Fourbee: Our Tale of Two Litters
Our first major experience trapping cats occurred when we moved into our new house. We trapped 9 cats in 36 hours and ended up with four keepers: an adult cat that chose us, two kittens we chose and one teenager that our adolescent kittens brought home with them. That trapping marathon cleared our property of feral cats for nearly a decade, but the year my mother was failing a brown tabby and her dreamsicle-colored sidekick began frequenting our yard. Before we became wily enough to trap her, the brown tabby presented us with two litters of four kittens each. Not one of the kittens in the first litter resembled any of the others. We speculated they had four different fathers. The second litter was a matched set. When the brown tabby brought them on the deck for the first time, I quickly took pictures and forwarded them to my husband Tom. He turned to a colleague at work and remarked, “My wife has just sent me photos of tribbles.” These kittens were so furry their feet and tails barely protruded past their fluff. As we began to trap them, it became evident that an unaltered Maine Coon had passed through the neighborhood.
Over a period of years during which there were adoptions and returns and more adoptions, other trapped cats and other adoptions, we ended up with all eight kittens, as adult cats, living in our home. Their names: Pluff, Scraper, Chicago, Bruce from the first litter and Josephine, Gracie, Skidmark and Fourbee from the second litter. Pluff was named onomatopoetically for the sound she made when she pounced on the deck as she played. She was much tinier than her enthusiastic brothers who hit the deck with thuds and crashes. When her tiny mass landed, there was only the slightest sound, as if the air moved quickly out of the way of her paws.
At mealtime, one of Pluff’s brothers cleared his plate and moved on to finish everyone else’s. At my Girl Scout Camp, the person who prepared our plates for the dishwasher by swiping the last bits of food off them with a spatula was called ‘the Scraper.” So there were Pluff and Scraper, plus the dark kitten with extra long ears that looked like a bat and one with very white feet. The white-footed kitten was dubbed Chicago by husband, a visual baseball pun and the bat kitten he called Bruce, as in Bruce Wayne, Batman’s secret identity.
In the second litter there was Josephine who hissed and bit first—and purred later, named for Jo March of the same disposition. Gracie was named by the first person who adopted her, a woman who insisted the names of her cats always begin with the letter G. The only kitten from the second litter that reached near Maine Coon size earned his name chasing tiny, swift, agile Pluff. Pluff would race down the hardwood floor of our main hallway and cut left into our living room. This required jumping down a 5 or 6 inch step. Invariably, her younger, much, much larger half-brother would barrel down the hall after her, realize she had turned, attempt to put on his brakes, slide a foot or two past where she had disappeared, and finally go over the edge of the step, landing on his backside. He would sit at the bottom of the step, looking around, as if he were trying to figure out what had happened. Thus, Skidmark and Pluff designated the two ends of the coordination scale in our household, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Finally, the fourth kitten from the second litter would not get his name for quite a while. The only time either of us spotted him was that very first outing the tribbles had on the deck with their brown tabby parent. We assumed he was lost, until one evening two years later, a small cat had come to scavenge the few bits of food left by the tabby and her blue-eyed sidekick. The small cat lifted its head and light from our den struck its round full mane.
“That cat looks like the moon,” I said. Then it occurred to me how much it resembled our tribbles. “Do you think it’s Dad?” I asked Tom.
“No,” he replied. “I think it’s 4.”
“Oh,” I realized and I added, “you mean, 4-B.” And it indeed it was, the fourth kitten from litter B, but now two years old and still feral.
A week later we had trapped Fourbee and he was in our guest bath sitting in one of the sinks. Every time we came in to give him food. He watched us in the mirror and hissed.
Fourbee was a tiny cat, weighing just eight pounds. His coat was rough and tangled. I overheard Tom tell him, “Fourbee, your tail is a disgrace to your family.” The tails on the other tribbles were family standards. Josephine’s was a perfectly groomed, symmetrical flounce, Gracie’s sported extra-long tresses on the right side. Skidmark’s was mammoth, when it was straight up, it curled over at the top and when it was horizontal, it threatened to knock over everything in its path. Fourbee’ s tail was a stick with wisps.
Fourbee also had an injury on his hind leg that had not healed properly, the vet opened it and gave him a shot of antibiotics. Maybe that was why he spent most of his time curled up in the sink. Other cats we socialized had cowered behind the toilet or under the vanity. Fourbee was the only sink sitter we had ever encountered. And he wouldn’t budge. He did not progress to eating in our presence. He remained curled up, facing the mirror, not allowing himself to look or hiss at us directly. We weren’t getting anywhere with him. I was concerned. Finally, in the middle of the night I woke to pitiful, quiet whines. In our hallway, water was pouring out from under the guest bath’s door. Inside I found Fourbee with his injured leg on the window sill, a faucet running and an overflowing sink. Fourbee’s weight had pushed the stopper into place. He must have knocked one of the faucet handles and turned on the water. I woke Tom. We worked our way from the hall into the bath, sopping up water with beach towels. Even the vanity drawers were filled to overflowing, Fourbee leapt from the window sill and cowered in the bathtub. I couldn’t help but think, “Well, at least he moved.” I turned off the water supply under the sinks and we went back to bed.
The morning after the flood, I leaned against the counter in front of Fourbee’s sink. Despite his hissing, I put my hand on his head and dragged it down his neck onto his back. I did this perhaps three times before he began to purr. And that was it. I had called his bluff.
We began to talk about moving Fourbee into the guest bedroom, but even though we were both petting him now, he insisted on staying in the sink. So, one day, the same way I had approached petting him, I scooped him up, held him close and moved him to the bedroom. He didn’t even hiss. From that moment, our feral, sink kitty was a house cat. Whenever I sat on the bed, he jumped up for me to brush his wadded fur. He walked away so the brush would hit the right spot and returned to repeat. It took us several days, Fourbee and me, working together to get his coat sorted. All the while, he had a happiness about him, a little bit of joy. Fourbee celebrated his good fortune by head butting the brush, the bed post, me, the wall behind the bed, whatever was available. On a return trip to our vet, she recorded his weight gain, but also pointed out he had grown bigger overall. “He waited to finish growing,” she told us. The next time Fourbee visited, the technician responsible for taking Fourbee’s temperature had trouble locating Fourbee’s anus. His tail and the fluff on his hindquarters had filled in. At home Fourbee strutted across the bedroom floor with his tail straight up. “Who’s a disgrace to his family now?” I asked Tom. Fourbee’s tail was now a huge fluffy bottle brush with hardly a front, back, or sides.
When we thought it was the right time, we opened the bedroom door to let Fourbee explore the rest of the house. Our other cats visited him and he had no problem getting them to accept him. Whatever cat language he used, they understood he was not a threat, but the spare bedroom had become his new sink. He would not venture out. Finally, with friends coming to visit, we had to shut him out. He adapted well—again, with almost no hitches.
Meanwhile, in preparation for our guests, Tom and I pulled the bed by the window away from to wall to make it easier to clean the hardwood floor. All in all, from beneath that bed, we retrieved 39 toys. There were actual cat toys, tiny fake mice and bounding balls. There were also pen caps, the plastic rings from milk jugs, a pencil or two, a large pine nut, small plastic lids and small rocks. Anything and everything a cat could enjoy batting around was under that bed. Fourbee had been exploring the house while we slept and bringing prizes back to his room.
Once we forced Fourbee into the mainstream life of our household, his love for play blossomed. He continued to find “toys” and batted them fiercely, with more energy than it seemed such a small cat should be able to muster. He developed a post-dinner ritual, swaggering across our den floor, inviting the other cats to chase him. We called him their aerobics instructor. Our youngest cat, Fox always accepted Fourbee’s invitation. They flew through the den in front of us. Sometimes Fox chasing Fourbee and other times Fourbee chased Fox. They wrapped up each evening with a head-over-heels—or ears-over-tail—tumble. The pair of playmates was much more entertaining than the TV shows we watched. And Fourbee knew how to sleep—with such soundness and bliss. He would stretch in the sun, belly up. His fore and hind legs were completely extended in a position similar to a swimmer sailing off the starting block, only upside down. Or, he curled up with his littermate Skidmark and older brother Bruce. Fourbee kneaded Bruce with all four paws and purred. For the most part, Bruce enjoyed the free massage, but occasionally he had to hiss and poke a paw into Fourbee’s side to get him to stop. Three of them would settle down and sleep soundly, paws wrapped around necks, heads curled into bellies, like some kind of hand-carved, folk puzzle from the Appalachian Mountains. I used to watch Fourbee sleeping and wish I could feel so safe and happy.
Fourbee never went outside again. In fact, one night I woke to Fourbee’s pitiful whine, the same distressed noise he had made when the bathroom flooded. The Santa Ana winds had blown our front doors wide open. Fourbee was sitting on the back of our living room couch, watching the other cats exit the house. He was stressed about the open doors, so he had alerted the humans. He was not about to follow his siblings into the yard. Fourbee had made his choice—house cat forever.
Fourbee sleeping, with Bruce to his right and Josephine (or JoJo as we call her) to his left. Notice how similar Fourbee and Josephine are in color and markings. They are part of the litter we called the tribbles.