Razzle, Dazzle, Pokey, and SOCKS!

I realized I never continued my pet story I started back in February...today it's all about the cats. From a very young age, I was enamored with cats. I don't hardly remember a time when there weren't cats in my life. (NEVER in our house mind you - except when we'd sneak them in - sorry Mom...) I recall a time when we were visiting someone and I coaxed the cat out from under the bed. The owner was shocked that Kitty let me near her. After that I was so proud to hear my dad repeatedly declare that I "had a way" with cats. Many of my fondest (and most tragic) childhood memories involved our cats.

It all started with Missy...at least that's how I remember it. She was a city cat that the family no longer wanted so we took her in. I can hardly even believe my parents agreed to it knowing how they feel about cats today. I don't remember ever anticipating Missy's arrival. Dad just showed up with her one day. I don't know if Missy wasn't fond of our home or if she was just an explorer, but she'd find her way back into town (approx. 1 1/2 miles) to her previous home on a regular basis. The former owners would call to let us know Missy was back and Dad would go pick her up again. Eventually she got used to it and stayed. I think Missy, a brown tabby cat, must have been the mother of almost all of our baby kittens as I was growing up. I only really remember her having the babies...hmmm...maybe Midnight had some too... Hey, maybe it all started with Midnight and Boots! Where did they come from anyway? For some reason I want to say Aunt Ellen, but I'm not sure about that one. As a matter of fact, that's the way it is with farm cats: you lose track of them.

My sister and I prided ourselves on the fact that all of our farm cats (as many as maybe 20 or more at a time) were tame. We spent hours - and that is no exaggeration - out in the barn or down in the basement (really a cellar) or in the shanty playing with those cats and kittens. We dangled strings in front of their faces and rejoiced when they'd reach out to paw at them. We felt the anticipation as a kitten hunkered down and wiggled its little bottom right before we were filled with delight to see it pounce on the toy we'd been enticing it with. We snuggled them inside our bright red sweatshirts and dressed them up in doll clothes. We "rescued" them from Prince. We were thrilled when we knew a cat was expecting kittens and didn't quit searching for where she might have hidden them when we saw the "skinny" mama walking around. (Did you know a mama cat leads you right to her kittens if you shake salt on her tail? ;o) As soon as the kittens were born we agonized over not being able to touch them until their eyes were open and dreamed up names for each and every one. Some of the more memorable names included Razzle and Dazzle from the same batch of kittens - identical except one had a darker nose than the other. I forget which one. Pokey (who is one of the few who lived forever and the one who was the start of my sister and I referring to all cats as "Kinanis" ("ki-nah-nis") another one of those sister things) and Jokey - also identical except Jokey had a little more white on his belly. And SOOOOOOCKS! (spoken with the drawn out "o" sound and kind of a sickly voice) We thought Socks was super cute because he looked different than most of our cats. He just sort of showed up one day. One of the cutest things he'd do is climb up your pant leg to be loved up...not fun to experience this wearing shorts...He lives on in infamy because, well, let's just say he was "special". (As it turns out, with all of the inbreeding that goes on with farm cats, quite a few of them are kind of "special".)

The life of a farm cat is certainly not all it's cracked up to be. The dreaded tom cat is lurking around just waiting for an opportunity to put an end to their adorable little existence. A sense of innocence was lost the first time (among several other times) Dad told me the tom cat had gotten a batch of kittens. One time I even saw the poor things in a pail in the back of Dad's pickup ready to be disposed of. What a horrific memory! It still makes me sick just to think about it. After a few announcements of litters lost to the tom cat, my sister and I had declared war! Every time we even caught a glimpse of that monster, we were yelling at him or running to Dad to ask him to get the gun out...little did we realize no tom cat means no more baby kittens...I did still have some of my naivete in tact. Eventually we talked Dad into building us a "cat cage" so we could protect the little babies from that horrible creature. Unfortunately, we weren't always the best at keeping the cage clean...we had the best of intentions, but were not the best at seeing things from the cats' perspective. I can still hear the mews of kittens desperate to be released from the cage as we opened the barn door. Distemper (a feline disease) runs rampant once it gets started - those poor kitties with their goopy little eyes... Food is often scarce. We fed them, of course, but children can be forgetful and let's just say the adults are relatively unsympathetic to these quickly-multiplying little creatures. There were times we had TONS of cats and then they'd disappear and we'd be down to a half dozen or so.

Sometimes the cats were not imprisoned in the barn. In the wintertime, we kept them down the basement or in the shanty off of our porch. Remember that innocence thing? We used to be clueless as to why Missy would be "crying" so loudly from the basement that it would wake us up. There was a little hole at the bottom of the door to the basement that the cats could just fit their paws through. We thought it was so cute to see a paw popping through there. I witnessed the capture of a mouse in the basement one time. It was not fun to see the little thing scurrying across the floor; but it was oh-so-satisfying to watch Missy pounce on and play with her prize once she caught him. I'll never forget witnessing the birth of a litter of kittens. It was in a box we'd prepared on the porch. We were so proud of Missy! And those kittens were so small...Mama licked them clean and fed them almost right away. Can't you just picture those little paws kneading as they nurse? The kittens could barely walk on those wobbly little legs. So precious! Gives me warm fuzzies to think about it.

So, if you haven't figured it out already, I am declaring myself a "cat person". I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I'm enamored with them. I'm not sure what it is about cats, but they bring a smile to my face. They can really be kind of a nuisance, but I love them! They can be playful, cuddly, aloof, selfish, relentless, annoying, meticulous, or messy - but one thing is for sure - they are CURIOUS! Maybe it's the challenge of trying to win them over. Maybe it's the velvety soft fur. Or, more than likely, it's the memories. It's the joy and companionship they provided for me as a child. Cats, and especially kittens, found their way into my young heart. And young hearts don't forget feelings like that...