A Tiny Story, In Memory of a Tiny Cat

(Picture by Kerin F.)

La Caterina and I have been feeding the feral cats in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for--my, it must be getting on for ten years now. At least 9, I'm sure of that. We first joined a long-standing friend of both hers and mine when she generously placed three cats we had located in the back yard of our Queens digs which la C called the Dutch Kills Orchard and Cattery (we had two fruit trees in the back yards). When, perforce, we moved to Brooklyn, la C (and thus me, in a non-executive, "Thog lift!" capacity) became volunteers at our friend's large feral cat colony spanning both Steiner Studios and the Annex of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

We made friends with the other cat ladies and the cats. The Steiner cats flourished in the studio's parking lots, while the Annex cats had the run of the sprawling, overgrown Victorian buildings and the grass sward between them. In those halcyon days, the ruined buildings were a feline domain, and the cats themselves an attraction on the public tours that ran through the annex on buses.

Alas, now the Annex is closed and we feed the cats at certain designated points. Still, they let us do it, and even allow us to use the studio water supply to refill the water jugs we use to provision our furry charges. Over the years, we have lost a fair amount of the original cats, but a core cast has delighted us over the years.

We lost one last week. Tiny Cat, pictured above, was one of the original Steiner cats (at least, she has been there as long as la C and I were serving the kitties food and beverages). Years before Hurricane Sandy, this small, petite black cat would demand a separate bowl of food, or jump in the hatchback opening of our Saturn Vue and help herself to some of the large wet cat food stock filling la C's Tupperware boxes. Tiny was, well, tiny, but she was funny in her aggressiveness, and a beautiful, trim cat with luminous eyes.

I remember on my first visit, la C warned me, "Don't pet Tiny. She scratches. For real."

Now, la C is the Cat Whisperer, but I too have had cats for many years--getting on for 20, now. So, recklessly, I dared to approach Tiny, and to tentatively pet her. Remarkably, she took to me, and the cat that you could not approach allowed me to pet her for what has been a long service in the Navy Yard/Steiner Studios. I loved the little beast from the moment she accepted me, and petting Tiny was one of the highlights of a Navy Yard visit for me. She was as silky as a pampered house cat could be, and as sleek as anyone could hope for their pet to be. She was feral but friendly, made her own rules, but had favorites.

More so than I, la C's colleague at the Yard Kerin was a Tiny Cat adoptee as well. The little thing was ok with la C, loved Kerin and was unaccountably fond of me. In all our years there, Tiny thought about scratching me once, and then changing her mind, head-butted the hand she had moved to attack. She was always painstakingly gentle with me.

According to the ASPCA "community cats", that is, "outdoor, unowned, free-roaming cats," have short lives: "If a community cat survives kittenhood, his average lifespan is less than two years if living on his own. If a cat is lucky enough to be in a colony that has a caretaker, he may reach 10 years." So if you wonder why busy professionals like Kerin, la C and their friends and colleagues burn a helluva lot of their scant spare time nursemaiding these cats it's that 8 year difference. They give these cats a good life, love, and stability. Which is why so many of them have lasted a decade or longer.

Tiny Cat made her decade (and in fact Tiny was probably a bit older) but we lost her tragically. She died, as I said, but not of sickness or old age, but of--misadventure. I'm not sure just what happened, because her body was found post-mortem. Not a natural death, as she deserved.

CORRECTION: Kerin writes to inform me that Tiny was found injured but alive, and that she was mercifully st free from pain with Kerin comforting her. She didn’t die alone, and that is a comfort.

I miss her. In her memory, John Keats's "To Mrs. Reynolds' Cat":

Cat! who hast past thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d?—how many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green and prick
Those velvet ears—but pr’ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me—and upraise
Thy gentle mew—and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists—
For all the wheezy asthma,—and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nicked off—and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enter’dst on glass-bottled wall

Tiny Cat's fur was ever soft, her velvet ears had only the nick that warns Animal Control that this cat has a place, and is cared for, her tail may have had a nick or two, but her affectionate, slightly sardonic spirit aways delighted me--that I was accepted, for no real reason, by the sharpest cat of the lot.

May she rest in peace.

Catsky: A Remembrance

The life of a feral cat tends to resemble that in Hobbes’s description of life in the “state of nature”: “solitary, poor,nasty, brutish, and short.” A feral cat, or, as the ASPCA calls them, a community cat's average lifespan is less than two years if living on his own. In a well managed cat colony, they may live as long as ten years.

So the cat colony run by la Caterina and her ragtag band of rebels--er, elegant and compassionate women--whose love of these little guys has extended for many years (la C has been involved since the summer of 2010, and the colony predates her by some years), have given these animals an extended lease on life. In fact, two of the cats we had in out backyard before we moved to Brooklyn, Chauncey Gardiner and Bernie (for Bernard Shaw), are still with us.

Many of these cats are the classic "community cat"--skittish, stand-offish, with a wild streak deep within them. But surprisingly many become what the colony helpers call "friendlies," and will come up to you for affection--my departed friend Katy No-tail would cuddle with me for up to a half hour.

Some even transition to indoor cat status--our little Ninja Kitteh has been inside longer than she was in the wild, and although she has the tipped ear of a colony cat (don't judge; that cropped ear says to every animal shelter this cat has people who care about her and want her home).

Our feline friend Catsky, pictured above, was about ten years old, and went missing a little while ago (they sometimes do this general), but was found dead today by his favorite person, Kerin. Catsky was very sweet; I knew him only a little bit, but was allowed to pet him. La Caterina and Kerin (who was so loved by him that she could pick him up, which even my Giles never liked), knew him and loved him much longer and better.

Catsky was a beautiful, calm cat, with a sweet disposition. He was very loved by all of the colony's helpers, but, I think, by none more than Kerin.

When you hear someone dismissively referred to as a "cat lady," or wonder why people with demanding jobs and other time pressures would run around a cityscape leaving food and water, even through the depths of winter, cleaning dishes and shelters to make sure that their charges are healthy and comfortable, think of this: A decade's worth of of love.

The reward dwarfs the work, and even the sadness in the wake of loss doesn't take away those years of friendship with animals to whom everyone else in the world may be potential danger--but their people are loved in return for the love they give.

The Prayer Kitty

This--how you see her here--that's how I like to remember her. Betty the Prayer Kitty, whose love for the nubby-textured red version of the Book of Common Prayer warred with her love of the two volume black Daily Office Book. Betty, who shared my journey to the diaconate with me, by cuddling ferociously to the liturgical books that formed the core of my rule of life as a Christian.

Betty was, as you can see from the photo (click to embiggen, as we say on the intertubes), a subtly beautiful cat, with gold fur highlights in the seeming brown-grey patches that made continents against the ocean of white that made up most of her body. She lived a remarkable life, nearly 19 years old when she died tonight, and< was the last survivor of her litter. (We lost Elvis, the Comfort Kitty in 2014, and their brother Buster a year later (Buster was basically Steveie Smith's galloping cat come to life.

Betty kept on keeping on, a gallant High Church lady of the old school.

Except when she and my cat Elspeth went to war every now and again.

About two years year ago, she began to seem wan, a little bullied by Elspeth. We moved her up to the Northern Residence, where she rallied, and soon asserted sovereignty over the Albany home. (Poor Ninja cat!) And then Betty got sick, an instance of what the NYT called "the mystery of the waiting house cats"--hyperthyroidism. Despite the fact that she was already well over than the 12-15 years house cat life expectancy, she responded well to treatment, gained back most of the weight she had lost, and enjoyed her new digs. She was a happy, snuggly kitty, claiming the bedroom, leaving Ninja the couch. Peace reigned in the land.

Yes, I had to make sure she got subcutaneous fluids (not from me, folks, I have a very skilled cat sitter), and twice a day orally administered medicine (that I got quite handy with. I'm apparently a natural with a syringe.)

And there was much rejoicing.

Until a few weeks ago, when Betty quickly lost all the weight she'd gained, and her kidneys were malfunctioning. Suffice it to say that, once again, I had to accompany another beloved pet to the vet for one last time, one more goodbye.

I read the light tone of so much of what precedes that last sentence, and I can't help it or change it. Betty was a happy cat, a companionable animal, whose heart shaped little pink-and-brown nose, whose golden tinted fur, whose kneading my chest, always made me smile.

Even now, sad as I am, and ravaged by the ordeal of having to make the choice for her, and hold her to me until the end, a pale reflection of all the happiness we shared in the nearly 12 years we shared together comforts me little bit. Better to have been with her in that moment than not. Better to have shared all of the experience, to the end.

Better to have loved to the last moment. And beyond.

The Cat Who Came in From the Cold: A Memorial

That's my favorite picture of Giles T. Katt, the cat who came in from the cold. Literally.

You see, back in 2000, I moved for a few years back out to Nassau County, and rented a back cottage (in this town, most of the properties had a main house and a smaller cottage in the rear). The cottage was two stories, and, while compact, quite cozy (The main property was rented to a woman and her daughter). Our next door neighbor, an elderly man, had let his cottage go to ruin, and it became what I called "Kittycat Central"--a gathering of all the feral cats in the neighborhood. My ex and I took to feeding them, and one in particular, a handsome young adult grey-and-white cat whom she called "Oliver" was a regular.

In the winter of 2001, the weather report warned of a blizzard, and so I made a frantic trip to buy groceries (the cupboard, while not quite bare, was pretty sparse). The snow began as I headed out, and was falling in earnest by the time I got back. As I finished unloading the car, the front door to the cottage propped open, in walked the grey-and-white cat, an unneutred feral male, leading a small group of kittens behind him. This is, in case you didn't know, not typical of unneutered feral males. The grey-and-white led the kittens in, found a corner of the cottage (right by the stairs) where the wind wasn't blowing, and settled the kittens in, molding them into a pool of fur, to share their body heat. He then lay down in front of them, crossed his paws (a gesture I was to see repeated for many years, had I but known it), cocked his head at me (ibid.), and shot me a look as if to say, "It's cold out there, mate. Let us stay, there's a good chap?"

How could I not?

And how could I not keep that cat?

I renamed him, for reasons that I think are obvious, Giles, and never has a cat been better named. When fights broke out among the kittens, Giles would protect the weaker cat, rearing up on his hind paws, and boxing the aggressor; when a cat came back from the vet, and other cats were shunning him or her, he would trot up to the sick cat, snuggle him or her, and reintegrate that cat into the family.

Later, when La Caterina and I joined our lives and households, her three cats (Elvis, Betty and Buster) and mine (Giles, Ethan, and Elspeth) had to find a modus vivendi. Giles formed a pact with Elvis, the Comfort Kitty, and together they enforced decency, fair play, and kindness.

Elvis is gone three years now, so too is Buster, whose relationship with Giles reminded me of the sometimes affectionate rivalry between the Ainley Master and the Fifth Doctor.

Now I've lost my Giles.

He started losing weight a couple months ago, and la C took him to the vet, whose treatments seemed at first to be helping. Then, a little over a week ago, la Caterina told me the vet had informed her that it was time to put him down. I drove down against some of the worst traffic I've ever faced--the trip took nearly double its usual length, but we got him to the vet--only to be told he was very slightly better. When la Caterina came upstate for Christmas this year (I'd had to come up early for a funeral), she brought Giles. He seemed weak but not unhappy during her visit, but was eating less and less. He cuddled a great deal with me, with la C, and her sister, who came up to be with us.

Last night, his respiration changed, into a wheezing groan, and he ate nothing. He joined me in the bed, and pressed against my side all night. Betty, normally quite territorial about the bed, looked at him intently for a moment--and then joined us. For that one night, Giles was lovingly enfolded by not just me, but by Betty, the last survivor of la C's litter.

This morning, his breathing was worse, and he took just two small licks of food. I made an emergency appointment with the excellent vet up here, and brought him in. The news couldn't have been more dire: Tumors were closing off his breathing, surrounding his thyroid, and in his abdomen.

It was time.

I won't say any more of what passed when Giles and I were alone together, or when the Doctor joined us, and gave him the anesthetic that gave him his release. I did my duty to the finest cat I have ever known, and that is all.

But I will add this: As he drifted into sleep, I whispered into his ear, "Thank you. Thank you for choosing my door."

Requiescat in pace, little friend of friends!

O Hai!

Above is Horatio P. Kitten, a fine Brooklyn native who traveled (see video above) to North Carolina with la C and me, then to Albany (being 15 years younger than all of the cats in the Dutch Kills Orchard and cattery (Brooklyn Branch). He now reigns over the home of a friend and colleague of mine.

It's nice, in this world where lie can often be stark and even cruel, to see that sometimes the Ninth Doctor has it right.

A Tale of Two Kitties

My beloved NinjaCat is about the worst named animal alive. Named after an impressive and silent burst of speed she put on the first time I met her, the day la C and I moved to Brooklyn, she prefers to loll about her territory, enjoying a superior vantage point. She must have been mistreated at some point, because she is very slow to trust, and I (and la Caterina) are the only people she does trust. She hides from visitors, family, friends and cat-sitters alike.



Horatio P. Kitten, by contrast is a kitten so bouncy as to make Tigger look like Eeyore. He is a cuddly, 6 month old kitten whose mischeif, affection, and occasional lunacy are at once heartwarming and unpredictable.

Unfortunately, these two cats share the Northern Annex of Anglocat Central, and his persistent efforts to romp with her were perceived by Ninja as aggression. She hissed, she fled, she fought. Worse, my efforts to provide a division of territory where each could have a safe space, and to gradually introduce them as he calmed down after his neutering, fell apart when Horatio proved able to surmount every barrier I erected. When I hired a contractor to create a full one, he didn't turn up for our appointment, and then didn't return my call. In short, my only option was to confine Horatio to a small bedroom. He absolutely hated it. He had a few hours a day "out" time, but hated being contained.

It couldn't last, of course. A good friend of mine was hoping to get a cat, and, after we spoke about the matter, I "homed" Horatio with him and his family tonight.

Horatio is already adjusting, playing with his new family, giving cat-kisses to them, and loving his new digs--I have a happy message from my friend already.

Ninja is Queen of the Manor again, swanning around the place as its chatelaine. Peace has been restored, and her truncated dominion is once more hers.

Only the Papa and the Mama are sad for what might have been.

I know, I know, luxury problem; cats all happy, friend and his wife and children ecstatic; good solution, no?

But I do miss the little rascal, and so does la C.

Anglocat at Peace

Blog mascot Betty the Anglocat has taught me many lessons. And this morning, as she lay next to her old adversary Elspeth P. Kitten, I thought how lucky I am that these disparate animals who make up our herd of cats live in (relative) peace.

Later in the day, I reflected on what a gift the people we disagree with can often be to us. Oh, I know--we can get into shouting matches, flame wars, succumb to obsessive "comment wars" because someone is wrong on the internet. La C often uses this cartoon to call me out. And she's right to. Because sometimes they teach me things I need to know and even offer me comfort when I need it. The trick, I am slowly realizing is to shut up and listen. Not just hear, listen, and try to see why we disagree, and to disagree respectfully.

It doesn't mean caving. It means respecting the person with whom I disagree enough that I make the imaginative effort to see through his or her eyes, and to grasp their perspective emotionally, not just logically. It makes disagreeing much less disagreeable when I don't leap to the conclusion that disagree with me is clearly done in bad faith or lack of thought. (I know; I'm turning 50 this year--you think I'd have learned this sooner.)

Another example: I just this past week bought a devotional book that is privately published, kept in print as a labor of love. The person who curates this work is someone with whom I am at variance on several issues significant to us both. I wrote directly for a copy, and received an email that was warm and gracious. This person has enriched my life; if we had met in a different context, we might have seen each other as caricatures not people with much more in common than might otherwise be thought.

The same thing happened with a lawyer I worked with for nearly a decade; we liked each other so much that we assumed we were in political accords. When we found we weren't, we started to argue--until we didn't. Why jeopardize a friendship that was real, over ideology? (I'm normally good about doing that, but I think we were both so stunned that the other was not aligned with our politics that we thought convincing the other would be simple.)

So a heartfelt thank you for all who have disagreed with me over matters great and small, and still cared enough to keep me in your lives. I hope to make that easier in future.

Battlecat!

Here is little Horatio, who has been with us for about a month now, taking on a fearsome adversary, the dreaded string bean.

Posted for your enjoyment because…well, because it just happened, and I missed National Cat Day, and tomorrow is Caturday, and, well, the last few posts have been pretty much serious/reflective, and a cute kitten taking on a string bean is a pretty good palate cleanser. Also, the little mouser keeps climbing my leg like its frakkin' Everest. Kittens are not as hard to train as puppies, but they have their moments….

A Conundrum

(Photo by Jacquelyn Griffin)

So, l have a problem, dear friends and readers. We have 4 wonderful kitties--albeit getting a little long in the tooth, all aged between 14 and 16, and a bit more fractious than they used to be--but then La C helped rescue our above-pictured friend. He's adorable, sweet-natured and highly adoptable. And, as La C (correctly) says, we don't keep the ones we can easily find good homes for.

However, he is a mouser, and of all our cats at Anglocat Central (I exempt Ninna in the Northern Annex) he is the only real one we have. Elspeth still has the ability, but her interest flickers. So my instinctive squee of "Kitten!" is not entirely impracticable.

Or, we can find him--and I know we will, a very good, loving, forever home. Or keep him.

A tough one, no?

For Want of a Rubber Band. . .

Just so you don't think I've become anything less of a worrier about my cats, submitted for your approval:

Ninja Kitteh, pictured above, was frisking about on my desk while I was working on a piece of writing the other day (yes, it was the Fish fisking). On the desk was a thick rubber band that I'd used to hold together a book the chipped spine of which I had repaired while the glue dried. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw her knock the rubber band off the desk, and pursue.

Then the penny dropped; she might eat the bloody thing, which can be very bad for cats--possibly even fatal. I started up, just in time to see Ninja on her hind legs, flicking her head, and the rubber band?

Nowhere.

I didn't see her eat it, I comforted myself, as I searched fruitlessly for the missing rubber band.

So, the big question--was Ninja perfectly fine, or had she gulped the thing down, and even now it was getting ready to block her digestive tract?

48 hours later, I had my answer. First time I ever smiled while scooping out a litter box.

Buster T. Katt: A Memorial

[Buster T. Katt, foreground; Giles T. Katt, background]

When La Caterina and I came together at last, we each had three cats. I brought Giles, Ethan and Elspeth into the family, she brought Elvis, Betty and Buster. We lost Elvis last May, at 15. Now his litter-mate Buster has gone to join him.

Buster was our wild child--a yowling nuisance at times, affectionate and clever all the time. He would strand himself in a high place so that La Caterina would have to rescue him. He would insist on being picked up by me, knead my shoulders, often sinking his claws luxuriantly into my shoulders. (My heavy wooly bathrobe soon made that more bearable.) When we moved from Queens to Brooklyn, he burst the cat carrier in a scene that only James Herriot could do justice to.

A little over a month ago, I was celebrating Buster T. Katt's flash of his old style and diablerie in catching a mouse (a big one, too), and strutting through the apartment to the front door.

I was delighted to see that he remained what La Caterina and call "a cat among cats"--that is, still holding his place in the herd. Or the pack, or a pride, whatever a gathering of cats is called. Gaunt from causes our vet couldn't specify, he had nonetheless maintained his élan.

He even seemed to have put on a little weight two weeks ago.

He had to be put to sleep yesterday.

On Saturday, I noticed he had lost all the weight he had gained, and some, and that he was less agile than previously Still, he managed to get from the floor to the chair, the chair to the table, and the table to the back of the bench--just the right hope to walk across the thin rail atop the bench, and step onto my shoulders, as he has long loved to do, and purr in my ear as I caressed him.

But he was terribly light.

Wednesday, while I was upstate, he crashed--a necrotic mass in his mouth became evident, and he lost all energy. I came home the next morning, and got back at 2:00 pm, just in time to take him to the vet. La C and I knew the outcome, of course, but when the vet tech hazarded a guess that it might just be his teeth, an unrealistic, idiotic, hope flared in me.

I knew better, of course. I picked him up (the mass stank horribly, but he wanted a pickup one last time, and damned if I was going to disappoint him). I held him until the vet came, and then after she confirmed he was terminal and it was time, I held him on my shoulder while they prepared.

Enough. I won't harrow you with the details. The vet did what had to be done, and I spoke to him, my face against his, nose to nose, so that he knew he was not alone. He slipped gently out of life, and into the next life.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes a visit to Heaven, in which he is chaperoned by George MacDonald, a Nineteenth Century novelist who was his teacher in many ways. they meet a woman in heaven, woman, trailed by a great throng of people, but also animals:

Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”

***

“And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.”
“They are her beasts.”
“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”
“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”

Aye, that'll be La C, and so I am sure that Buster and I will meet again. But it is hard to say goodbye.

Battle, Murder and Sudden Death

(Buster T. Katt [foreground] and Giles T. Katt, in 2010)

Odd that I was writing about the Great Litany just a few minutes ago, because we've had, in the immortal line of the Rite I version, "battle, murder and sudden death" here tonight--for I hasten to add, a mouse.

A mouse. A wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, the hell he was. We heard some mously piping behind the TV upstairs (that is, in the living room adding our bedroom), and gazed around at our cats. Four more somnolent, disinterested creatures you never saw. Ethan yawned. Betty concurred. Then Giles investigated, and hope bloomed. He then returned to me, and said with his eyes: "Mouse back there. Good luck with that."

Even Elspeth the Mighty Huntress, who once brought down a bat on the wing, did not stir.

I was, it seemed, the last bulwark of defense between this beastie and the bedroom. La Caterina was not thrilled.

I pulled out my trusty rapier (yes, I have one. Don't try this at home. I'm a trained, er, amateur).

As I prepared a lunge into the space (believe me, my heart was bleeding for the poor creature, but what is one to do?), our cat Buster, who has been these past seven months ill and gaunt (though recently reviving a little bit), walked slowly over. Too thin, too frail. Fifteen years old, like all of the others, except Elspeth who's fourteen. What would he--

--oh. He's really in there [piping noise-don'tthink too much about it]. Buster's lithe, if gaunt, frame pushes further in. And out saunters Buster, with a large field mouse (looked him up on Google Image) in his mouth. The mouse struggled, but Buster had this. He took the mouse downstairs, through the kitchen, to the front door, and finished him quickly. (That surprised me a bit.) Then, making sure the mouse was dead. He looked over at me. I disposed of the remains (no blood, thanks, Buster works cleanly), and while sad for the poor mouse--wrong place and time, laddie--rewarded my cat for his work.

Fifteen years old, thin as hell, the fire still burns.

Buster remains a cat among cats.

Even in the Heart of Darkness...

…an ember may flicker.



(Helen Mirren as Rand in "The Passion of Ayn Rand.")

Really:

Ayn Rand was all about objectivism, the philosophical system for the selfish, but she was, apparently, also all about cats.
She loved cats so much that she subscribed to "Cat Fancy" magazine and engaged in correspondence with them on March 20, 1966.

Mallory Ortberg of The Toast came across this letter in the book "The Letters Of Ayn Rand."

Here's the text:

Dear Miss Smith,

You ask whether I own cats or simply enjoy them, or both. The answer is: both. I love cats in general and own two in particular.

You ask: “We are assuming that you have an interest in cats, or was your subscription strictly objective?” My subscription was strictly objective because I have an interest in cats. I can demonstrate objectively that cats are of a great value, and the carter issue of Cat Fancy magazine can serve as part of the evidence. (“Objective” does not mean “disinterested” or indifferent; it means corresponding to the facts of reality and applies both to knowledge and to values.)

I subscribed to Cat Fancy primarily for the sake of the picture, and found the charter issue very interesting and enjoyable.

"What?" I hear you cry, "a story about Ayn Rand that doesn't involve an attack on her philosophy or her bizarre fixation on serial killer William Hickman, or her horrifyingly turgid prose and lame ideas that are disturbingly influential? (Cue John Rogers: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.")

Yes.

Rand, for all of her flaws, was sound on cats.

Still my least favorite author, still a philosopher who bent her considerable intelligence to aggrandize all our worst instincts, but--sound on cats.

It's something.

Katy No-Tail

This is my favorite picture of Katy, who I nick-named Katy No-tail, when I first met her. She was a feral cat, about five years old, we think, and when I would accompany la Caterina to the Navy Yard Annex cat colony (in a run-to-jungle square of what were once handsome old buildings), four cats would regularly run out to greet us: Chauncey Gardner (who had been in our backyard for several years before we had to move), Black-eyed Susan (so named for a ring of black fur around her right eye), Midnight (one of the few pure black cats in the Annex), and Katy. Chauncey would always greet us as one clubman might greet another--affectionately, amicably, but not effusively. Black-eyed Susan was exuberant, until the food was set down, and then might-might-deign to let us pet her. Midnight? Beautiful, truly, but not terribly affectionate. Friendly, but reserved.

Ah, but Katy.

Katy adopted me quite quickly, and over the three years (hard to believe it's been so long, but there you are) that we have been caring for these cats, has become increasingly affectionate. Oh, she loves the other cat wranglers--Mary, Queen of Cats and she have a thing going, and la C can pick her up. But after she eats, Katy seeks me out for a snuggle. She wreathes her little body around me, if I sit in the grass, and rears up to place her paws on my leg, contemplates being a lap cat, and--no, she's off again, snuggling her way around on another orbit of me, accepting pets until it's all too, too relaxing, and she flops down next to me, and purrs. We can spend a half hour doing this, amongst the beauty of the ruins dotting the Annex.

Katy lost her tail because, before she was in a safe space (the Navy Yard) she was in a warehouse, and her tail got caught, and festered and had to be amputated. She was also quite, quite deaf.

As I'm reading what I just wrote, I see a lot of it is in the present tense. But Katy died yesterday. She had kidney failure, and other complications, and, as la C and I were leaving the DC area, we got a call from Mary, who told us the bad news: Katy had to be put down. And yet, I will leave this post in the present tense. Because, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/And time future contained in time past.

And so somewhere, Katy and I are enjoying a snuggle on the leaf strewn grass, among the ever crumbling, but never-crumbled buildings, and always will be.

Which will not stop me missing her.

The Cat that Lived

Just a brief note of gratitude and celebration that Elspeth, my 12 year old kitten, is running, playing and sometimes ornery, as she always has been. She is back to her old ways, not at all unlike Christopher Smart's Jeoffrey:

For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion

Change the pronouns, and you've got the picture.

In other words, while we have to continue to monitor her eating and her weight, and will probably have to do this for the rest of her life, Elspeth is very much better, and that terrible period when it seemed that she just didn't want to try is over.

I have my Elspeth P. Kitten again.