Introducing Jenny

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,

It isn't just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

T.S. Eliot

(What IS it with cats and bags?)

When Sugar Plum died in May, I started chanting "I don't want another cat." I said it when my beloved little ginger cat, Sweetheart, died in 1988. But my daughter gifted me with Calpurnia anyway. And Cal was enough; I never wanted to bring Boo home, but what else could I do? It was a matter of life or death for him. I said it again when Boo died and it was just me and Sug alone together way up there in the wilderness in Mt. Baldy... but then came Purrl. I tried not to take Purrl, but no one else would and she desperately needed a home. When Sug was gone, I thought it would be enough for Purrl to hang with her best buddy Thomas, but she cried and cried for Sug, going to the door and emitting the most piteous cries of grief.

And so, two weeks ago, I sent up a quick request to Sug and the Universe to guide me, then headed out to Friends of Upland AnimalShelter because the word was out via social media that the shelter had been inundated with kitties. Specifically black kitties, still the hardest to place. (Why?? Who would not want a beautiful mini-panther running around the house?)

I took a stroll through the dog kennels (just to see who was there), came back out to the hallway, saw a little black female cat in a cage, talked to her for about five minutes, took her picture, and told her I'd be right back. The name on her kennel card was Jenny. I made a polite but cursory examination of the other kitties in the cat room, then went up front and told them I wanted to adopt Jenny. (We did do a mandatory "meet & greet" that lasted less than five minutes as she promptly ran and hid under the bench where I was sitting. "I'll take her!" I told the very helpful employee. Twenty minutes later she was in my cat carrier, and we were on our way home.

Despite having a list of cute names all prepared to try on her, "Jenny" stuck because, when I sent my kids her photo, they loved her name. How could I change it? She is "Jenny" when I'm calling her, looking for her all over the house because she's small enough to fit in tiny places. "Jenny-fur" if she has done something naughty like knocking all my pencils off the drafting table or jumping up on the kitchen counter. "The Little Minion" to Thomas, who is still anxious around her, expecting to be swatted or swiped at—because that's what Sug would do. By the time she is old and fat I will no doubt be calling her "Jen" or "Mini" or some other diminutive.

She is "Jennyanydots," of course, when she is being a Gumbie Cat—as described by T.S. Eliot in his delightful book of poetry, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats:

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;

The curtain-cord she likes to wind, and tie it into sailor-knots.

(She definitely has a sense of humor.)

How I knew that Sugar Plum picked her out:

1. The first thing I noticed about her was her long beautiful tail. In my morning meditations, Sug has, on several occasions, reminded me that while she is no longer with me to hold my paw in life, she is quite happy where she is, and she has her whole tail back again. Jenny's is quite lovely.

2. On the second day after I brought her home, I opened the bathroom door (where she was confined for the first few days until Purrl could get over telling her in profanity-laced language to "get out of the house") to find her curled up and sleeping in the sink. One of my favorite pictures of Sug shows her curled nicely in my bathroom sink.

(Sug not Jenny)

(Definitely Jenny; see the tail?)

3. On the first day she was allowed to explore the whole house, all doors open, I was making dinner, listening with one ear to the rustle and bump noises a new cat makes when squeezing in and out of spaces, when I heard a particular sound that froze me in my tracks. We are all aware that a certain sound, just like a certain scent, can evoke deep and vivid memories. On this day, for me, it was the sound of a small, hard rubber ball bouncing on the laminate flooring. I hadn't heard that sound in nearly a year. When I did, I had to stop what I was doing and grab a tissue. Somewhere in the den, way back behind my big writing desk, Jenny had found Sug's ball. It was Sugar Plum's favorite toy. When I lived on the mountain, I would often go up to the loft to read or write. Sug would follow me up, and as I sat on the bed and tried to focus on the material at hand, she would chase that little ball around the room, her stubby little legs pumping, her claws scratching their way across the slippery surface. It was a happy sound.

4. Jenny played with the ball until she finally chased it under the couch. (I had to move all the furniture the next day to retrieve it, but I needed to vacuum under there anyway.) Later that night when it was time for all of us to go to bed, I found my new cat in the den, sprawled across the top of the writing desk (just like Sug used to do), her long tail swishing back and forth across the photos of Sug I've placed there so I can still keep her close when I'm writing. "Jenny," I said. She winked at me.

So here is yet another 'extra add on' cat in my life. Each one I've brought home has had a specific role to play. Calpurnia was my constant snuggler in the horrible year that I got divorced (for the second time) and also navigated through a bout with cancer. Boo was my comfort when Cal passed, just as Sug was my comfort when Boo passed. Purrl came only months before Thomas arrived, but she has only ever offered him comfort, as she offered it to me when Sug died. Since Purrl is only five and Jenny is two, they have the next decade or so to become close friends. I hope they do. Because I don't want another cat.

Sug

In the summer of 2006, my little black hellion Calpurnia died, leaving me with just Boo, the little flea-and-worm-infested kitten who'd grown into a gorgeous panther after I'd brought him home from work at the request of a student because kids were trying to stone him to death. (You can read Boo's story here.) Boo and Cal were never what you'd call close, but after a few months I wanted to make sure he had another cat around, so I walked into my local Petsmart, went to the cat condos, and saw a small black cat I assumed was a kitten or at least a juvenile. I called the number for the rescue (H.O.P.E. or Helping Out Pets Everyday [sic]), and the conversation went (I kid you not) like this:

ME: Hi, yeah, I'm looking for a female black cat. I see you have one here--

HOPE: She's actually the only black cat we have, but she's missing half her tail, she's stunted, and she was living on the street when we brought her in with two kittens, so she's semi-feral.

ME: I'll take her.

HOPE: Well, we'd like you to meet her first....

A meeting was set up, but honestly, I'd heard enough ("We think it was a human who chopped off her tail, since she won't let anyone touch it") to know I'd be bringing her home. When they let her out of her plexiglass prison cell, she strolled over to me and hopped up on the bench next to me, then settled down in bread loaf position and began to purr. "Wow," the volunteer said, "we've never seen her do that with anyone before." Well, of course not. She wasn't anyone else's cat.

She settled in just as quickly at home (after hiding behind the dryer for a couple of hours). From the first night, she jumped on the bed and slept by my feet, just as if she'd always enjoyed the comfort of human companionship. She and Boo had a conversation about who slept where, but it didn't last long, and there was plenty of room for all of us.

A few short months later, it was time for the three of us to move to a cabin high in the wilderness in Mt. Baldy, and that's when our adventures began.

For six months, I kept the cats inside so they would learn that, first, this is our new home and second, this is a dangerous place.

We'd only lived there a few weeks when we saw our first bear. It wandered up onto my back deck at just after dawn one morning, and as I leaned on the kitchen counter to stare out the window at it, I became aware of a puffy little body beside me--Sug sat beside me for twenty minutes, growling and twitching her tail at the beast as it plundered the wild bird seed I'd put out. Some years later, I would receive a call from a neighbor as I was dressing for work, warning me that a bear was in the vicinity. I descended the loft stairs moments later to see Sug standing at the French doors which led to the back deck, her body puffed up to twice her size as she faced off with the three-hundred-pound black bear on the other side of the doors. Oh, for a photo of that encounter!

The cats saw enough of bears, raccoons and coyotes through the windows to make them realize they had to be on alert always when I gave them brief time outdoors (only when it was broad daylight and I knew we were safe from visitations). Sug was always the leader in the slow sneak out the door.

And that was a problem at times; I had to watch the door constantly or she would dart out behind my back. Her curiosity often got the best of her, even at night... in the snow.

Sadly, our Boo passed away in the second year we lived in Baldy, and I am ever so thankful little Sug was there with me. Boo was a fine gentleman of a cat whose habit had always been to climb onto my chest at night just before I fell asleep and kiss my face with his purry wet kisses for a quarter of an hour before he finally climbed down beside me and went to sleep. The first night without him, I cried myself to sleep. On the second night, Sug came up to curl into my armpit. That would be her sleeping spot for the next decade....

She loved flowers. Often on special occasions, my son would visit with a bouquet, announcing as he entered the cabin, "I brought your cat some flowers."

And she loved to hear me sing. There is a short piece in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book about how, when we moved to Baldy and she was frightened at first, I sang to her and it calmed her. She loved "Sugar Pie Honey Bunch" by The Four Tops, and she would roll onto her back every time I sang it to her. Every time. Click here to see that phenomenon.

After Boo died and it was just the two of us in Baldy, I sang to her often when we were cold or worried. She would curl into my side as I sang her to sleep, setting her chin into the palm of my hand and purring along with whatever song I chose.

Eventually we left the mountain, and I bought a temporary home in Ontario. I'd been without a dog for the six years I lived in Baldy, and I couldn't wait to bring one home. But then a friend posted a photo of a scraggly gray kitten on Facebook, pleading with someone to take her. Gray? We don't do gray cats. But something about that little ball of feistiness spoke to me, and I brought her home. As soon as Sug heard her crying in the carrier, her maternal instincts kicked in. She watched out for Purrl and cared for her--until Purrl grew to twice Sugie's size, and then the two girls were like jealous sisters, swatting at each other daily but always huddling close to each other under the bed whenever they sensed danger.

A month ago, Sug experienced an episode of hyphema (hemorrhaging into her eye), and we sped off to an emergency veterinary clinic where the kind young vet and I slowly clicked off causes until we landed on "probably kidney failure." I brought Sug home and set about loving and spoiling her for the weeks she had left in this world. I took lots of pictures. I cried a lot. I recorded her purring.... Watching her decline was so, so hard, but even as she grew weaker and endured more episodes of hyphema, she maintained her loving sweetness toward me, still purring me to sleep at night, even when she must have felt awful.

She passed away yesterday. And for the first time in 28 years, there is not a black cat in my household. But there is a gray one... and a big red dog. Purrl and Thomas have been a comfort, as have all my dear, dear friends who have met Sug and know of our bond. Twelve years is a long time to companion with a cat, but not nearly long enough.

When I first met Sug at Petsmart, I noted that the rescue had named her Sugar Plum, and I thought, "That's the stupidest name for a cat in the history of cat rescue." But... no other name was forthcoming in my mind, even after she'd been with me for weeks, so Sugar Plum it stayed. Here's to my sweet little girl--Sug, Sugie, Sug-Sug, Sugar Plumpkin, Itty Bitty Kitty, Bitty, Bit, Bijou, Sugie Pie Honey Bunch. Go find Boo, my dear little girl. Play nice with him until I see you again.

Celebrating Sugar Plum

Happy Solstice! Normally I would be writing a post about it, but today is a very special day in my little fur-family, so I'm wholly focused on that (and eating the fudge that animal lovers Bill and Stephanie Keaton sent me).

Indulge me for a brief moment while I muse on a day long ago....

The black cat legacy began in 1989. My orange tabby, Sweetheart, died that year, and I was so grief-stricken without her, my teenaged daughter took it upon herself to comfort me by giving me a kitten—a tiny, mewling, big-eared goofy looking, fluffy, black kitten. "I picked the runt," my daughter said. "I knew that's the one you'd want." She does know me very well.

We christened her (the cat, not my daughter) Calpurnia. (That would be the Calpurnia from To Kill a Mockingbird, not Shakespeare's Calpurnia from Julius Ceasar.) She grew into a dainty little princess who slept on my bed at night. A few years later, along came the mini-panther, Boo (who has been written about extensively, both here and in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book). Suffice it to say, he was black as well.

Fast forward to 2006, the year Calpurnia died. Again I found myself grieving for the little dragon who would rule the bed at night with her teeth and claws, making sure Boo understood that his role was to guard my feet. As mean as she was to him at times, though, he missed her.

Which brings us to today's celebration.

Ten years ago (good grief, seriously? a decade?!?) I walked into the Petsmart in Upland and asked if they had "any black cats." I was directed to the tiny Plexiglas condos where the rescue group, H.O.P.E., kept kitties who were available for adoption on display. There was one black cat, a female... who looked like she'd been the runt of the litter.  She was stunted, with short little legs, and she was missing about two-thirds of her tail. (No, she wasn't born that way. Yes, there are people that cruel. Enough said on this happy post.)

At that point, the nice cat ladies at H.O.P.E. had been trying to find a home for her for a year. She and her kittens had been rescued from the street by a good Samaritan and handed over to H.O.P.E. Her two beautiful daughters had been adopted, but no one wanted the not-so-friendly mama who was still very touchous about anyone petting her near her tail.

"She'll bite you," they warned me.

"I'll take her!" I told them. "What's her name?"

"Sugar Plum," they said.

Oh good heavens. Who names a ferocious little black cat "Sugar Plum"? That's the stupidest name for a cat ever (except maybe Marshmallow for a white cat).

(My grandson, Ben, with his cat, Marshmallow... about 1998.)

I didn't say that to the nice cat ladies. I said, "Where do I sign?" and I took that little cat home.

The first night, she jumped right up on the bed, like she knew this was her place, and I sat musing about what to name her. That musing continued on for days. See, she was supposed to be "Scout." That would've been perfect, right? Following the To Kill a Mockingbird theme, she was a tough little girl. But my best buddy Doug had a cat named Scout already, and since he and I spent most of our time talking about our cats, it just would've been confusing. And so poor little Sugar Plum—now "Sug" or "Sugie" or "Black Devil Cat" (to Sgt. Thomas Tibbs)—was never renamed.

For years, she slept at the foot of the bed, and Boo slept on my chest or curled into my armpit.

And then Boo died. (Enough said and forgive me while I type really fast to get past this part.) And Sug began sleeping under the covers, curled into my side. Of course, by then we had moved to Mt. Baldy, and it was very cold at night from, say, October to, say, June. The longer we lived on the mountain, the more I realized how important it was that Sug had lived as a street thug prior to her life with me. It saved her life on at least one occasion. She faced down bears at the French doors. Chased raccoons off the back deck. And leaped high into trees when suddenly chased by the neighborhood Golden Retriever. Her favorite game when we lived there was to sneak down to the basement at night, scoop up a mouse in her jaws, carry it carefully up three flights of stairs to the loft where we slept, then let it go so she could chase it around the room. At midnight.

(Where she ended up after T.J. chased her.)

I've gotta say, I think she really missed that game when we moved back down the mountain.

Imagine: This little six-pound cat has lived somewhere on the street in Upland, in a tiny condo at Petsmart for many, many months, in a three-bedroom house in Rancho Cucamonga, in a 1600-square-foot cabin in Mt. Baldy, in another three-bedroom house in Ontario, and now here in Calimesa, where she is the smallest of my fur children and definitely the one in charge. We call her "the dowager queen," as she is aging but still has all power. In fact, on January 9 (a very special birth date in my extended family), she will be twelve years old.

Sug still plays. She loves her catnip mousies (which, to her small frame, are more like ratties). She also loves strings, ribbons, rubber bands, plastic bracelets and any paper I place on the table near her cat grass. She tells me what time to get up (4:00a.m.), what time to go to bed (8:00p.m.) and when to plug in her water fountain (every waking hour). She doesn't love her sister much (poor Purrl!) and she really hates having a dog in the house (especially after being chased and treed by T.J.), but she tolerates all this nonsense because she knows that twice a day—naptime and bedtime—I will lie down on the bed and she will assume her rightful place, purring me to sleep.

I have absolutely no doubt that when Sug decides she's had enough of this crazy world, Purrl will take over the queen's role. For now, though—and I hope for a very long time—things remain status quo. Cats are great friends. And black cats have always—always—brought me good luck in the form of love and companionship.

And as a further note here, I have to mention how proud I am of my grandchildren, two of whom have recently adopted cats—black, of course. That's the way we roll in this family.

Our New Normal (wherein I anthropomorphize to my heart's content)

Summer is here. As I write this, Sugie is beside me, curled into a fold of the softly worn green blanket that has covered this swing for eight summers now. During the school year, when things get so crazy with early hours, papers to grade, parents to call and impossible time schedules, this is what I daydream about. This is what keeps me putting one foot in front of the other, shuffling one more graded essay to the bottom of the stack, these long blissful moments of swing-sitting with this little chunk of a cat… and writing slowly, leisurely, thinking through my word choices as the ice cubes twirl slowly in my glass of sweet tea.

This is heaven for both of us. For me it’s the writing. For Sug it’s having her mom home so she can spend hours outside on the patio if she so desires (as long as I am out here with her).

This summer, of course, our routine is just a wee bit altered. Sug now shares me with annoying little sister Purrrl and the world’s most quirky dog, Sgt. Thomas Tibbs. So far, things are working out just fine.

In previous summers, when I’ve done my annual pilgrimage to Missouri, Sug has been left with various housesitters. I have always returned to find her somewhat emotionally shut down, always clingy and anxious for many days after my return. (And if you think I’m simply projecting or anthropomorphizing here, take a moment to read this piece in today’s Los Angeles Times by Amy Hubbard.) Even those closest to me have never fully understood that my deep anxiety in leaving her stems not from worry about her physical well-being but about how her psyche will fare while I’m gone. I am the center of her daily routine, her source not only of food but of safety and security. My absence means subjecting her to her own ‘worries,’ primal as they may be. Keep in mind, this is a sentient being I have cared for and loved for eight years. I know the difference in her response when I’ve been gone for an hour compared with an absence of twelve hours. It’s not about the food; she does truly ‘miss’me.

To help Sug feel slightly less alone when I travel—or when I’m gone from the house for a grueling early-morning-to-work-plus-parent-meeting-plus-grocery-shopping day—I brought little Purrrl into our lives last fall. And this year, when I returned from Missouri, Sug had not shut down. Well at least, not to the extent she usually does. Yes, I’m sure there were some moments of anxiety—my housesitter, with whom Sug is acquainted, invited people over a few times, so the house was noisy and there were strangers. But when the girls get anxious, they dive under the bed and huddle up together. They don’t cuddle, but I have no doubt that being near each other during a potentially scary experience helps them both to cope and offers them the comfort of familiarity.

All of that is preamble to say that, where my late summer mornings used to consist of yawning, stretching, and strolling outside to the patio with Sug, there is a bit more to it now. Now when I wake I have to move cautiously around a sleepy gray kitten who hogs the middle of the bed (Sug and I relegated to the left side, always) and who will lash out with cranky claws if her beauty sleep is disturbed. But ten minutes later, I will hear the girls chasing each other through the house. Because apparently cats do not need one or two cups of tea before they can officially begin to wake up; they seem to be able to go from I’m-still-sleeping-Mom! to I-got-you!/I-got-you-back! in about thirty seconds.

And after everyone is fed—except for me, though I am allowed one cup of tea to drink while I dispense fresh water, pick up rawhide chew remnants from the floor, start the sprinklers and put my shoes on—there follows a long, luxurious walk with my boy, Thomas, who is quite the happy dog these days. (Update on the good boy in an upcoming post.) Later in the morning, Sug will let me know it’s time to stop cleaning or folding laundry or goofing off on Facebook, and we will wander outside together to this very spot. This routine is what keeps me sane, and I am grateful to the Universe that the sanity it brings will last me for ten months when school starts again.

Today’s blog post is dedicated to my dear friend and faithful reader Barbara Tinsley, who gave me just the nudge I needed at just the right time.

Giddiness Prevails!

Bear with me for a moment while I take deep breaths…. I’ve spent the weekend celebrating my daughter’s acceptance into a Master of Fine Arts program… and also celebrating 70-degree temps for the first time since October… and bringing the bench swing back up to the porch from the garage…. Oh—and Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Cat’s Life released this week, with my story, “The Legacy of Boo Radley.” And my Author’s Page went up on Amazon (which is indescribably encouraging, because I can see that Tainted Legacy is still selling all around the country). What else? Oh! The Grandson is here for the weekend (which is how I got the swing back up the stairs to the porch—and several other chores accomplished).

I’m excited about the weather warming for many reasons. A few are:

I’m out of firewood. (Could buy another half cord for $150, but I’d rather spend that money on something that doesn’t go up in smoke.)

“Scruffy,” the cat abandoned in the forest by some idiots, has a better chance of survival. He/she is responding to food and affection, looking healthier every day.

The wildflowers are beginning to bloom. 

I can spend more hours working on the dog book. Some of you know that my cabin in winter gets so cold that I can’t stay at the keyboard for long before my fingers are so stiff from the cold I have to stop typing. As the weather has warmed (except for last Saturday, at 20 degrees), I’ve been able to work on that memoir. I want to be close to finishing by summer.

I’m grateful this week to several people who have been especially supportive of my work, particularly Laura Hoopes, who helped me get the Amazon Author’s Page going. Her memoir will release on May 2, and I’ll be talking about it here.

I’m also grateful for the readers who have checked out my blog from afar. This week, I had two pageviews from Germany, two from France, two from Russia, two from Slovenia and one from Iran. Who are you, my exotic readers? Thanks for stopping by!

One more note that I’ve been meaning to tell you about: Some weeks ago, Gary Sutton sent me a copy of his new novel, Oskaloosa Moon. Gary is a savvy businessman who usually writes about that field. However, to pay dubious respects to his roots, he wrote Moon. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first; can a businessman write an engrossing novel? But I have to tell you, I fell in love with this book from the preface. If you are a reader of novels, I promise you will love this book. I have provided a link to Amazon here—if you buy it and don’t love it, let me know; I’ll buy it back from you!  (Just click on the book.  I know; it's way too easy....)

Covington Two

(This is the second part of yesterday’s blog. Today's photo is of Sugar Plum.)

After deciding on Thursday that the beautiful black boy who was desperate for affection would be Sugie’s new brother, I knew I had to continue bonding with him even though I couldn’t think about taking him home until Sunday. I had a book signing scheduled for Friday, so I drove down the mountain early and headed for the shelter. I signed in and went straight for the ‘annexed’ cat room. There was my boy, lying on his side, paws protruding through the bars. Poor little criminal. What had he done to find himself here? His eyes were closed, so I put my hand under his nose and waited. Suddenly he stood up, eyes wide, looking through the bars at me.
“Yes,” I told him, “I’m here to rub under your chin for you!” He began to purr immediately and we repeated yesterday’s time together, him doing happy cat postures, me just petting and scratching and quietly talking.

Before I left, I stopped by the larger cat room to wash my hands. One cage was empty. Apparently Mr. B&W had persuaded someone to take him home. Perfect.

That evening I told Sugie to expect a new brother soon. I’d been sorting through names that might fit him. I’d never changed Sugie’s name when I brought her home because, well, “Sugar Plum” just seems to fit her. But this cat, this very cool cat, had no name. Hmmm. ‘Which of my male friends is a very cool cat?’ I wondered. And I had the answer in an instant. Bob. I mean, Robert Louis Covington, beloved friend and poet. Covington would be the perfect name. Now that he was named, he definitely felt like my cat, and I couldn’t wait to bring him home.

The next day was Saturday, and I had a long-planned reunion with a cousin that had already been re-scheduled once, so I didn’t want to change it, but I thought I’d just get things started on Covington’s adoption. Again, I headed down the mountain early, but Saturday is a busy day up here; this summer we’ve seen people in record numbers coming up to hike. By the time I’d negotiated traffic (and spent a few minutes talking to a neighbor at the post office), I’d used up half the time I’d wanted to spend with Covington. ‘No worries,’ I thought. I’d be bringing him home soon enough.

Instead of going straight to his cage when I arrived at the shelter, I stopped in at the office. The young man behind the counter was in his mid-twenties.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said smiling, “Do you have an adoption application I can take home and fill out?”
“Nooooooooo,” he said, dragging out the vowel and smirking as if I were asking him if he had a steak smothered with onions. “Do you know which animal you want to adopt?”
“Let me show you,” I told him, turning away and heading toward the dog/cat room. With each step I took a deep breath. I hate when people are condescending toward me.
I led the young man to Covington and his first words were, “You want this cat?” Yes. This nondescript full grown black cat. Yes. But I said aloud:
“Yes, I know he’s been here a long time—“
“He’s been here a really long time,” he cut me off to say.
“Do you know how old he is? Was he a kitten when he came in?”
“No, he wasn’t a kitten. Let me see how old he is….” Naively, I thought he was going to go look up the cat’s file, but he stepped in front of me and threw the cage door open, causing the cat to jump to the back of the small cage, frightened. The man reached his hand in and I watched as Covington’s eyes grew huge in terror as the man grabbed his head, then lifted his lip to look at his teeth. “He’s a year or two, I’d say.”
Thanks, genius, I thought. I can see that from looking at him. I took more deep breaths as he closed the cage door and turned to me accusingly.
“Why can’t you adopt him today?”
“I have somewhere I need to be in about ten minutes,” I told him. “Can I just fill out the paperwork—“
He cut me off again, shaking his head. “I can put a hold on him—“
“Oh, great,” I replied, “so I can get him tomorrow—“
“No. I can only hold him for an hour. And you can’t take him until he’s neutered, and the vet’s office won’t do that on the weekend anyway, so the soonest you could have him would be Monday. But you could come in tomorrow and do the adoption, then he’d go to the vet’s overnight and have the surgery first thing the next morning. Will that work for your schedule?”
“Perfectly,” I replied, leaving out the “you jackass” ending. My time with Covington was limited to five minutes of serious neck rubbing before I took off to meet my sister and head for Pasadena.

So Sunday morning finally arrives. The shelter is only open for three and a half hours on Sundays, but I am there at noon when they unlock the door and allow the public in. The day before, Mr. Jackass’s last words to me, in reply to my “I’ll be back tomorrow to adopt him,” were, “Just bring me the card off his cage tomorrow.” So I scurry back to Covington’s cage—only to find a gray cat looking up at me through the cage door. I search all the other cages in the room, my heart pounding. No Covington. I run to the larger cat room. Two small dogs are now in cages in the other cat room, but no Covington. He is nowhere to be found. I rush to the front desk.
“Can I help you?” a young woman asks. My words tumble out haphazardly as I try to explain that I’ve come to adopt the cat who is known as “Impound #25,” and that I’ve been there four days in a row bonding with him, but now he’s not there, and, I add, “now I’m frantic.”
She goes to the chair at her desk and as she swivels away from me and toward the computer she says, “Well, he must’ve gotten adopted, then, because I haven’t put anybody to sleep today.”
At first I think this is a horrifically bad joke, but then I realize she is not kidding. I’m suddenly aware that my stomach muscles are clenched, my face tight. If this were a movie, if I were Erin Brockovich, I would be saying something in reply like, “I’ll bet that’s one of the aspects of your job you take particular pleasure in, ma’am.” But I stand quietly at the counter, listening to the blood pulsing in my ears.
“Oh yes,” she finally says, after scrolling through countless files, “He was adopted by someone yesterday.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, “he’s been here since—“
Just then Mr. Jackass walks by. When he looks up, I ask if he remembers me coming in yesterday, asking about that certain black cat in the back.
“Oh yeah!” he says, enthusiastically. “Some people came in yesterday after you were here and they adopted him. He’s already gone off to the vet’s. But hey,” he adds in a patronizing tone, “we’ve got plenty of cats available for adoption.”
I make it to the parking lot before I start crying. I drive a block, then pull over, because the lenses of my glasses are fogged with tears, and I need to blow my nose.

What are the chances? The boy sat there in that cage all those months, and no one wanted him. I come along, fall in love with him, and someone snatches him out from under my nose. In my bitterness, my first thought (after ‘God hates me’) is that Murphy’s Law has once again come into play. But then I have to take some deep breaths and consider the absurdity of the ‘coincidence.’ And since I don’t believe in coincidences…. Maybe my daily visits were enough to give Covington hope, to bring him out of his despondency enough so that, when the next group of people strolled through, he was up and looking like a sweet, affectionate boy at the front of his cage. So someone got a really cool cat, and I want to believe that he ended up in a really loving home. Please, Universe, let that be so. And—when I can stop crying—I will find a companion for Sugie. But the experience has really made me think. We know that animals become despondent if they are left alone, without attention, over a long period of time (even a short period of time—some cats become depressed after only 72 hours alone). If my time spent with Covington perked him up enough for others to notice him, I wonder if just volunteering to spend time with some of the other cats could have the same result. Of course, if I go back to the Upland shelter, I’ll have to put up with Mr. Jackass. Maybe this can be a learning experience for him, too, I think. That’s me; ever the teacher, ever the optimist.

Covington One

On Wednesday afternoon, I finished reading Homer’s Odyssey, a soon-to-be-released memoir about author Gwen Cooper’s “wonder cat,” Homer. As a tiny kitten, Homer’s eyes were so badly infected that they had to be removed. Gwen’s vet asked her to adopt the little cat, and thus began an amazing relationship that has lasted over a decade. The book was a completely absorbing read, both for Cooper’s skilled writing and for the stories of Homer’s amazing courage in the face of a challenge he apparently still hasn’t realized he has.

Having recently lost my own domestic shorthair cat (black, like Homer), reading the book took me on quite an emotional journey. I miss my Boo every morning when I wake up and realize it is only Sugie on the bed with me. Oh, I don’t know what I’d do without her—my own courageous little black cat who suffered horribly at the hands of some less-than-human cretin before finding her way into my heart. But we have felt the loss of our beautiful boy cat for some months now. Mostly for me this happens at bedtime, when Boo is not there to push my journal away and climb into my lap. For Sugie, it is in the long hours she spends alone when I am at work. Yes, there are birds to watch from the windows, mice to stalk in the basement, and warm sun spots beneath the skylights in which to curl up and nap. But I know from the way she clings to me constantly after being alone all day that she needs someone to be here with her always. She and Boo were never the best of buddies; by the time Sug came to us, Boo had entered the winter of his life and was no longer interested in racing through the house, playing hide ‘n’ seek. But let there be danger, and the two cats would quickly find each other and huddle up, usually under the bed. And it was Sugie who watched over Boo in my absence as he became sicker and sicker, crawling under the bed to check on him and soothe his fretfulness by kissing his head.

I found myself inspired by the story of Homer’s inner strength (and that of his mom, the young Ms. Cooper who decided at one point in her life to move from South Beach, Florida to New York City—with all three of her cats, something I would never be able to summon the resolve to do). So, on Thursday, I headed down the mountain to run some errands, and I stopped by the Upland Animal Shelter.

When I adopted Sug, it was through a local rescue organization (HOPE), which contracts with Petsmart. The cats are kept in the store in small but clean quarters behind a large Plexiglas window. Some months after the death of Calpurnia, the little black spitfire my daughter had given me for my birthday sixteen years previously, I went looking for “a black cat” as a companion for Boo. I walked into Petsmart one Sunday afternoon, and there was "Sugar Plum"—the only black cat they had. “I want her,” I told the volunteer who was there to clean litter boxes and fill water bowls. All the other cats were beautiful feline specimens. Sug was short, overweight (not the case any longer), and missing half her tail. I had to undergo a grueling process to get her, including filling out a three-page application, submitting to a home inspection, and taking Boo to an unfamiliar vet for all manner of tests to make sure he wasn’t afflicted with any feline maladies (despite my offer to produce documentation of shots and annual check-ups from our regular vet). “Sugar Plum,” I asked her when I was finally allowed to bring her home, weeks after initially finding her, “are you worth it?” She was.

Someday soon, I hope, the City of Upland will follow the lead of neighboring Rancho Cucamonga and renovate its shelter facility. It seems hard to believe that it is the same stark place I visited in 1986 and again in 1987, adopting first our beautiful huskie/coyote mix, “Nikita,” and the next summer finding “Alex Haley,” the Rottweiler/Chow mix who was the best dog a girl could ever ask for. The Upland shelter is still far too small for the number of animals housed there, especially for the cats. According to the original design of the building, there was one room set aside for housing cats, with large cages along three of the four walls. But the shelter now houses so many cats that part of a laundry room has been used, with cages stacked one atop another against the wall that divides the laundry room from the dog kennels. Cats housed here are exposed to the constant barking of terrified, impounded dogs for hours on end.

When I first arrived at the shelter, I headed for the larger cat room after signing in. I was looking for a black cat, just as I had been when I went looking for Sug. It’s not that I have some affinity for black cats over others—I’m not prejudiced (though my kids will tell you otherwise). But I’ve learned from various shelter and rescue groups over the years that black cats (and black dogs, as well) are very hard to place. Yes, my bright, educated friends, there are still so many superstitious folks out there that black cats often languish in shelters for months if not years. No one wants them. HOPE took custody of Sugie when she was a year old, living on the street with three kittens. They’d had her for a year and a half when I came looking for her.
I assumed (silly me) that there might be a handful of black cats at the Upland shelter, and I could quickly narrow my search by finding a male. Ha. In the large cat room I discovered kittens, many, many little black kittens, mewling, tumbling, shoving their way to the front of the cage. For a moment, I was overwhelmed. How does one choose from a batch of identical black kittens, all with huge ears and wide eyes?
“Me.” I heard someone say.
I looked down. In a lower cage was a black and white kitten, somewhat older than the others, maybe twelve weeks to their eight.
“Hey, little guy,” I said.
“Me. Please. Me.” He put his front paws up on the cage door. I reached my finger in and scratched his neck. He mewed and purred, mewed and purred. Hmmm.
“I’ll be back,” I told him. I left the room and walked through the door marked “Cats and Dogs.”

Here were the cages where I’d found my beloved canines years ago. Off to the side, in the laundry room, small cat cages lined the walls. There were more black kittens here, a few gray ones, a gorgeous Siamese, a beautiful but sleepy orange tabby—and a young black male cat, lying on his side, one paw listlessly protruding through the bars of the cage. I stood in front of him, talking softly, stroking his paw. He wasn’t sleeping; his eyes were slits as he scrutinized me. Finally, I slid my fingers through the bars and stroked his forehead, then stopped. He stood up and pushed his face into the metal bars. Please pet me again. I did, reaching my whole hand through as far as I could to scratch his ears, his chin, his head as he rubbed his face against my fingers repeatedly, purring and occasionally mewing when I stopped.

It’s true what people say: When you find The One, you’ll just know. I knew. I looked at his card. “Available 1-10-09.” He’d been here, in this tiny metal cage, for seven months.
“I’ll be back,” I told him. I knew I couldn’t take him home on Thursday; I had a book signing to do on Friday, a reunion with a cousin on Saturday, but I would return home and start making preparations for him to join the family. Before I left, I stopped by the large cat room again to wash my hands. A young man and his lady were looking at kittens. The little black and white orphan stood with his paws on the cage door, talking to the girl.
“Hey babe,” the young man called from across the room, “look how pretty this one is!”
“I like this one,” she told him, never taking her eyes off Mr. B&W.
“Me. Please. Me,” the kitten said.
I left smiling, vowing to return the next day.

As I realize this post is rather long… and I also realize the value of a good cliffhanger… I will post Part II tomorrow….