by Amy Newmark
About a month after Phoebe disappeared, I was in the barn feeding the horses when I heard a loud crying sound. It sounded familiar. I called out, “Here, kitty!” The cry grew louder. I looked up toward the eaves of the barn — the same place where a newborn kitten had fallen two years earlier. There, peering down at me, was a sleek, black cat, meowing loudly.
I ran up the hayloft stairs and called out, “Phoebe!” She came running, and I picked up my thinner but unharmed friend. I carried her out of the barn and inside the house so I could get a better look at her. It took me a moment to realize I was repeating “Thank God! Thank God!” as tears sprang to my eyes at the return of this dear pet.
A little underweight, but unharmed, Phoebe jumped onto the old green afghan on the couch. All was well with the world again. I loved this cat, no doubt about it. I guess we really weren’t just dog people after all.
~Janet Anderson-Murch
One Lucky Cat
A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution.
~Hazel Nicholson
Gus joined our family when our son was five, and they were instantly inseparable. Gus roamed the neighborhood as he pleased, but nights were spent on Jordan’s pillow.
Then, the summer before Jordan’s junior year, we moved from New York to Colorado, living in a rented house for about six weeks before buying our home in the mountains above Boulder. We moved in on the Jewish New Year, which was in mid-September that year, and experienced a major snowstorm that first night. When Jordan opened the door to get more firewood, Gus ran out to explore. Nothing unusual there.
But he didn’t come back.
All that night, we called. Normally, we’d call his name and clap our hands, and soon we’d hear the bell on his collar coming closer.
After everyone else was asleep, I set my alarm and got up every two hours to open the back door and call. Nothing. Once, I even pulled on my boots and went out, thinking I’d heard Gus crying. I followed the sound to a small, snow-laden bush where I imagined he was huddled, cold and scared. I found a fox. We looked at each other in the moonlight before it ran off. I returned to my warm bed for another two hours.
The next day, we searched everywhere, meeting several new neighbors along the way. They expressed concern for Gus and told us, “Up here, cats and small dogs tend to have short but happy lives.”
In the dawning hours of our second Gus-less day, Wayne saw a mountain lion on our front porch. When I awoke, he said it had probably “come back for seconds.” I was horrified and convinced he was wrong.
We went out several times that day, trudging through the deep snow and yelling until we were hoarse. We continued searching as what became one of the coldest and snowiest winters in years descended on “our mountain.”
By December, we were pretty discouraged.
The house was coming together. Jordan was settling in at Boulder High. Wayne’s home office was taking shape, and I loved my new job. We no longer went out calling for Gus, and Wayne was sure he wasn’t coming home.
Then, on the last night of Hanukkah, just as Wayne and Jordan were about to head up the mountain and out of cell-phone range, Wayne’s phone rang. It was a woman saying she’d just found a cold, hungry, injured cat seeking shelter in her barn. Wayne turned the car around.
She was holding him when they arrived. He’d been there when she came in to feed the llamas. Jordan cradled him while she explained that she knew Gus was loved because, when she put out food, “He spent at least half a minute looking between her and the bowl, clearly conflicted about which he needed most: food or a hug.” He chose the food, but let her pick him up immediately afterward.
Gus was severely underweight, had a large puncture wound on the right side of his neck, and a broken “elbow” joint on his left front leg. It had been shattered, and he’d been holding it up for so long that new bone had formed, ensuring it would never unbend. The vet wanted to amputate. We wanted to wait until his wounds were healed and he gained some weight, so we headed home with our personal Hanukkah miracle.
Based on where he was found, we concluded that Gus had been heading toward the house we’d rented when we first arrived, which, having been the end of his cross-country journey in the moving truck with Wayne, he must have decided was his home. That cat had traveled about eighteen miles and crossed a major highway to get there. He’d worn his collar the whole time, its bell alerting predators to his existence while warning off any smaller creatures he might have eaten himself.
Eventually, Gus recovered and was his old self again — bounding up trees and chasing impertinent deer and foxes off his property. In honor of his surviving the loss of one of his proverbial nine lives, we changed his name from plain old Gus to Gus-the-Miracle-Cat.
We never did amputate his injured leg. He used it for balance and, when sitting on one of our laps, patted our faces gently, but only with that paw.
The mystery of the puncture wound was solved, too, about eight weeks after we got Gus home. We found a lump under his fur, so we took him to the vet, who was shocked to discover it was a .22-caliber slug!
She theorized that someone had been using a sign for target practice, and the bullet had ricocheted, causing the puncture wound. The impact had knocked Gus over, and the fall had broken his leg. That explained both his injuries, but nothing explained how he survived two months alone in the snowy backcountry, except that Gus is one lucky cat.
Gus enjoyed ten more years of adventures before dying quietly at age twenty-two. His ashes are spread over his mountain.
~Lisa Napell Dicksteen
Old Tom
A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays, and for the last three he stays.
~English Proverb
It was a sun-washed Tuesday in late September when I met old Tom. I had responded to a call from an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Winter, who was badly crippled with arthritis. Her voice was halting and apologetic. “It’s about this cat…” she said, and led me outside to meet the biggest, oldest, ugliest, sickest alley cat I had ever seen.
He lay on a splintered board on the paint-blistered porch behind Mrs. Winter’s house, one paw stretched out in pain. His ears were scabbed black from ear mites. Two deep, blood-encrusted cuts ran down his tabby-striped back. His face was oddly distorted, the mouth pulled askew, apparently the result of some fight.
“Old Tom’s been coming around for sixteen years,” said Mrs. Winter. “Never lets me pet him or nothing. But I leave a little food out. And some water. Kind of cheers me up to see old Tom. Now he’s so sick…” Her birdlike voice trembled. “I’m afraid he might die.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t know Mrs. Winter well. I’m single, and my freelance work kept me too busy to socialize much in our neighborhood. Finally, stumbling a bit, I said, “Sixteen years is pretty old for a cat. Are you sure it’s always been Tom?”
“Oh, yes. My friend Mrs. Giraldi — before she had her stroke last year — she used to visit. She always said Tom’s gone through all nine lives and then some.”
As if he felt our attention, the cat lifted his head and stared directly at me. His yellow eyes were hard and shiny.
I gave in. At the very least, I could ensure that Tom was humanely put to sleep. “I’ll take him to a vet I know,” I said. Gingerly, I picked up the cat. Too sick to fight, he stiffened when I jarred his injured paw, but otherwise was quiet as I deposited him in my car.
“He might not make it,” I warned.
Mrs. Winter nodded with tears at the corners of her eyes. “Old age and hard times never licked Tom before. No sir. Hear me, old Tom? You can’t just give up.”
At the vet’s office, Dr. Abbot said, “Is this a candidate for kitty heaven?”
The old cat stared at me, and then blinked. I surprised myself by saying, “Not yet. Let’s see if we can save him.”
“Are you sure? This old cat isn’t your responsibility. And vet bills…”
“I know. But still, do what you can.”
“I can treat his ears at home,” I said.
“Okay,” said Dr. Abbot. “But this is a feral cat. I don’t think you’ll make a pet of him.”
“I know.”
I borrowed a large dog crate and set it up in my basement. For a month, Tom lived there, learning to use a sandbox. Morning and evening, I treated his ears for the mites. It wasn’t easy. Every time I opened the door to the crate, Tom backed into a corner until I moved a safe distance away. Then, stealthily, he would poke his head out, until slowly one paw would emerge, then another. At last, with a certain weathered dignity, he would stand beside the kennel. Like an old soldier at parade rest, I thought.
Tom’s body began to fill out, although his ears continued to itch. Still, I decided, he was in good enough shape for a visit with Mrs. Winter.
When she came into my house, her eyes grew young in their gladness. “Will you look at old Tom? It’s a miracle!”
The bent old lady and the veteran alley cat eyed each other. “I guess it just makes sense to stay alive when someone cares, don’t you think?” she said.
I moved Tom upstairs. He no longer retreated when I approached, but he still didn’t let me pet him.
The week before Thanksgiving, an envelope arrived, full of wrinkled bills and a short note. “I been saving my money,” read the crabbed handwriting. “I want to give you something for keeping old Tom.”
I counted the bills. Nearly fifty dollars! From a woman who lived on a very tight income. “Well, old warrior,” I said to Tom, “what should I do about this?”
Tom still didn’t come close, but when I talked to him, his yellow eyes would lock on mine, and he’d tilt his head as if listening.
“I’ll hurt her feelings if I return the money,” I said. Instead, I wrote a letter.
Dear Mrs. Winter:
Thank you for bringing me help when I needed it. Your money is going to a shelter for stray cats.
Your friend,
Tom Cat
P.S. Barbara invites you to Thanksgiving dinner.
On Thanksgiving, Mrs. Winter wore a pink, silk dress that smelled faintly of camphor. Shyly, she offered a bowl of homemade cranberry relish. Tom didn’t come close enough to be petted, but he stayed in the same room when we sat down for dinner.
“He’s doing pretty well,” I said.
“Old Tom. He’s no quitter, that’s for sure.”
When I replied, “I’d say the same for you, Mrs. Winter,” she almost blushed.
After I took her home, I cleaned up the dinner dishes, and then settled on the living room sofa. Tom sat three feet away as usual. “You’re a good ol’ cat,” I said.
Suddenly, I felt a peculiar weight in my lap and heard a strange, rumbling noise. It was Tom! And he was purring! For a moment, I was too stunned to move. Gingerly, I placed my hand on his back. He didn’t flinch. He just looked at me with his tough, yellow eyes.
~Barbara Bartocci
When Friends Meet
Cats come and go without ever leaving.
~Martha Curtis
Blended families. The transition is not easy. Concessions have to be made — so much to be gained and… sometimes lost.
One side of this new marriage had a cat; the other had a little boy with asthma and an allergy to cats. They tried to find a home for the cat, but no one would take him, and regretfully, I couldn’t. So, the cat went to the shelter, and the boy’s breathing improved as a result.
Almost a year later, my granddaughter — who had shared her room for a short time with the cat — went with a friend to visit his grandparents. They had a black-and-white cat, like the cat her family had before they had to give him up.
The cat rubbed against my granddaughter’s legs, jumped into her lap, licked her chin, and gave her an affectionate head butt. It was like a friendly “how are you” or “nice to see you.”
The grandmother was surprised. “I’ve never seen him do that before,” she said.
My granddaughter scratched the cat behind his ears and ran her hand down the length of his body and along his tail to the crooked tip she knew she would find there.
“Where did you get him?” she asked her friend’s grandmother.
“From the shelter at the Humane Society,” the woman replied. “We’ve had him about a year now.”
My granddaughter smiled. Meeting an old friend will have that effect. “His name is Charley,” she said.
~Deborah Lean
United by a Myrakle
There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
~Dan Greenberg
My husband and I were looking for a new brand of kitty litter to try. We drove twenty-five miles to Eugene and chose one of twelve pet stores there.
The kitty-litter aisle in the store was forty feet long, making our choice complicated. We did not want pine litter, as it is hard on my and the cats’ breathing. We had tried the newspaper brands, and crushed walnuts were not to our liking. We were not sold on the clumping brands because they attached to our Persians’ long fur, and could end up in their digestive tracts when they groomed.
We were reading bag after bag of clay and crystal litters, trying to figure out what to do. Whenever someone pushed their grocery cart up to the litter section, I approached them like the “kitty-razzi” and interviewed them about their choice. “Have you used this brand long? Does it hide the odor? How often do you change it? Do you have long- or shorthaired cats?” Everyone smiled and gracefully answered our survey.
Then a beautiful, blue-eyed woman with shoulder-length white hair, reminiscent of a white Persian cat, tossed a bag of litter into her cart. I noted her kind face and proceeded to ask her my list of questions.
She told me, “My name is Linda, and we have two shorthaired cats.”
I quipped, “Oh, you look like someone who would have Persians.”
She stopped, caught her breath, and said quietly, “We did have two. We loved them. But Myrakle died a year ago.”
I was stunned! I felt I already knew the answers to my next questions before asking them, but I tearfully choked out, “Was she a rescue cat? Was she orange and black? Was her full name Ms. Myrakle?”
“Yes,” said Linda.
What were the odds?
“We fostered and named Ms. Myrakle for the Humane Society,” I said. “It took three days to gently clip off all her tangled fur. When the last fur ball was clipped off, she could finally extend her back leg. It had been held back by the tangled fur. She lifted her head from my lap and looked into my eyes as if to say, ‘Thank you!’ Then she slowly stretched her leg fully out for the first time in a long time.”
Linda was nodding her head in recognition. I continued to reminisce about Ms. Myrakle, and told her, “She never fought with our cats, and she accepted my daughter’s two dogs. But we had to give her back to the shelter when I had surgery. We were so sad. We always wondered what happened to her, even after all these years.”
In fact, just that morning, I had been reminiscing about Myrakle while looking at the newspaper article I had written trying to find her a loving home.
Now crying, Linda recounted her life with Ms. Myrakle: “Four years ago, I told my husband Gene that I wanted a cat for my birthday. We saw Ms. Myrakle on the shelter’s website. Persians have lovely personalities — and we liked how her name was spelled — so we went right over and adopted her. She was elderly and had only a few teeth, so we knew she would be a challenge. Gene would get down on the floor and hand-feed her soft foods. We both loved her. She was the sweetest cat.”
I nodded in sympathy. Linda said, “While driving here, I was thinking about Myrakle because she died a year ago this week. I miss her and our other cat. They both die
d the same week during the Christmas season, but a year apart.”
Then what she said next stunned me again: “Our other cat’s name was Angel.”
I had to grab her litter-filled shopping cart for balance! As the author of the online “Angels and Miracles” newsletter for twenty years, teaching others to “Expect Miracles” (also the name of my first book), this divine encounter by the kitty litter was an unexpected, overwhelming joy.
For a day that started off normally, it had a remarkable, miraculous ending!
Linda and I felt that Ms. Myrakle’s love brought us together to assuage our grief and thank us for the gift of loving her. I was thrilled that Myrakle had found a loving home.
As soon as Linda arrived home, she told her husband, “I had the most amazing thing happen at the pet store.” He said, “Oh, no!” and began looking around for a newly adopted pet! She laughed and told him that it was “someone” she met.
Linda and I are now good friends, united by a cat in heaven.
~Mary Ellen Angelscribe
Passion and Compassion
A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor.
~Jules Champfleury
Shortly after dawn on an otherwise ordinary morning in late June of 2016, heavy raindrops began to fall across much of West Virginia. Within moments, torrential rain began in what was later called a catastrophic “thousand-year” flood, sweeping away cars, houses, and bridges in a mighty deluge of raging water and mud. In the path of the destruction were hundreds of thousands of animals, among them three newborn kittens.
Nearly a thousand miles away, Janet Swanson’s phone rang. A lifelong ardent animal lover and philanthropist, Swanson has been volunteering with the American Humane Rescue team since the devastating EF-5 tornado almost wiped Moore, Oklahoma off the map back in 2013. After she was told of the newest humanitarian disaster, Swanson began laying out plans to mobilize with the famed rescue program, which began its work more than 100 years ago rescuing wounded war horses in World War I Europe. It has been a part of the rescue effort in virtually every major disaster since, including the Great Ohio River Flood of 1937, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.