An Homage to Cat Companions

This autumn one of my cat companions died. He was a marvelous fellow, confident, friendly, trusting and loving to a remarkable degree. He was rescued from New Cathedral Cemetery in Philadlphia, where he lived outdoors several years ago when I was visiting that cemetery while doing family history. My German relatives are buried there, the Sandman and Young (Jung) families, my maternal grandmother's ancestors. I named this cat after my great Uncle Yock, who looked kind of like a big cat himself, the same watchful and mischievious eyes.

j One of the things I find so endearing and sorrowful about cats, as about all the vulnerable ones, is their trusting, hopeful, and confident natures. Little Yock came right up to me, innocent as an animal in the garden of Eden, innocent of the evil of people. The cemetery worker told me the cat would lead us to the family grave site, and he did! I am sure it must have been his favorite place because there was a tree there and he may have liked lying there in the shade or climbing the tree. He came back to the car with us, too, my sister Sue was with me. The keeper said "You can take him if you want, when I am not here he has no water or food!" So I told the cat, "If you come with me, I will give you a home." He let me pick him up and put him in the car so I took him to my vet straight away and he lived with me from that time forward, about 8 years.

He was a commanding cat and he immediately established himself as the top cat in the household. He was bigger and stronger and had some kind of indescribable charisma as well as cat behaviors invisible to me, that demanded respect from the other cats and even the dog. He was fearless. All the cats are different just like we are. I have had cats for companions my whole life. Most of them were rescued during my childhood in the city or actually, chose us to live with.

Presently I have 6 cats, all of them interesting, all of them with their own little stories. But Yock was bigger than a 'little story' and he had so much presence, he was as big as a remarkable person.

The thing that is mysterious to me is how cats live in this human dominated world, both in our houses and at large in the neighborhoods. Both of these places have such limitations but the natural world no longer exists for them as it no longer exists for us. They must accept the limitations of the indoor world as we do, and it is better, I think, than the challenges and sufferings of the outdoor world, especially in winter. Like homeless people, homeless cats must scavenge for a living and they are at the mercy of the killers, whether human or animal. I have tried to give my cats a bit of the outdoor world by having constructed a "CATIO" which is something I saw on an animal show on tv. It is a 6 foot tall chain link enclosure, much like a dog run, about 12 feet long and 8 feet wide, with a cat door installed in a window so they can go out and in as they please. This is a compromise that allows them outside time but doesn't put the birds at risk. I once saw an old cat of mine, long deceased now, eating a blue jay out in the yard, but some cats cannot be kept in. Little Yock had to go out and he was a master at escape. Because he was about 3 or 4 when I took him in, he had spent his formative years in the outdoors. When I was home, he loved to be in the house, by my side on the sofa, or at my feet in bed, but each day he went out on patrol, usually when I went out to walk the dog. And when he was out and I came home, he rushed to greet me and the dog and he rubbed up against our legs purring loudly in his joy to have us back home again. He rushed to the car when I came home from the store with similar joy at my return. I don't think anyone was ever so glad to see me before or since.

My cats curl up with me whereever I am, on the sofa or in bed, and they purr and they sometimes lick my hand, tiny little cat kisses. And when I pet them, I can feel my blood pressure going down and my body relaxing. It is true that they are expensive and take a lot of care. I have to scoop the six kitty litter boxes pretty much every day, and one of my cats, the oldest, Black Honey, has recently cost me a total of about $400 in veterinary bills. She got thinner and thinner and was constantly screaming to be fed. I would feed her wet canned food and tuna and chicken, and she would gobble it ravenously and then scream for more. No matter how much she ate, about a can or two a day with 6 or so feedings daily, she still wasted away. The vet told me she had a hyperthyroid condition due to her age, which is about 17 years old. Fortunately, the medication is efective and fairly easy. Each morning with her breakfast, and at night with her bedtime snack, I put on a rubber glove and a drop of medication cream on a finger tip and rub it in her ear. She is gaining weight again and doesn't scream in pain and alarm all the time as she did before. Becaue I have had her for so many years living with me and becasue she is a link with so many parts of my life, and because I, too, am an old lady now, she has a special kind of poignancy for me. She can't make the jump from the floor to the kitchen table anymore. She doesn't have the control over her back legs that she used to have, they are wobbly and a bit shaky now and don't provide the push she needs to make the jumps she formerly made effortlessly. She eats on the kitchen table because the other cats and the dog will take her food. The dog steals it from the kitchen table too.

I suppose Black Honey will die within a year or two, much like Little Yock died this past autumn. One evening, he gave a loud cry, then came down from the attic, panting, and went into the hall and keeled over, dead. probably heart attack. He hadn't been sick at all and he had been eating and drinking and behaving as always. It was heartbreaking to lose him, to put him in a box and bury him in the back yard, all his beauty and personality reduced to that.

All the expense and the work is worth it because they bring such joy and delight into my daily life, and love and affection. It is an honor and a wonder to share my existence with people of a different species, to watch their interactions, to eperience them growing from kittenhood to adulthood, to enjoy their warmth by my side on the sofa as I read or watch a tv program on my laptop, to feel their little warm bodies curled up beside me in my bed at night. From the earliest years when I sat in the alleyway of our South Philadelphia row home, and visited with the free ranging cats, they have been my freinds in every sense of the word.

It alarms me When I read the ocassional articles making war on cats. There was an article in the Smithsonian about Australia being over run by cats and the rangers were killing them. Shortly after their war on cats they were overrun by mice. It seems like Austrailia is always off balance with some kind of animals they want to kill. Also in Outdoor Magaine there was an article about killing the cats in Hawaia becaue they were a danger to indigenous birds. We all know there are better ways to control populations than wholesale and wanton slaughter, but men seem to need to kill. I canceled that subscription in protest. Lately in a sicience magazine there was an article about cats being an "invasive" species and destroying birds. We are all invasive species depending on where on the migration clock you turn the dial. Aside from birds, cats also keep down the rodent population and they have been guardians of the grain larder for thousands of years.

Well whatever the articles may say, cats are here to stay. Every friend of mine has two or more cat friends living with them. I can put aside my worry about the way they are treated by donating to cat rescues like The Alley Cat Allies and by looking at my cats, well fed, well loved and well cared for in every way and knowing I do my part and have always done my part for the cat friends.

Tp celebrate his life and beauty, I made a painting of Little Yock and my sister and brother bought me a cat statue for his grave. If there is an ocean of consciousness where ours returns after our corporeal body disintigrates, I may meet up with all my former friends in the cat world some day! Until then, I wish the cats the dogs, all the other creatures and all of us -

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com