A feline lover tells of pets of the past and present
I have written about the many things that I remember at Christmas. Now I will tell you of some more things that I cannot forget not only at Christmas but also at other times. Cats! I have written about them before several times, but since my kitty-cat was 16 years old this past September I think cats deserve another story.
Tom
Some of my Cameos have been about my cat that I had in 1938 that everybody helped name, and he ended up with the name “Thomas Tony, Johnny Chaplin, Wamcat Murphy, Junior, Billy the Second.” Of course we called him” Tom.” Now Tom was an exceptional cat since he would roll over on command like a dog. When you talked to him, he meowed back as if answering your questions. He loved popcorn and would join my mother in eating the bag of popcorn that I brought home following my work day at West Bros. each Saturday night.
He lived indoors, with an occasional trip outside from time to time for bathroom privileges. Always, he came to the door and announced that he was back and wanted back in. This particular time he left but he did not return as expected. We had received our January snow, and the ground was still frozen. We called and called and no Tom appeared. We became concerned, but one day he straggled up, sick and so skinny and poor. We immediately put him in a box lined with towels and offered him food. He was too sick to eat. He coughed and coughed. My mother decided that he had pneumonia. She remembered the treatment our doctor had used on me. When I was five I had red measles, and a bad case that ended with pneumonia. We lived in Shreveport and my doctor was the same doctor that had delivered me, Dr. Elzey. He had prescribed a hot toddy for me and he came to my home with a prescription bottle of whiskey, mixed it with a little warm water and sugar and had me drink it. It burned all the way down and I could not stand the taste, but he spooned it into me. I lived over both the toddy and the pneumonia, but I never forgot.
Toddy for the Kitty
And so Tom was sick. Mother decided to see if our neighbor had any whiskey so that she could get a few tablespoons for a toddy for Tom. Our neighbor did not have any whiskey, but she did have some wine. Mother decided that it might not be as strong as the whiskey but she could use a little more. She mixed up a toddy with wine, and we spooned it into the listless, almost lifeless cat. He lay for a time and then he arose, arched his back, and pranced around, howling and putting on a show. She decided that if a little did him so much good, a little more might be even better. And so she mixed a little stronger toddy, and spooned it down the lively, uninhibited cat. Then he walked on his back feet like a bear, he put on quite a show, and howled, meowed, and arched his back and walked sideways. Finally he just fell over, dead. We killed our cat, we got him drunk and he died just as drunk as a “sot.” At least he died happy, but we decided we would never be veterinarians (or bartenders) since we did not know how much was enough. “Pore” old Tom!! What a way to go and to think we were two religious Baptist church members that got our precious cat drunk enough to kill him.
Not a Litter Box
This is the same cat that chose the Boston Fern flower pots in the living room as his bathroom while my friend and I entertained a couple of nice boys. One flower pot was not enough so he used two. We tried to get him out of the living room, but it was too late. We played like we did not know what he had done, and so did the boys.
About a year later the same neighbor offered us a pretty little cat, a black cat, that she had named “Tom.” We still missed the first “Tom” and welcomed the little kitten. By then we lived on First Street and had a couple of roomers, one a Mr. Murphy who worked at the La. Ordnance Plant. He was a nice gentleman and since our name was “Murphy” too, we kidded about being kin, but we were not related at all. He often petted our cat and commented on his beautiful shiny black fur. During the day while I was at work Mother had to rescue Tom from time to time from neighbor cats that seemed to take pleasure in fighting him. But Mother always charged in and ran the other cats off with a broom and brought Tom into the house.
Thomasina
Several weeks later we heard Mr. Murphy laughing so loudly that you could hear him uptown. We peered out the back kitchen door to see him bending over a No. 2 washtub that had a few “tow” sacks or burlap sacks in it. He saw my mother and said, “Tom is it, well, just come and see what Tom has here”. We did and it was five little black kittens, just as cute as Tom had been. We changed his name to Thomasina. You can tell by now that neither my mother nor I could tell the sex of a cat, we just had to wait and see if they had kittens. Apparently the cats she chased off were “Tom’s” boy friends. So much for sex education.
Kittens
We have had cats, and cats, and cats. Some we knew were boy cats and some we did not know. One that my husband found at work turned out to be a girl and started the chain of kittens that culminated with us having seventeen kittens one spring as she and her four female offsprings had kittens.. They had names such as Paraphernalia, E. P., Ming, Jaws (which we had to change to Joyce when she had kittens), Turpentine, Pumpkin, Boots, Midnight, Patches, Smokey, Peppermint, and other unusual names. E. P. had the distinction of being the only cat that would use the ridge roll on our roof for her bathroom, and that was the only place she used. It was quite a sight since our roof is so high; the cat was visible from a good distance down the Sibley Road. Another unusual thing about E. P. was the fact that she never had kittens to live, they were either stillborn or died shortly after birth. She wanted to be a mother so badly that she stole kittens from the other cats. It was not uncommon to find her with two little kittens from another cat’s litter. We tried to return them to the right place. She would hide and curl her body around the little kittens. The Sibley Road traffic killed most of my kittens. We could not bear to give one away, so eventually all were gone and we had to start over.
It became apparent that if we wanted cats to live they must be house cats. In 1990 my grandson’s cat, Ally, had five or six kittens, so ugly that only God and the mother could love them. Nobody adopted any of them. We took two, had them neutered, all the shots and their front toenails removed. They were litter trained and ate dry food. The other four were killed by my daughter’s neighbor because she did not want them to come into their yards or use her flower beds for their bathroom. So she got traps from the city and caught them and disposed of them, all but the mother cat, who tore out of the trap with her back ripped open and ran away to die.
P.K. and Sissy
It is December 2006 and our two cats at sixteen years of age are still going strong. One has a pretty face, and her name is P. K, which is short for Pretty Kitty. The other is not pretty, but is so smart, so alert and such a joy. Her name is Sissy. She follows me to my desk and gets into her bed on the corner of the desk. She wants to be where the people are, and loves company. Sissy has three ways of communicating with me. She purrs, she meows/howls, and she has another sound that is almost a growl, but has syllables to sound like words. I tell her I love her, and she looks up into my face and utters three syllables that sound like “I love you.” Maybe it doesn’t sound like that to others but to me it does. When my little Spitz puppy died, Sissy crawled up into my arms and looked up at my tears. Very carefully she reached up a paw ad touched my face, lovingly. She felt my sorrow. I love her. Sissy sleeps with me each night and enjoys my electric blanket along with me. Let’s just say, “I am loved”. John says that even while I am napping Sissy will crawl up into my arms, loving me.
No ‘In-Between’
So the world is made up of two kinds of people “Cat lovers” and “Cat haters”. There is no “in between” no matter how much the cat haters protest. I belong to the first and so do my children and grandchildren. My friends know of my love for cats. Elsie Hock sends me dishtowels, potholders, cards and many other things that have cats on them. Melba Lowery gives me a Hallmark Calendar each year with cats on each page, along with many gifts of angels, which I also love. Freddy Haynes also remembers me with cat cards. Many other friends always send birthday cards and other cards with cats on them. My son even buys birthday cards that have cats on them and signs them “P. K. and Sissy.” Dogs have masters, but cats have a staff. So you see we are cat lovers, and long may the cat lovers live!!! I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and I think Sissy and P. K. did.
Juanita Agan has lived in Minden since 1935. Her column appears Wednesdays in the Minden Press-Herald. She may be reached at 377-2050.
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