Cats

It is not my intention for this post to be anti-dog.  I know a wonderful dog:  Fender, a Standard Poodle, who lives with our friends, Kevin and Connie, in Durham, NC. 

On my sixteenth birthday in 1961, my brother Joel and sister-in-law Judy gave me a puppy for a present.  She was a mix of beagle and fox terrier and I named her Trixie.  She was a nice dog, obedient, but stupid.  Or maybe I was just too stupid to train her well.  Before her first birthday she gave birth to a litter of three puppies. Trixie had sex way before I did.  When I went to Penn in 1963, I had to give her away as my mother refused to care for her in my absence.  

In 1969, my ex-wife, Bonita, and I adopted a beagle whom we named Zootie.  We kept her for ten years until she outgrew her welcome.  Zootie had her good points, but she had plenty of bad ones.  She growled at us when we disciplined her and she was obsessed with food, once nipping my daughter, Rachel, above her eye when she was nervously eyeballing a carrot being sliced nearby.  

Some years after Zootie, my sister-in-law, Noreen, asked us to take care of her cat, Lucy, whom she had to give up because of a problem with her landlord in Washington, D.C.  I was hesitant about bringing a cat into our house even though I had no experience with any.  Why?  Perhaps because of Walt Disney.

In the 1950s, my formative years, I saw three feature length Walt Disney produced cartoons which featured cats as negative characters.  The first was Cinderella (1950), the story of an orphan girl named Cinderella who works as a servant in the house of her cruel step-mother, Lady Tremaine, whose cat, Lucifer, loves making Cinderella's life miserable.

Next was Alice in Wonderland (1951), the story of a girl named Alice who visits a strange land where she meets a variety of weird characters, including the Chesire Cat who displays the mischievous ability to appear and disappear at will.  To Alice, the Chesire Cat is a very unreliable character.

Finally, there was The Lady and The Tramp (1955), a love story between a cocker spaniel named Lady and a mixed breed dog named Tramp.  There are also two twin Siamese cats, Si and Am, who are very mean to Lady.

I believe I was influenced by this anti-cat prejudice.  How many other Baby Boomers were affected as well?  Many times, I have met people who, without any cat experience, will tell me they hate cats.  It's irrational.

So, because of my desire to help out Noreen, I agreed to give Lucy a one month trial.  She stayed with us for five years until her death.  Of the three pets I had in my life, Lucy was clearly the best.  She was the most intelligent, the friendliest, and the cleanest.   

Lucy was so independent that we could leave her at home for a couple of days without any trouble whereas my dogs had to be boarded. We would leave a bowl of food which she would eat a little at a time. And then, so amazingly, she could jump from the kitchen floor to the counter top to drink water from the dripping faucet.  

I remember Lucy's custom of sitting by the kitchen door waiting to either enter or leave the house. Unfortunately, one day she left and never returned.  Our veterinarian had diagnosed Lucy with a cancerous growth on her throat.  That last time, I believe, she was looking for a place to die.  Lucy was unforgettable.  Cats can be great.