Article - Adventures In Cat Rescuing

© June 14, 2010

Being an animal lover with pet allergies isn’t easy and that’s why I turned to stray cats for companionship. I spent the majority of my childhood giving abandoned and unwanted cats a new lease on life. They had food, water, toys, and a place to sleep; yet they were free to prowl the streets and do whatever it is that cats do when their humans are not around. There was, Tigger, Junior, Squeaky, Smoke, Dusty, Curtis, Harvey, Blacky, and several others who weren’t around long enough to name. The most memorable, however, was Fritz.

Fritz was a pampered orange and white tabby who adjusted well to life on the street. Rumor was that he had once belonged to an elderly lady. No one else in the family wanted him so when she passed away Fritz was abandoned. He found his way to my house and that’s where he stayed until his death eight years later.

In that time, Fritz and I shared a special bond. There were others he went to for food and attention but he always came back to me. Perhaps it was because we had much in common. He also rescued abandoned cats. Junior and Squeaky were kittens that had followed him home. I believed he went back to the cats he mated with to check on his offspring and if there was a kitten being neglected by the mother he brought it to me. This made him even more unique than he already was. Most male cats will either ignore a litter of kittens or kill them so the female will go into heat again. Fritz, on the other hand, played babysitter while the mother was away.

Two weeks after his death on July 23, 2003 I took in two kittens from a neighbor who no longer wanted them. I named them Smoke and Dusty because of their gray fur. They were extremely wild for house cats and after a battle over who was going to sleep by my head and who was going to sleep by my feet Dusty ran off and never came back. I don’t remember how long it was before Smoke contracted distemper but I believe it was about two years. She died shortly after her second litter of kittens, of which I kept one. I named him Naraku, after a Japanese Anime character.

Naraku loved to chase shiny objects, sleep in boxes, and bring live rabbits into the house. I think his favorite thing to do was bury himself in a snow bank and lay in wait for an unsuspecting victim to walk by and attack an ankle. He had a wild streak just like his mother, but he was the best pet I had had since Fritz. Although he never brought stray kittens home, he did allow another cat into his territory once.

Tigger was a severely abused orange tabby. I never found out what exactly was done to him who did it but the evidence was there. The back of his spine and his hips were crooked and riddled with arthritis. The abuse was also noticeable by how he shrank away when I would try to pet him. That particular habit disappeared as he came to realize no one was going to hurt him anymore. His habit of urinating on everything, however, did not. I didn’t know that his kidneys were failing him until it was too late to do anything about it. It wasn’t long before it consumed him and I just hope he found solace in the final days of his life.

Now, I only have one cat; another orange tabby named Mercury. She’s been a pampered house cat most of her life, ever since she was rescued as a kitten by a friend of mine. Mercury lived with her but, as my friend is approaching her golden years, the responsibilities of a pet were tiring her out and so she gave the cat to me two years ago. Mercury is now fifteen and the way things look she may very well live to be twenty.

I don’t know if the love and passion I developed for rescuing cats was always there or has developed after spending so much time in their company. I do know it’s something I will continue to do. I’ve also found that I’ve owned so many cats over the last seventeen years that I think my pet allergy gradually wore off.