She hobbles over to where I sit at the kitchen table tapping away on the keyboard of my laptop computer, nudges my leg and waits for me to reach down and pet her. Which I do without hesitation. She sits patiently, soaking up the ear- and chin-scratching until I resume what I was doing. She settles at my feet. After watching her move around our house since she moved in with us, I have concluded that MamaCat is protecting me.
My relationship with this kitty goes back several years. She was born to a scraggly, malnourished feral cat who disappeared shortly after teaching her two kittens they could find food at the Warrens' Carport Diner where we left food out for our cats. Bob and I simultaneously named her "Wolfie" one day when she peered at us over the fence from our backyard patio. She was black verigated with small splotches of orange, and she looked rugged -- like a wolf. She was "he" to us until the following spring when she plumped up and suddenly slimmed down, and we discovered a litter of kittens under our deck. Wolfie became MamaCat.
A few weeks later, MamaCat brought her family to the Carport Diner, as her mother had done with her. Shy and hesitant at first, eventually bold and untouchable they came. It was a busy summer for us, and the thoughts I had of taming them got lost in the shuffle, and we soon found ourselves swarmed in feral kittens who were quickly becoming cats. One morning we knew they had to go. While they still had a chance of adoption, Bob called animal control and borrowed a trap. Silently rooting for the kittens, I kept score. Kittens 1, Bob 0. They outsmarted his efforts. Kittens 2, Bob 0. I was impressed, and had to share my glee -- kept score online with my sister and niece on our family website. I'm afraid that jinxed the kittens. From then they were quickly gobbled up by the trap one at a time. Bob put the trap and kittens into the car and delivered the them to the animal shelter. When he came back with the trap, I was puzzled.
"She has to go, Pam. We can't have her putting out kittens several times a year, " he insisted.
"Bob, they'll euthanizer her. She's wild. She doesn't have a chance," I pleaded.
The argument went back and forth, and finally he succumbed. "Ok, but you have to tame her enough to catch her and take her in to get her fixed."
I promised. And I started working immediately on the taming of MamaCat. After a short time, I could touch the top of her head while she ate at the Carport Diner. If I moved too quickly, she panicked and retreated. But she knew I was her friend. And I knew she was mine. Daily we met there and visited together while she ate.
One fall morning I stepped outside to feed her and was surprised that she wasn't waiting on the other side of the carport for her breakfast, a recent habit. I looked around, called "Kitty, kitty? Where are you, MamaCat?" I was puzzled. Something was wrong. I walked to the front yard, and almost immediately, I spied MamaCat sitting in the street by the curb in front of the house across the street. As I slowly approached her, I talked to her softly hoping not to spook her. I expected her to run as I had never approached her like this before. But she didn't. She just sat there looking at me. I stooped down and reached my hand out to her. She sniffed it, but still didn't make any effort to escape. There was no blood, but I knew she was hurt. I touched her cautiously. We were becoming friends, but she was a feral cat, unvaccinated, and I had no assurance that under stress she wouldn't go into defense mode. Something about the position of one of her hind legs wasn't right. She was going to have to see a vet. I came back home and quickly found a box the right size to confine her for the ride and returned to where she sat in the gutter. After talking with her quietly for a few minutes, and petting her to keep her (and myself) calm, I slowly picked her up. Her one hind leg dangled lifeless, her body tensed at this first experience of being held by a human, but she didn't struggle.
Now I had my own struggle. I knew her injury was not minor. Veterinary care is not inexpensive. I needed reassurance. I called Bob at work and told him what had happened. His reaction was not surprising, but maybe it was what I needed to strengthen my own resolve. "Put her to sleep, Pam. She's a wild cat. I'm not paying for a vet for a wild cat."
"But she trusts me, Bob. She's not wild anymore." -- I was definitely stretching the truth here.
"I'm not paying for it."
"That's ok, I am. I can't put her to sleep. She trusts me. It's probably not a serious injury. I can't put her to sleep because of a broken leg."
So off to the vet we went, MamaCat and me. Dr. Dicou took us right away, and after a visual evaluation, she told me what I already knew, that MamaCat had a broken leg. The extent of the injury was more apparent when Dr. Dicou put the xrays up on the screen. The break was very close to a joint and would be hard to repair. And even with surgery, there would be no guarantees of a permanent fix. She might need her leg amputated. We could skip the repair, if I chose and go right for the amputation. No, I said, let's try to fix it. A veterinary orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Smith, was called and would do the surgery as soon as he could. I went home and waited for the news.
The call came sooner than I expected. Dr. Smith said he had taken a look at the xrays and found that her other hind leg was also fractured. To repair the fractures, he would need to put pins in to pull the bones back in alignment and hold them together. He confirmed what Dr. Dicou had already told me: because of the break(s) being so close to the joint, there was no guarantee the surgery would work. And of course, the fee for the surgery went up considerably with the second break. What did I want to do? What did I want to do, he asked? What did I want to do? Mostly I wanted not to have this problem, nor have to make such a huge decision on the spot. I had to err, if I
were to err, on the side of this sweet kitty. "Do it," I told him.
A day or two later, MamaCat was released to my care. She had to be confined so that she wouldn't walk on her legs any more than necessary. We kept her in a kennel in our living room, near the dinette, where she could see us most of the time. She required pain medication and antiobiotics several times a day. She was a good patient.
MamaCat's legs seemed to be healing, and upon Dr. Smith's instructions, we allowed her out of the kennel a few weeks later for short periods of time. Daisy and Oreo were house cats at this time, but after their initial inspection of the newcomer, they seemed to prefer to ignore her. I confined them in the basement when I let MamaCat out for exercise. She didn't run from me, she couldn't. But she was still very shy.
One day as I picked her up to put her back into the kennel I felt something sharp on her leg poke my hand. Closer observation showed the screw holding her leg together had become dislodged and was poking thru the skin. I was horrified. I called Dr. Smith immediately and he said to bring her in. Another surgery, another recuperation. A few weeks later, it happened a second time.
We took her to Dr. Smith's office in Sandy. I sat quietly in the exam room with MamaCat waiting for him to come in. He ordered xrays. He brought them in to show me what was happening. The bone in the leg that had been most severely damaged had become diseased somehow and would not hold the pin. I was in emotional agony. She had come so far, had been through so much pain and discomfort. How could I put her through any more? Should I? Or had Bob been right in the first place? Should she be euthanized? I asked Dr. Smith what he thought. He hesitated then said, "If she's just a feral cat and you have no feelings or attachment for her, then maybe euthanasia is the right thing. But, we can amputate this leg and she will be just fine." I was also thinking about another vet bill, although Dr. Smith had generously not charged me for the second surgery. I wouldn't expect that kind of continued generosity. He must have read my thoughts because he added, "If you want me to amputate her leg, there will be no charge. I'm in this with you to the end."
So MamaCat endured her third surgery, and returned home a few days later to her kennel in the living room. Round three recuperation was underway.
This time, there were no setbacks. She healed completely. And, just as Dr. Smith had promised, she adapted very quickly to being a three-legged cat. For her protection, (we thought), we moved Daisy and Oreo outside. A kind of role reversal just took place. She was the live-in cat, and they had become the yard cats. MamaCat was still basically a feral cat. She scattered away on her three good legs when she saw us coming. She would come to me if I stooped down and talked to her softly. Fast moves still spooked her. She allowed Bob to live here, but she wasn't about to be his friend. If he looked at or spoke to her, she made a quick getaway.
MamaCat, 6 months after The Accident
Little by little she became more at ease. There were no major turning points, but a gradual acceptance of her new life and of us as her family. There was only one milestone that was notable, and it happened two or three summers after The Accident. In that time, she had finally accepted Bob as a necessary evil and didn't always run when he came into the room. She even let him pet her occasionally, if he didn't move fast or speak harshly. But if a stranger came into the house, she hobbled up the steps and hid under our bed until she could no longer hear the stranger's voice. The summer of 2006 my sister Kathie and her husband Carl came to visit. MamaCat made herself scarce, coming out in the open to eat and use her box mostly at night or while we were away. One morning, Kathie and I were sitting at the kitchen table and while we were engrossed in our conversation, MamaCat quietly came in and sat at Kathie's side. When we noticed, we glanced at each other, the surprise apparent on both our faces. Kathie slowly reached down, speaking softly calling her by name, and touched her head. MamaCat accepted her affection. Other than the times that I have held MamaCat and let Brody, Kennedy or Carter pet her briefly since then, Kathie is the only person other than Bob and me to touch her.
In the beginning of her house confinement, when Daisy and Oreo lived in, MamaCat seemed to realize she was the newcomer and the house cats were unthreatened by her. They guardedly passed each other, and an occasional low growl was heard from one or the other. But no obvious hostility. That is, until Daisy and Oreo were banished to the outside. Each day that went by, MamaCat became closer to me, following me around during the day and sleeping in our room at night. One day it occurred to me that if she wasn't at my feet, she was often laying by the door of the room I was in, facing outward. That she might be "guarding" me seemed possible. That hunch was validated one day when I let Daisy come in to go to the basement. MamaCat suddenly attacked Daisy as she ran straight toward the basement. Fur flew. Cats screeched and hissed. But in the end, there were no injuries, except Daisy's pride. This had been her home, and now she was humiliated by some punk three-legged cat
half her size.
I don't remember when MamaCat decided that rather than sleeping under our bed, she wanted to sleep on it, but one night she came to my side of the bed and tried to claw her way up. Even though her one hind leg had healed enough to walk on, it is not fully functional and she cannot leap as other cats do. I reached over and lifted her onto the bed. She sat quietly for a moment not quite knowing what to do. She licked my arm for a few minutes. Then she put her face in mine and gave me one little lick by the corner of my mouth. Thus started our nightly ritual of "bath and a kiss". So she really is My MamaCat. She gives me a bath, and tucks me in with a kiss each night.
Little sister Amy with Ryan
