The Difficulty About Cats

I just finished framing a pastel painting of Hardpan and Tarmac sniffing the air at our back door. I am flooded with the feeling of them and their stories. Those were the halcyon days of cats and humans in our household.  Four cats, two humans—there was plenty of time to enjoy each other. 

Some day I will set out to write the story of our cats. In the past I thought it would begin with Thistle, the gray cat who peered at me through the weeds in our front yard when we first moved into our new home, but one evening I sat on our sofa gently stroking Thistle’s head.  I confessed to her. “You’re the reason we have kitties in our house at all.”  I meant it as a compliment.  Her big soft eyes looking at me through those weeds, the thistles, those eyes had telegraphed her message with perfect clarity. She had chosen us and we did not resist. 

At the moment I made my confession to Thistle, my friend Susan, who had been to the kitchen for a cup of tea, was passing by us on her way to the other end of the sofa. She paused, and carefully balancing her cup so that it would not spill, she stooped to lap level “That’s right, girl,” she told Thistle. “There never was a Portulacca.”

Susan was correct. The story of our cats probably does begin with Portulacca, the tiny runt of a tortoiseshell  kitten I brought home from the garden shop where I worked after I graduated from college. I have written about Portulacca before, but not in the context of the cats that found their way to me through the door she  opened.  First Leonard, then much later, Thistle. Along with Thistle came Hardpan and Rubble, the kittens of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.  Hardpan and Rubble invited Cobweb. Mary Lamar was next, then Tarmac, Trespass, three from the deck cat’s first litter: Chicago, Scraper, Pluff, and from her second litter, the two girls, Josephine and Gracie. Later, we captured Skidmark, the third kitten from the deck cat’s litter, who would eventually give his mother her name: Mommy. 

Two kittens, one from each  of Mommy’s litters, we assumed were lost, but two years later, we trapped both of them—first Bruce from the first litter and then Fourbee, the fourth kitten from litter B. Not soon after that, a cat we were going to release as feral, Fox, bit a veterinary tech and we had to keep him inside to make sure he did not have rabies.  As I type, I am watching him sun inside our bay window. 

A scrawny gray tabby showed up and annoyed Mommy so much, we brought him in to give her some peace. He opened every closet and cabinet door in the house, stole everyone’s food, hogged everyone’s favorite spot and throughly upset every routine we established—Loki. 

Meanwhile, Chickweed showed up at my parents’s house and somewhere along this cat-filled path, we managed to find permanent homes for Joey and Noodles. Sock and Shoe stopped in for meals on a regular basis and, most recently, Milk Drop Kitty and Fyckle have become permanent residents of our front yard.

I look back at what I have written today—the paragraphs on these pages list the names of the cats we have befriended. I haven’t even explained how most of those those names came to be. This is why I have not written about our cats.  It feels like a mammoth undertaking. The thought of beginning overwhelms me, but we have lost Skidmark now, and Fourbee, who sat in the bathroom sink and growled at our reflections until I finally picked him up—gentle Fourbee has cancer. 

So much loss: their personalities—not one adhering to the stereotypical reduction to aloofness—and  purrs that sound like doves cooing, like thrumming motors, like rock tumblers. I have tales of only tails, of special games, of extraordinary coordination and exceptional clumsiness, of kitten collisions and house cat mentors. And, of course, there is how all of these cats and their care have affected me. 

You may wonder why I have remained in the middle of this endless saga of cats entering that door Portulacca opened. What I have to say about that is: “Why” is not a question to ask about pets or children, who you marry or the plants you keep on your window sill. Attachment resides in the realm of the heart. The heart would ask something more like, “Are you happy to know these beings that are passing through your life and I would respond, “I suppose so, or it would be much easier to write about them.“