d get confused easily and always had a sort of vacant look on her face. I remember going out to my brother’s ranch one time, looking out the window to the side yard, and seeing a long-haired black cat with splayed hind legs, and saying, hey, that cat looks just like Jerry. He must be her father. (We knew who her mother was, of course, but the father could have been any of the various toms at the ranch.) My brother said that was Ren, one of two black cats who’d formerly lived down at the pump house. Ren was the stupidest cat ever, my brother said. Not a brain in his head. Seems she took after her father, in intelligence as well as in looks.

When my house burned down in 2011, we temporarily went next door to live with my mom. Mom’s little one-bedroom mobile home didn’t have anywhere for the kitties to have their own room, so I screened in the small back porch for Jerry and Socks, while Spot stayed in the house with me. I put in a six-foot cat tree, so they had some vertical space, and a chair so I could sit and visit with them daily, along with their food & water and litter boxes. It was a bit cramped, but it was the best I could do for them in the months while I got my new house built. When the weather turned cold, I put plywood over the screens to close it in, and draped fleece blankets over the chair and cat tree to make little tents for them.

I made sure the new house had a room for the girls. Jerry and Socks settled in quickly and life went on as before, for a while.

It was around this time that Jerry started to develop problems with constipation. At first, it was just a matter of taking her to the vet to get unblocked every once in a while, and making sure she had plenty of wet food with some occasional pumpkin. Eventually, her condition progressed to megacolon, and she needed daily medication.

She seemed like a big lump with a fat belly, but she wasn’t really fat, she was just full of poop. Her colon had lost its elasticity and it was hard for her to move her bowels. But she was pretty healthy otherwise, and it didn’t seem to bother her too much. Fortunately, she was pretty easy to give liquid meds to. She didn’t like being restrained, but if you were patient and put the syringe up to the corner of her mouth, she’d just open her mouth and let you squirt it in.

In July 2013, my heart kitty, Spot, died. Without the big orange bully claiming the rest of the house, there was no reason to keep the girls confined to one room, so I opened their door and let them out. It took a while, but soon they were hanging out on the couch and enjoying the freedom of the house.

Miss Jerry even became something of a lap kitty, although she was so heavy I’d have to boost her off after while so my legs wouldn’t go numb.

This video perfectly exemplifies Jerry’s relationship with Socks. She walks up to her, they sniff noses, Jerry turns to walk away, and Socks swats her as she leaves, just to show her who’s boss.

Socks had her own health issues, and she passed in November, 2015. For a few months, Jerry had the house to herself. But she seemed lonely, and didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d follow me around the house, crying tiny little squeaky mews if I wasn’t in the same room with her, and she wanted to sit in my lap all the time. I thought she missed Socks, and since she’d always wanted to be friends with her, I thought she might like a new friend.

In January, 2016, I got Davey, hoping he and Jerry would be friends. She tolerated him a bit at first, but he was way too rambunctious for her, and pestered her until she retreated to my bedroom and wouldn’t come out. A few months later, I got another orange kitty, Simba, hoping an older kitty would take some of the pressure off her. Simba and Davey soon got to be good friends, but poor old Jerry didn’t want anything to do with either of them. She took up residence in my bedroom and refused to come out unless the boys were in their rooms.

Once or twice, the boys joined her on the bed and they shared the space for a brief time, but pretty soon, Jerry would get tired of having them there and go hide in the bathroom. They never really fought, but she would hiss and growl at them if they came too close, so I kept her door closed most of the time. She didn’t seem to mind it. I suppose she was used to living in one room, which she had done for most of her life. And she got to spend the nights with me. She wasn’t much of a cuddler, but she’d often lie on my lap while I read for a while before going to sleep, and then when I turned the light out, she’d go sleep at the foot of the bed, or on the stool next to the bed. She’d sleep under the covers during the day if it was cold, or snuggle amongst the pillows.

She liked to play, but she didn’t want to get up to play. She’d lie on her back and wave her paws in the air at strings on a stick. Her favorite toy was my hand. She’d swat and bite at it, but never hard enough to leave a mark.

Last summer, her megacolon got to the point where the meds weren’t controlling it any more, and she needed surgery to remove most of her colon. It was major surgery, and she had a rough time when she first got home, but once she recovered, she was much better.

Amazingly, she went from 12 pounds before the surgery to 10 pounds after. She had two full pounds of colon and poo removed from her little body! It was strange to see her without that fat belly she’d always had. Poor kitty, dragging that weight around! She became more playful and active and was doing really well.

Her end was sudden and unexpected. One morning, she got up in distress, stumbled around crying for a minute or two, then crawled into my bed and died. It was all over in just a few minutes. I suspect it was a heart attack, but I’ll never really know. She only survived another eight months after her surgery, but I’m glad she was able to live her final months healthy and happy, and didn’t suffer long at the end. Rest in peace, my darling girl. I’ll miss you always.

She came to live with me in the summer of 2003 with her brother Felix when they were around four months old. They were from a litter of barn cats at my brother’s ranch.

While Felix was a friendly little goof, Socks was always stand-offish and a bit high-strung. I would pet her a little bit every day, but she didn’t really care if she got petted or not. Meanwhile, Felix would be crawling all over me, rubbing and snuggling.

Things changed when one day a young bobcat came up onto my porch and attacked Socks. Through the glass in the porch door, I saw a blur of tan fur chasing her, and heard the thump of them hitting the porch wall. I jumped up and opened the porch door, to see Socks crammed into the corner of the porch, held down by one of the bobcat’s huge paws. They both looked up at me. I didn’t want to threaten the bobcat into attacking me, but I had to make it let go of my kitty, so I reached down and tapped it lightly on the side. That startled it into letting go of Socks. She dashed into the house, and the bobcat jumped off the porch and stood there watching me. I didn’t want it hanging around to possibly attack my kitties again, so I ran outside yelling and waving my arms, and it trotted off around the house. I chased it twice around the house, until it finally took off down the road.

I found Socks hiding in the kitchen under the cabinets. I let her stay there until she felt like coming out the next day. The whole side of her face was swollen where the bobcat had whacked her head, and her eye got infected from a small puncture wound near her eye, but she recovered completely after that. She also decided at that point that I was okay, and we became friends.

She also started spending most of her time indoors after that.

By her lights, the entire house should have been hers, but my older cat, Spot, didn’t agree. He never liked the kittens and would have liked to chase them away, but as long as Felix was around to act as a buffer between Spot and Socks, there was an uneasy truce among them.

Sadly, I lost Felix when he was about a year and four months old. Socks really missed her brother, but even worse, without Felix around, Spot started to harass Socks terribly. I started keeping her inside all the time so Spot couldn’t chase her away, and I was constantly breaking up fur-tearing fights, and poor Socks was so stressed, she was peeing and pooping everywhere. Finally, one day, I shut Socks in my spare bedroom with a litter box and food and water, just to get a little peace and quiet. I figured she’d be crying to be let out soon enough and I’d open the door then, but she never did. In fact, she seemed much happier to have a space of her own without that big old bully always after her. So from then on, she had her own room.

She had a kitty bed on top of the filing cabinets, with a window to look out of, and everything seemed fine.

I visited her every day, but I did worry a bit about her being alone most of the time. I remembered how much she loved her brother, and thought she might like a friend, so in 2006, I got another cat from my brother’s ranch, Jerry. Unfortunately, it turned out Socks didn’t want another friend. She didn’t want anything to do with Jerry. Thankfully, they didn’t fight, but they never got to be close, either.

When my house burned down in 2011, I made sure my new house had a spare bedroom for the girls to live in.

Just as in their old house, they had kitty beds and a cat tree and a window to look out of.

Two years ago, I lost my heart kitty, Spot. I still miss my big orange buddy, but with him gone, there was no reason to keep the girls shut in their room any longer, so I opened the door and let them come out into the rest of the house. After a couple of days of wondering what all this new space was about, Socks decided she was queen of the house, and claimed it as her own.

As she got older, Socks started having some difficult health problems. She developed stomatitis and had to have her teeth pulled, and she was put on prednisolone. She absolutely hated taking medicine, and wasn’t eating reliably enough to put meds in her food, but fortunately we were able to get the pred in a transdermal gel I could rub on her ear flap, and she grew to tolerate that.

Later, she developed hypercalcemia, which is often a symptom of lymphoma. Many tests, including a biopsy, couldn’t find any sign of lymphoma, so we just treated her high calcium with weekly Fosamax pills. She didn’t like that at all, either, but at least it was only once a week! And for a while, it controlled her hypercalcemia, and she was doing pretty well.

Then, earlier this summer, she started throwing up a lot and losing weight. Again, the vet couldn’t find anything wrong in exams and blood tests, so he thought it was just a side effect of the meds she was on, and put her on an anti-nausea med. That was a liquid she had to take every day. She really hated that, and it became a bit of a daily battle to get it into her, but it did stop the vomiting and she started doing better again. Fortunately, she didn’t hold a grudge, and five minutes after the hated syringe of medicine, she’d be in my lap purring up a storm.

This past weekend, she suddenly stopped eating, and spent all day Saturday hiding in the cat tree. I thought if she wasn’t better the next day, I’d take her to the vet on Monday. On Sunday, she sat in my lap for a little while, but didn’t purr and didn’t seem like she could get comfortable. When she jumped down, she suddenly started howling in pain. I decided I’d better not wait, so I bundled her up and drove her to the emergency vet 50 miles away.

Turned out she had a huge tumor in her abdomen, and was severely anemic, probably due to internal bleeding from the tumor. It seems likely now that she did have lymphoma all along, but it hid from detection until it was too late. Treatment would have required surgery, which she might not have survived because she was so sick, and which wouldn’t have had a high chance of success anyway. So I decided to let her go.

I used to call her my fussy little diva. She wanted everything just so, and she would let you know if things weren’t to her liking. If she didn’t think she was getting enough attention, she was inclined to stop eating. The food she liked one day she refused to touch the next day. When she sat in my lap, I was required to stop whatever else I was doing and stay still and pet her—just enough, but not too much—or she’d jump off and run away. She terrorized the pet sitter and hid from guests. She’d prowl the house at night, knocking things off counters, and playing loudly with her toys at 5 AM. Sometimes she drove me crazy, but I loved her dearly.

She liked to sit at the door and smell the fresh air.

She had little black speckles on her little white feets.

She had a white girdle on her tummy.

Being a mostly-black kitty, it was hard enough to get a good picture of her, but she also hated having her picture taken and would run away whenever I pointed a camera at her. But I did manage to get a few good shots of her over the years.

This is the last picture I took of her at home, sitting on top of the firewood in a sunbeam.

We had twelve years together, but it’s never enough. I will miss my little fussbudget terribly.