Drinking from the Trough Page 17

  A long time ago, the cat room was Mary’s cat clinic reception area. When Matthew was a kitten, it was his room; he still hides out in it when he wants to chill out and have some alone time.

  But when we first came home, it was just my brother’s and my room for a while. Matt and Tipper could sniff at the closed door and tell that we were inside, but they couldn’t come in. That protected them in case we had “shelter crud.” Lots of pets from animal shelters come home with an upper respiratory disease, kind of like a bad cold. My brother and I didn’t have the slightest hint of the sniffles, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

  Mary discovered that we had Cheyletiella mites, also called “walking dandruff.” Mites are really common in animal shelters, and they’re so contagious that pretty much every cat and dog at the shelter has them. The mites don’t infest people like they do us cats, but they will jump on for a quick snack of blood, leaving tiny itchy bites on the skin.

  Mary discovered bites where she had a little hole in her jeans. The bites were challenging, because you can’t scratch your butt in public, especially when you’re a teacher at a junior high school, where the kids know everything, see everything, and gossip about it. So before the mites could give her any more bites, Mary gave us a bath with a special shampoo. That got rid of our mites. It protected Matthew and Tipper from catching them from us too.

  We had fun in our cat room. It was airy and sunny and lots larger than our old prison of steel. And the toys! With all the stuff Mary gave us, we were in kitty heaven! She and Earl played with us a lot. We showed our approval by purring extra loud when they held us.

  A few weeks later, we slowly began to join the rest of the household, supervised by Mary and Earl.

  Tipper the Wonder Husky loved cats! That was a load off my mind.

  Matthew insisted on being Top Cat. He had fun beating up on us, but we overwhelmed him with our charm, and the three of us became buddies. He still insists on being Top Cat, especially over my brother. We’ve been grown-up for years, but Matt still chases us and occasionally bops us with his paw. Sometimes, he takes a flying leap and lands on top of me. But most of the time, Matt and I just hang out together doing what cats do best, sleeping.

  Sometimes, it takes a while before you know what your name is. Mine took a week to appear.

  My brother’s name was obvious from the first day: Cowboy Joe, because of the brown fur in his black tabby coat. Brown is one of the University of Wyoming’s colors, and Earl was a rabid Wyoming Cowboys fan. Mary knew my brother should be named after their team mascot. Matthew is gold, Wyoming’s other color. Earl was triumphant—now he had brown and gold cats to match the Cowboys!

  At the end of the first week in my new home, I still didn’t have a name. Mary even had a kitten-naming contest in her junior high school science classes. The kids came up with many interesting names, but none of them fit me.

  Then one evening, I heard Mary and Earl giggling in the family room. They were watching one of their favorite movies, Men in Black. They always giggled when they saw Frank, the pug dog alien. They giggled harder. Mary claimed that “Frank” fit me to a tee, even though he was an alien dog and I was a kitten. They started calling me Frank.

  “‘Franklin’ is more dignified,” Mary said, but she still called me Frank.

  Then, because I have a lot of fur on the inside of my ears, she decided I should have a middle name: Irving, after her grandfather’s brother. Great-uncle Irving taught Mary how to make the perfect martini when she was fifteen. He had hairy ears too.

  So I am officially Franklin Irving Carlson the First.

  Technically, I am also Franklin Irving Carlson the Last, because I am not able to produce any more Franklins, if you know what I mean. Before Mary adopted us, we had had our first deworming, our first distemper combo shot, and our special treatment so we wouldn’t make more kittens. While I am personally happy to have neither the responsibility of parenthood nor the distraction of always wanting to search for a mate, it still puzzles me when Mary giggles and tells us that, like the dog in The Far Side cartoon, we were “tutored” at the shelter.

  While I am confident that I am Best Cat, it’s true that my brother and I weren’t the first cats here. Matthew wasn’t first either. One snowy night, we curled up with Mary as she told us the stories of the cats who came before us.

  Pruney was the first. She had been Mary’s cat ever since Mary graduated from college. Pruney came to live at our house after Mary and Earl were married. She lived a long time but died when a runaway dog hurt her. Since then, Mary and Earl have never let their cats outside without a leash, though sometimes Matthew sneaks out when no one’s looking.

  Their next cat was Simon. Mary was working in the anesthesia department at the CSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital, and she brought home a beautiful buff-colored tabby cat from the hospital. He had copper-colored eyes, and he’d originally come from an animal shelter. The hospital spayed or neutered cats who had been left at the shelter and, after they recovered from their surgeries, returned them to the shelter for adoption.

  Mary didn’t know Simon hadn’t been vaccinated wherever he had lived before, and unfortunately, he came down with feline distemper soon after he arrived home and died quickly.

  Now Mary and Earl had to wait at least two weeks before considering bringing another cat into their home, to make sure all traces of the feline distemper virus were gone.

  A few weeks passed. Mary was having a bad day at her VTH job, so she went to the back of the hospital, where the cats from the animal shelters were being held before their surgeries. That’s the same place where she had found Simon.

  She spied a huge, long-haired orange boy in a holding cage, and she fell in love.

  Mary thinks orange boys are special, and this one was extra special, because he was from the Cheyenne animal shelter. That meant he was a Wyoming cat, and as far as Earl was concerned, orange was really gold, one of his beloved Wyoming Cowboys’ colors.

  The staff members who worked in the holding area knew Mary had lost Pruney and then Simon, and they had been saving this six-month-old kitty for her.

  When Mary walked up to him, he reached one of his giant slab paws out to her through his cage. Mary melted; she knew he was the one for her.

  She waited until he was neutered and vaccinated, and then she held him at the hospital for another ten days to see if he developed feline distemper. He didn’t.

  Mary visited him often during his waiting period. They cuddled a lot in her lap. He was incredibly soft. He also had mites, the same kind Cowboy Joe and I had. The mites bit Mary all over her tummy; she was covered with small red itchy bumps. Of course, she couldn’t just put her hand under her scrub pants and scratch herself whenever she wanted to. When it got really bad, she’d run down the corridors of the vet hospital to the restroom, pull her scrubs out of the way, and scratch-scratch-scratch. Ahhhh, relief. For a little while, anyway.

  The big orange boy passed all his health tests. After antibiotics to wipe out his shelter crud and a medicated bath to get rid of the mites, Mary brought him home, and they named him Fletcher.

  Fletcher was a good sport, even better than Cowboy Joe. Mary and Earl could do anything with him, and he wouldn’t object. They rolled him up in a blanket like a kitty burrito, and he stayed put, no complaints. They pretended to fish for him with a ridiculous fishing rod toy so he would do wild gymnastics jumps. They even held him up to their husky dog, Keli. Keli loved cats, and she would lick Fletcher all over his body. They had fun all the time.

  Then Mary moved away.

  She went to Virginia for a whole year to practice working with cats at a feline veterinary clinic so she could open her own clinic when she came back home.

  Earl and Fletcher stayed home in Colorado with Keli and the horses, Franny and Marcie. It was hard to be so far away, but Mary and Earl visited each other every month and had many adventures exploring the Eastern Seaboard. After her year of practice was finished, Mary came h
ome to stay and opened her own feline clinic.

  Instead of being happy that Mary was home, Fletcher started pooping on the guest room bed. How rude!

  Mary thought Fletcher might do well with a buddy. I hadn’t been born yet, but there was an ad in the paper for free kittens.

  There were three tuxedo kittens. Earl’s Aunt Elaine and Mary went to check them out. Two kittens ran under the couch and hid. Mary did her special test on the third kitty to see if he would be a good cat, the same test she did on my brother and me.

  She held him in her lap on his back and gently turned him upside-down, with his head hanging over her knees. He relaxed and won himself a forever home.

  Earl named him Alexander, and Fletcher had a new best buddy.

  Alexander and Fletcher weren’t just pets. They were members of Mary’s cat clinic staff, where they worked as demo cats. “Demo cat” isn’t a political party; it stands for “demonstration.” They showed frightened clients how to do procedures on their own cats at home. They even let owners of diabetic cats practice giving shots! The clients injected Alexander and Fletcher with saline solution, not insulin, for practice. Al and Fletch let them practice until they were comfortable giving the shots and were confident enough to give insulin to their own cats.

  I must admit, I’m glad that Mary closed her cat clinic before she adopted me. I think if I had to put up with clients sticking needles into me all day, I’d want to stick my teeth into them. Needle-sticking practice is not for me!

  Fletcher died in 2000, when he was thirteen years old. Mary says thirteen is a geriatric age for a cat, but I don’t think it’s that old. I am over thirteen years old myself, and I’m just fine, thank you.

  Fletcher might have lived longer, but he had a rare heart disease. It isn’t seen much anymore because researchers discovered that it was caused by a lack of one amino acid. Nowadays, that amino acid is included as a supplement in all pet foods for cats.

  When Fletcher got sick, Mary took him to the vet hospital. The people there told her that they saw about one case of this kind of heart disease each year, and Fletcher’s case was it for that year. They were trying to be funny to cheer Mary up, but she was not amused. Fletcher was a beloved buddy, her special orange boy, and he was gravely ill. No one could cure him, and that was no joke.

  Mary and Earl do not just replace cats. How can you replace someone who was a part of your life for thirteen years? Our dad, Earl, died in 2009. Mary is never going to replace him. Personally, I myself am irreplaceable; I am one of a kind.

  So Earl and Mary settled into being a one-cat family.

  Then one day in October, not long after the terrorist action of September 11, 2001, a new cleaning lady was starting work at the Carlson home. Mary got one of those feelings she gets sometimes. She didn’t want to interrupt the cleaning lady, and something told her to check out the kittens at the Larimer Humane Society.

  She didn’t want another cat. She didn’t intend to get a kitten, and besides, it was nearly the end of kitten season. Still, she wanted to go.

  There, in a cage, was a three-month-old orange boy. He had short tabby-patterned fur, partially white paws, and a white chest. Short hair? What a mutant! She took him anyway and brought him home. Despite my fine black fur and excellence as Best Cat, Mary is convinced that all orange boys are smart, brave, and friendly, with extra-loud purrs.

  It didn’t take long to find the new kitten’s name.

  That fall, Mary had a special young man in her biology class. Matthew was one of the few junior high kids who would carry on a conversation with a teacher outside of the subject matter and class time. He was a voracious reader and an expert on the subject of the Titanic. He was also quite knowledgeable about antiques, one of Mary’s passions.

  The kitten looked Mary in the eye, and Mary knew right away that his name was Matthew. The name definitely suits him.

  When Boy Matthew from Mary’s class graduated from high school, Mary gave him a framed photograph of Kitty Matthew. Every time Mary sees him, he always asks, “How is little Matthew doing?” Even though he’s over thirty years old now and has had five open-heart operations, he still keeps the photo of Kitty Matthew on his dresser.

  When Alexander was fifteen years old, he went to the Rainbow Bridge because his kidneys failed. Matthew was three years old. Mary and Earl were a one-cat family again, and that just wouldn’t do.

  That’s where we came into the picture. We were both adorable, of course. We were soft and friendly. We were so hoping to get out of the steel cage and get a forever home. Mary adopted us both, making us a three-cat family.

  My brother and I have grown up to be big and strong. I am a felid of massive size—eighteen pounds—a (not so) lean, mean feline machine. My paw is so big that it covers the palm of Mary’s hand.

  My brother has the longest, fluffiest tail of any cat ever. Mary says it’s definitely longer and fluffier than any she’s seen, and she’s seen a lot of cat tails. Cowboy Joe waves his tail constantly. I know he’s showing off. My tail is straggly compared to his, but I am still Best Cat.

  Cowboy Joe and I groom each other. That’s called “mutual grooming.” Joe starts, because I am Best Cat and top cat over him. We use our spiky tongues to clean the places we can’t reach for ourselves, like our chins and the insides of our ears. We use our tongues to clean our own fur too. We keep at it until we are spick-and-span. Did you know that our tongue spikes go only one direction? They’re like a one-way comb, so I can’t get rid of what I put in my mouth. When I’m grooming, most of what goes in my mouth is hair, and the only place it can go is down my gullet. Eventually, it comes back up as a hairball. I may not have a great tail, but I am the King of Hairballs. I love decorating the carpet with them. Mary doesn’t appreciate my artistry. Thank goodness she has a new puppy who loves anything I cough up. The puppy comes running the moment she hears me hurk-hurking, and voilà! Instant floor cleaning.

  In addition to his champion tail, Joe has a soft, long coat. I’m jealous, because he never needs a bath. I have a long coat too, but my skin is dry, and my oily coat gets matted if I don’t have a professional bathing and grooming every other month.

  “Frank, your suit is looking pretty rumpled today,” Mary says, even though I do plenty of grooming, and Cowboy Joe helps. Then she schedules an appointment with the groomer. She schedules one for the puppy too, because Ivy, the goldendoodle puppy, needs a snazzy haircut for her fancy curly hair.

  I always know when bath day is coming. I hate bath day. Mary makes the groomers shave my underside—all four of my kitty arm and leg pits, plus my entire belly, including my personal area. She calls it a “potty patch”—how embarrassing! Is it any wonder that I’m upset and try to hide?

  I do my best, but I can’t get under any furniture; I am too massive. On bath day, Mary gets up early and shoves me into the guest bathroom so she can find me when it’s time to go. She closes her bedroom door and goes back to sleep, even though I meow and bang on the door so loudly the whole house shakes. When it’s time, she uses the reverse gravity method to load me into the carrier: she sets the carrier on the floor with the open end up, then slides me in back feet first, straight down and in.

  After all the fuss and aggravation, I have to admit that when I come home, I am definitely stylin’! I strut through the house, rubbing all the corners, happy and sooo proud of myself. I jump into Mary’s lap for well-deserved praises and pets and plenty of kisses on my beautiful head.

  Of course, Matthew and Cowboy Joe are jealous and hiss at me for two days. They finally get used to me being so good-looking, and they settle down and agree that I am Best Cat.

  The job of Best Cat carries a lot of responsibility. I figured that out when I was only six months old. Mary was gone for a whole week. When she finally came home, she couldn’t walk by herself; she had to use a shiny thing with extra legs. I waited for her beside her favorite chair. It took her a long time to cross the room. She sat down in her chair, then leaned over and
picked me up. She held me tight and cried and cried. I kept myself very still and never moved a muscle until she finished crying. That’s what a Best Cat has to do sometimes.

  She carried things with her teeth so she could keep her hands on her walker. I kept a close eye on her as she carried a paper cup in her teeth from the kitchen to her chair. As Best Cat, I knew I should help, so I carried cups in my teeth to her chair. Cowboy Joe helped carry some too. Pretty soon, we decided she had enough cups.

  I noticed she needed pens and pencils. She always kept some near her chair, but pens and pencils are tricky things; they can vanish when you’re not looking. So I began carrying pens and pencils and bringing them to her. I insisted that Cowboy Joe help me, of course.

  We would carry the pen or pencil to Mary and meow politely so she’d know we’d brought her these important gifts.

  I was proud to be so helpful. After Mary could walk on her own again, Cowboy Joe and I continued to carry pens and pencils to wherever they might be needed. We usually move them during the night so we don’t disturb anyone. We’ve left them in her bed and on the floor just outside the bedroom door, as well as by her chair. Once, the cleaning lady discovered our secret stash—twenty-five pens and pencils stuck under the sofa. Another time, a workman left his little pocketknife, open, on the windowsill. That wasn’t where it belonged. I moved it to the bed so Mary would see it when she woke up.

  But mostly, I stick with pens and pencils. My skill with them is so amazing that Mary decided I should have my own column on her blog. After all, I have a lifelong connection to writing. Or at least to pens.

  And I am Best Cat.

  19

  The Wayward Horse Trailer

  Warm days in Colorado winters are a rare gift. When one happens on New Year’s Eve, it’s cause for extra celebration and a gas fill-up and car wash, before the next storm front slams us back into the deep freeze.

  December 31 that year was a balmy sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit by midday. I was busy preparing for the annual veterinary conference held in Florida. Earl and I were flying out right after New Year’s. This year, I was part of an Academy of Feline Medicine work group developing best feline practice standards; my topic was proper and humane methods for feline euthanasia.