A few years ago, my professional partner looked confused when we learned a member of the staff was going to miss an important event because her cat had died that day. Where I understood and was completely sympathetic, he was the opposite. Not wanting to come across like an unfeeling jerk, he reminded me that he was raised on a ranch in a flyover state, where house pets lived outdoors and came and went without fuss or fanfare. And when one was discovered missing or deceased, it was just part of ranch life, not a reason for life to derail. “A cat,” he admitted, “was just a cat.”
I’ve thought a lot about that exchange over the years, and it seems to me that anytime you use the “just a…” to describe a being of any kind – be it a minority of this species or a different species altogether – you are dismissing that being’s potential, wonderfulness and especially individuality. In this case, the implication was that all cats were basically the same, so why mourn the loss of one?
As any cat lover knows, they are like snowflakes; no two are the same. I was reminded of this again this week, with two upheavals in my cat universe. Robbie, the sweet little tuxedo boy who I have joked was a “farm sanctuary reject,” after his expulsion from his first home for freaking out on his lovely adopters, spent two wonderful months in the arms of a friend I thought would be his permanent mom.
But it seems Max had other ideas. Such an affectionate little guy that he followed her around like a puppy until he was scooped up for a cuddle, he would, at the same time, lunge at her old kitty with such aggression that blood was sometimes drawn. Robbie is a confusing combination of traits: so gentle one minute, so aggressive the next. Needy of love but independent. (Such a description would fit many people I know. 😉
So he’ll soon move on to the next home – one where he’ll be the only cat. It crushes me to move him again, as he’s had a tough life already. But sometimes these things happen when matching individual personalities. Like a marriage, sometimes the first one doesn’t take.
Also this week, I trapped a big handsome boy I’d started calling Eddie after he began dropping by the Post Office field for the occasional breakfast. I could tell he was intact (sometime I’ll write about feeling like such a pervert, using binoculars to scope out a cat’s backside) but he was weirdly submissive. Gertrude Stein, the elderly (and cranky) dowager of that colony, could send him running with a mere cross glance. After being trapped, he continued to be a complete gentleman, never hissing or even acting alarmed.
“What, me worry?”
Because Eddie looks a great deal (in body and face) like my beloved Big Mike, and was, like Mike, so quiet and sweet in captivity, it crushed me to have to release him two days post-surgery. But there’s no getting around the fact that my inn is full to bursting, and the length of time it takes to socialize a four-year-old cat is prohibitive. So off he went this morning. For the first time before releasing a cat, I sat with Eddie for a good long while as he sniffed the smells of the meadow from inside his carrier. When I opened the carrier, I was amazed that for once, a cat did not bolt furiously for the green thickets they call home. Instead, he ran about six feet, then turned around and sat down! He watched me with calm green eyes and then began licking the smells of his captivity off his fur.
Eddie is a unique kitty, but then they all are. It costs us nothing to know this, except perhaps in emotional overwhelm when we have to part. Saint Francis, watch over this sweet boy and bring him around for breakfast. I’ll be there every day.
❤️🐾❤️🐾❤️🐾❤️