I’ve been a Cat Lady most of my life.
It began when I was eight, and took home a calico that I named Candy from my grandmother’s farm. It was either adopt her, or Grandpa would drown her, like German farmers did in those days if the barn cats outnumbered the barn rats.
That ended badly. My family went away for a week, unaware that Candy was with child. We returned to a horrible stench. Candy and her litter of eight were deceased in our basement crawl space.
I still have memories of my father donning a gas mask and going in to retrieve the carcasses. That pretty much ended his willingness to allow any pets in our household, but somehow, a few years later, I conned Dad into letting me adopt a little terrier mutt that I named Bubbles.
I chose her from the litter, and named her, but my youngest brother immediately stole her from me in a fair and square transaction. He was the better doggie parent in those days. Bubbles enriched our lives, but died prematurely of a heart disorder.
Several years later, when I was in college and living with my parents, I bought a bassett hound that I named Herschel. I took Herschel with me to grad school at Mizzou, but he was so undisciplined (my fault I now know) and got me into so much trouble, I pretty much wrote off ever having a dog again.
So when I got my master’s degree in journalism, and took my first job at a newspaper in Upstate New York, I chose cats again as my companions.
Delilah was the first. She was special, because she delivered kittens in my apartment bathroom, eating two that were stillborn, and I witnessed it all. I sneaked her into a no pets allowed apartment building in Ithaca when I married John a year later, and when we were unexpectedly transferred to Guam, we found Delilah a good home on a nearby farm.
We had not lived on Guam long when we adopted a Siamese kitten that our neighbor found abandoned by the side of the road while jogging. She became Sadie the Retriever Cat.
Sadie was really cool. We crumpled paper into balls, threw them onto the floor, and she fetched. She absolutely sold me on cats. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to Sadie when we left Guam in 1983. I left her with a friend, but I’m told Sadie pined for us and ran away from her new home, never to be seen again.
We moved to Virginia where we welcomed Muffy, Tiger, Suds, Nottigan, and, eventually, Gizbourne, the best cat that ever adopted me.
Gizbo was with us for 16 years, offering unconditional love much as a dog does, for he was, after all, my Puppy Cat. I witnessed his death on a dark morning in January before I left for work, and I knew that my life would be poorer from that moment on. I also knew that he would be my last cat, as he would be irreplaceable.
So after all these many years, I am back to dogs.
We stopped by an adoption event a month ago and a little terrier/poodle mutt who was napping woke up just long enough for us to see how smart and funny he was. He wagged his tail, flashed his big brown eyes at us, and won our hearts.
Harpo is now my Kitty Dog.
