First Dynasty: Happy, Sir Lancelot, Ainsika and Murgatroid (continued)
When Happy had her second litter it didn’t go as easily as her first. One rainy afternoon, I heard her wailing at the back door so I opened it. In she ran, soaking wet. But, to my horror, I saw the head and front legs of a kitten hanging half out as she made a bee-line to her cardboard box that she slept in in the back shed.
At this I ran screaming to my mother, yelling something like, “Happy’s coming apart!”
When my mother came down, she calmed my down and told me that Happy was having her kittens though she wouldn’t let me in the shed-kitchen to see.
As it turned out, this first kitten was still-born but the second, and last, was OK though she was tiny – even for a kitten.
As she was the only kitten, I asked my mother what the Yiddish word for “only” was and she said “Ainsika.” Don’t worry about the spelling, I certainly didn’t. I was an idiot for choosing such an awkward name and pretty soon everyone, including me, just called her “Puddy” as in “Puddycat.” [“I tawt I taw a Puddy tat!”]
We kept her, too, and she became my father’s favorite. My father had his accounting office in our home – in the dining room, on the huge table. She would sleep under the desk lamp as he worked though she would try to turn two pages in his ledger books when he turned one.
Ainsika was not nearly as successful as her mother. She had never been entirely normal as our other kittens and adult cats as she was exceptionally small. She also had difficulty with her bowel movements which became a major problem as the years went by. Her “favorite” place to “go” was under a safe in the corner of our kitchen. [WHY we had a safe is an entirely different story and is an article in and unto itself.]
Each morning we noticed a certain air and the search began. We learned it was under the safe, which was impossible to move. To make the story complete, her bowel movements tended to be quite loose, making the near daily clean up to be an exceedingly unpleasant chore even after we began “paving” the floor with newspaper because of that innate habit of cats to try to “bury” their excretions.
My mother used to spray an “air freshener” and to this day, whenever I smell that particular fragrance I flash back to those days and gag.
As I said, we kept “Lance,” for short and here we were, a three cat family but things changed for the worse as Lance began to do what a male cat does when there are two fertile females around: he “sprayed.” This was NOT an activity that people living in the house were willing to put up with and poor Lance was exiled to the back shed.
There he stayed for almost all of the rest of his life during the winters. Usually sitting on the short step ladder between the door into the kitchen and the door into the yard. He was fed regularly but he “let himself go” – he got dirty as he just didn’t bother to clean himself. Every once in a while, I’d go into the shed and pet him, sit on the ladder with him on my lap and then he’d start cleaning himself. My mother didn’t like this as she complained he was dirty and insisted I put a rag on my lap before I let him sit there.
As I’m typing this, I’m tearing up as THIS is the type of unintended cruelties I mentioned: we just didn’t know about “fixing” cats, cat food, litter or that it was a bad idea to let cats out at night.
One evening, when my father came home from visiting a client, he said that Lance was on the pavement, up the street and that he had evidently been hit by a car crossing Huntingdon Street coming from the cemetery where all of our cats hunted mice and sparrows that they would often bring home, half alive, in the summer to “train” us as they would do to any of their “other” kittens.
Alas, ignorance, is very powerful as it still didn’t occur to us that letting our cats out a night was a bad idea and put them in extreme danger.
After a few more litters, Happy died because of pregnancy complications but we still had Ainsika and she had a few litters, a male of which we kept who I named “Murgatroid” after a cat in a science fiction book I read and, finally! we had learned something and had him neutered. In fact, we found a veterinarian who made house calls. I heard, but didn’t see the operation on our kitchen table – covered with newspaper – just a short quick “yowl.” In a day he didn’t seem to be any worse for wear.
Unfortunately, the veterinarian didn’t tell us that we should give Murgatroid shots to protect him from a dreaded cat and dog disease – distemper.
Years later, he caught it. We called the veterinarian but when we described the symptoms, he told us not to bring him in as it would contaminate his office. Instead, he made another house call after which he gave us the bad news. Distemper killed almost every cat that contracted it but there was a chance if we gave him some medication and hoped.
All to no avail. The day came when he couldn’t move much and had trouble breathing. We placed him on the kitchen table on some newspaper (again) and my brother began to give him our best version of “artificial respiration” as he massaged Mergy’s chest them his diaphragm. This went on for some time until Joel gave up and came crying into the living room where I waited. I began crying as well. It was terrible losing a loved one even though this wasn’t the first time.
Is there ANY time when it doesn’t hurt?
I think my father wrapped his body up in the newspaper and probably one of my uncles drove him to the veterinarian to dispose of his body.
I, honestly, can’t remember when or how Puddy left us but I remember there was a seemingly long time where we were alone.
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