Rescue of Stray Cats
Dozens of cats are born on the farm next to me.
Cows give low moos, aching to be milked, at dawn, singing birds chirp and warble in clouds of
wings that fill the trees, and at dusk and dawn, roosters ca-ca-doodle-do in
its fenced perimeter, less than one hundred feet from my backyard.
In the tall grass fields, among goats, sheep and cows grazing, feral feline queens drop
litters of four to six kittens, every seven weeks, and sooner or later show them my backdoor
which always sports a bowl of water, and a plate of cat-food.
A frail black kitten who cried on and off all day, abandoned under a nearby woodpile on
a rainy day, was left by his mother and not returned for.
It took my son and me over an hour to first locate the cries and then to remove the
virtual ton of lumber precariously perched , under which his mother had left him.
He had cried plaintively for hours, wet, cold and frightened but hidden too cleverly to
easily reach.
He was so hungry still not weaned, that he bit off the rubber nipples on the small kitten
bottles I fed him with, swallowing rubber that made me rush him to the vet .
He was barely four weeks old, but I held him on my warm chest for him to hear the
familiar solace of a heartbeat, and I talked to him, at great lengths; he was one I didn’t
succeed, though I tried, to give away, but he was instead lovingly cared for, hand raised.
He was symbolically difficult from the very beginning; it took us almost an hour to
unload that large teetering stack of planking woodpile, behind a neighbor’s shed, to
finally locate him in pouring rain.
His mother, well within sight and earshot, patently refused to come to him, to comfort or
retrieve him, from where she had carried and hid him, and for a good reason.
Male cats were marauding nearby and she knew that by feline male nature, they’d
slaughter the kittens, and then wait for her dugs to grow dry of milk, and go back, into heat.
I weaned him, doctored his ailments and assuaged his angst.
Now, in his seventh year as a twenty-two pound neutered black tomcat , he has earned his name, Nudnick.
(Nudnick, is Russian, for an annoying, boring, persisting and irritating pain in the
derriere, personality. )
He is tall and large boned, an enormous pure alpha male with a huge square head who
affectionately and jealously loves our family with his head banging, deeply jealous of my
other cat, a doddering senior female, of tiny physical proportions, who hates him.
Squeaky, is the oldest rescue cat I ever found deserted: feeble, senile, on antibiotics, a
twenty-two year old ailing but purring, shriveled feline,
tiny, under five pounds, with glazed over eyes ,
who walks in lost circles of dementia,
When Nudnik sees Squeaky getting required medication with commensurate
affection, consumed with jealousy,-(he has core abandonment issues)-, he feels compelled to jump onto her to bite her.
You can see his eyes grow large with pain, when he sees that she is being cared for.
Because of jealousy, Nudnik tortures her and this, in turn infuriates me, which only fuels
his jealousy.
She walked into my living room from my back garden years ago, to claim us, a stray lost
and she rolled around on the floor in grateful pleasure and sat perched in our laps to
thank us.
Now, she’s a twenty-two year old, frail, striped tabby, who faces an unsettled old age ,
because an adopted kitten ballooned into a vengeful King Kong.
I wondered who had lost her and what quantum of love had been lost.
but I said that we would mend and adopt her, instead.
It seemed a betrayal, for she had shown a poignant gratefulness, a recognition of her own self-rescue.
Nudnik tackles and torpedoes her mercilessly, whenever she tries to move from
her bed to the litter box, and makes her transit anywhere, Hellish .
I had caged him for periods, when we were out and about, to insure her safety.
She had survived for a long time in the elements, but now rescued, seem to age quickly.
It was an ungraceful, dreadful old age retirement for her, because of Nudnik, who
Frustrated,
I have admonished a thousands times, but he is truly, a Nudnik.
Once a nudnik , always a nudnik.
He exhibits his nudnick nature when he tries to steal a leather recliner chair from
under me,
(“One cat, leads to another” (Ernest Hemingway)
when I am comfortably perched within its embrace.
He will jump up, get behind me on the chair, and bully me, physically nudge and push
me, followed up with bites to my arms to force me out of the chair.
When that fails, he leaves the room and knocks something loudly to the floor in an
adjacent room, to get me up to investigate, and when I do, he then runs into my chair.
Should that fail to work
When I am halfway there, he runs in at full tilt, or slowly swaggers in, a form of cat
smugness, jumps up to steal my chair, supplants me, and stretches out in the warmth
imparted by my body.
One can see some logical deviousness in his methods ; he has worked this out in his big headed little mind.
I have never before hand raised a cat, from a tiny kitten,
and He, alone, has given me more trouble than any collection, ensemble of cats , combined, that I have ever rescued.
His cat rules:
‘
- Always give generously. A small bird or rodent left on the bed tells them, I care.
- Climb your way to the top. That’s why the drapes are there.
- Curiosity never killed anything except maybe a few hours.
- Find your place in the sun. Especially if it happens to be on that nice pile of warm, clean laundry.
- If you’re not receiving enough attention, try knocking over several expensive antique lamps.
- Life is hard, then you nap.
- Make your mark in the world.
- Or at least spray in each corner.
- Never sleep alone when you can sleep on someone’s face.’
- There’s no denying the splendidness of felines:
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I recall a graphic in the “New Yorker”, where a well-dressed, neatly groomed man,
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stands over a litter box, arms akimbo, to directly address a cat nearby his feet and
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the caption read:
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” Never, EVER think , outside the box!”
PARANORMAL PAUL SCHROEDER 