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| Cat, Andy Warhol |
Two uncontrolled breeding cats create the following:
Two litters a year... at a survival rate of 2.8 kittens per litter with continued breeding.
- 12 Cats the first year.
- 66 Cats the second year.
- 2,201 Cats in the third year.
- 3,822 Cats in the fourth year.
- 12,680 Cats in the fifth year and so on.
- Multiplying to a staggering 80,399,780 cats in the tenth year.
Two months ago a tame and friendly cat came by the house; not a rare thing since our yard functions as a public cat highway. This cat, however, I had never seen before, and I noticed that he was a tom. Immediately, my annoying overly developed sense of social responsibility started tingling, only to wake my even more annoying sense of anxious guilt. What should I do with this tomcat before he breeds and gives rise to hundreds of more toms? ... as if anything I did could really ameliorate the feral cat overpopulation problem that exists... ...a friend of mine is currently feeding and trying to catch and neuter and perhaps domesticate several feral kittens living near her office...
I offered the tom some food. He ate it, but not ravenously, giving me hope that he had a home and was just a neighbor’s new cat that was going to be neutered soon. Tomtom, as I eventually came to call him, ate, disappeared, and in my mind went home to be “tutored”.
I was wrong. Tomtom showed up a few weeks later, this time with bigger balls and still the same sweet disposition. I was heartbroken to know that he was still wandering around, and doing it as a whole cat. I fed him again and decided to have him neutered. As I was about to put him in the car to go to the vet, my "social self" intervened and instead I made a poster inquiring if he belonged to anyone. My husband, at some point, when we were having a heated discussion over something or other, called my poster “offensive” while I think of it as plain “straight-fucking-forward”.
I stuck the poster at the various entry points of our neighborhood and sent out a mass email to my neighbors inquiring about the cat. I immediately heard from two people who thanked me for being a responsible neighbor, and another one who had also been feeding him and with whom I have since exchanged many friendly emails about our mutual love for cats and their crazy ways.
I am not a patient woman, and my sense of anxiety got the better of me two days later when Tomtom showed up again. I assumed he didn't belong to anybody, took him to the vet for “the works”, and brought him home the next day. He immediately disappeared, and I fretted believing I had been instrumental in somehow killing him. But as cats are wont to do, he sauntered over hungry two days later. Since then he has adopted our house as home-base and comes to eat, voraciously, every few hours. He hangs around single-mindedly, as only cats can do, hunting and torturing small prey which, until today, he treated as toys.
Two days ago he made our relationship official by killing a baby chipmunk and offering it to us by leaving it on our welcome mat. I gave it a simple burial: from earth to earth and dust to dust…. Yesterday he found a chicken bone somewhere and left it for me in the exact same place he had left the baby chipmunk…
And today, as I was about to step out the door, there he was on our welcome mat, his safe place, with a dead very young squirrel to show me. I had never seen this young a squirrel: pre-bushy tailed.... I told Tomtom "good boy" and quickly closed the door lest he decided to bring the little corpse into the house. He toyed with it for a very short while and then proceeded to eat the whole thing, starting with the limbs. This play of nature is truly horrible to watch; yet it is fascinating to see how predators learn to kill their prey. Since Tomtom will naturally kill these little creatures unless I keep him inside, I am glad he eats them rather than just leave them to rot.
Incidentally, his old owner did call me on the night after I had him neutered and offered to pay the vet bill. In fact, she had him scheduled to be neutered on the day he disappeared from her house. She told me she no longer wanted him, but felt responsible. It was nice of her to call, and we split the bill.
After Scruffy died, and with
Hidey being 19, Curtis and I were looking forward to eventually doing more traveling without having little lives to worry about while we were gone. I really wasn't looking forward to becoming the caretaker of a new cat. The vet recently asked me if I was going to adopt new cats after Hidey was gone, and I told her that though I inexplicably love the crazy beasts, I did not want any for the foreseeable future. At the time, I was also applying for a job, which if I had gotten, I would not have had time to devote to bonding with any animal. But since Mary Nan has taken care of our cats for the past 23 or so years, it was surprisingly sad to think that I might not see her again in that capacity (!) Well, I didn't get the job and now have nothing but time. And though I did not go searching, cats happen; and Tomtom happened.
After 19 years of having indoor-only cats, we now find ourselves sharing our lives with this wild outdoor/indoor kitty. And he is wild. He hunts all day, smells of wilderness, and although sweet and extremely excited to see us every time he does, Tomtom’s heart belongs to the great outdoors, and we have to get used to all the uncertainties that come with that. That's always tough for me since I'd like to know that he is safe at all times...
Before Hidey and Scruffy, we did share our lives with Leany, another "wild" cat. Leany came to us as an older mystery; he was 7 years old, already neutered, and with an inexplicable 22 caliber bullet lodged in his lung, two millimeters from his heart. The bullet had been in him for so long he did not even have a scar at its entry point, wherever that might have been on his fuzzy body. Leany was an amazing outdoor cat that made a very deliberate choice to come live with us. He was an alpha cat that decided to take over the neighborhood the minute we moved here with him. He got into so many fights we used to call him Mohamed Aleany.
Tomtom is another thing altogether. He's not so alpha and I've yet to see him fight with the neighborhood cats. He is about 8 months old, and he very much just happens. Every morning he bolts out the door to greet the day as if it were a total mystery with brand new wonders made just for him. He is sweet and friendly, and willful. He bites us humans when he does not get his way and gets frustrated, and especially when Hidey hisses at him, which is every time she sees him. Tommy is terrified of Hidey, who is not at all happy to have to share her space with him. I am glad he does not mess with her, for he is young and vital to her old and crabby, and he is three of her. I wish, however, that he would respect her without being so afraid. ...And I wish Hidey would stop being so territorial and stop screaming every time she sees him. I might as well wish for a nation-wide public transportation system in America...
Well, it’s the beginning of a whole new “adventure”; and I have fallen wildly in love with this blond little piece of wilderness that has walked into our lives. Welcome home Tomás.
