Cats and (Briefly) College

I think I can say I’m a cat person. I’m also a dog person. I don’t discriminate. But this post is about cats. Mostly one, but there are others in there.

When I was in the fifth grade, I asked for a cat for my birthday. (I am pretty sure it was the fifth grade. It could have been the fourth grade. I am almost positive it wasn’t the third or sixth grade.) I got two! Some family friends had just had some kittens in their barn, so we took two of them. We named them Charlotte and Rosie. They were purdy cute.

     
Charlotte.                                                Rosie.

I remember waking up with them curled up on my face, or crammed up against me under the covers. They slept with me when I was sick on the couch. Charlotte used to sit on the back of my dad’s recliner and watch our fish tank (pictured). And then they got fleas.

Cats get fleas. It happens a lot. But it affected Rosie a little differently than it affected Charlotte. She developed a weird skin rash and started licking the fur and skin off her belly. She started laying in the litter box for hours (we think because it felt good on her skin). We finally had to take her to the vet to be put down. It was pretty sad. But to be honest, I was a kid and  she grossed me out.

We still had Charlotte though! And as a stupid kid, I would alternate between being really nice to her, and tormenting her. She spent a lot of time in the basement, sitting on the rafters in the last room. We would chase her down with pool noodles whenever we wanted to play with her. I think this was around the time she started to become less social. She would scurry across rooms, hurrying from my room upstairs, to her litter box in the basement, to her food in the laundry room. I don’t think she felt comfortable in open spaces – partly I am sure because of us chasing her around, and partly because she was terrified of my dad. I have no idea why. I think he had loud footsteps.

It was around this time – high school – that we brought Charlie into the house. Charlie was basically a stray. One of our neighbor’s many street cats had kittens. She moved the first one to a new place after they were a few weeks old, went back for Charlie, and forgot where she was going. We watched her walk around the backyard – Charlie dangling from her mouth – looking for that other kitten. So my mom decided he would be safer inside with us. (we found a few dead kittens scattered around the yard that summer. She was not a clever cat.)

Well, Charlotte took one look at this tiny yellow kitten, and nope’d right out of there. Hissed right in his face and walked into my bedroom. The thing was, Charlie loved spending time in my room. As he grew (and he grew a lot), he soon dwarfed Charlotte in size. Charlotte weighed about 7 pounds at this time. Charlie grew to about 20. So there were many nights that I was woken up by those two cats freaking out on my bed. Charlie would sleep by my feet and Charlotte would sleep up by my head – and they would often just sit and shriek at each other, then fling themselves around the room. It was super annoying.

But then Charlie became an outside cat – he was, after all, basically a stray, and never really got the hang of a litter box. He never really fit inside all that well. Plus he peed by all the doors all the time. So he went back outside – but he stayed in the yard. He was decidedly ours.

When I went to college, Charlotte stayed behind. No pets in the dorms. Apparently she just sat on the edge of my bed until I came home, months later. My parents had to move her food, water, and litter box into my room. There was basically a small quilt of cat fur on the foot-end of my bed which marked where she spent her time. She was a sad panda.

 

I started dating Mary early February of my sophomore year at Purdue. The next school year, my mom called me and told me that I should probably take my cat. My apartment at the time didn’t allow pets, but Mary’s did! So Charlotte went to live with Mary and her roommate. She acclimated pretty well to college life, and they were nice enough to keep her litter box in their living room. Or in their apartment at all. It’s not the nicest thing to keep in an apartment, especially in a living room. It’s just a box of poo.

Anyway, after we graduated, I went to live in the apartment above Mary’s parents’ garage for the summer, because we were getting married. Charlotte came with me. We thought we’d lost her while unpacking, but it turns out she had somehow squeezed herself through a 1-inch gap and was hiding underneath the washing machine. She came screaming out the first time I turned it on. We lived in that mini-house together for about three months, until Mary and I landed our teaching jobs in Lafayette.

So we all moved to Lafayette! We found an apartment right downtown, and Charlotte of course came with us. This time her litter box was right by the front door, but it was a hallway and when the door opened it was kind of behind it – so it was all good. It was a nice apartment, and Charlotte seemed very happy. She was starting to open up – actually coming into the living room when people were around! Though she did tend to keep to the top of the couch.

In the spring of 2010, we decided to buy a house. There was a tax credit up for grabs, and savings be damned! Charlotte came with, and I can honestly say she might be the happiest she’s ever been. For the first few weeks after moving, we’d find her hiding under the covers of our bed – just a small lump in the middle. Slowly, she adjusted to her new surroundings. I was able to pick her up and hold her for an actual amount of time for the first time in my entire life (and hers!). She started sitting on my lap. She started sitting on Mary’s lap. She sat on a friend’s lap last week! She is a changed animal. Maybe she is getting old (17 years is, I suppose, a lot for a cat).

But if we’re going to talk about cats, we have to talk some more about Charlie. Remember Charlie? The cat we brought in from the mean streets of Clayton, Indiana? Well, a couple of years after buying our house, my parents divorced and sold their house – and the yard went with it. As my mom was living in an apartment that didn’t allow pets, Charlie came to live with us. And we promptly lost him, because we didn’t know how to keep a cat from leaving the yard to find his actual home. Fortunately, I had put a collar on him before leaving him in the yard, and 8 days after he disappeared I received a phone call from someone who lived about 5 blocks away. Charlie was found! And after a night in the garage, he seemed content to stay.

Charlie was with us for a solid two years, during which he came into the house twice. On one of those visits, Charlotte decided to corner him in the bathroom and start a fight. Five pounds vs. twenty. Charlie went back outside, and Charlotte went to the vet to get the hole in her stomach stitched up. Could have been worse I suppose.

In May of 2013 he developed some pneumonia after being under anesthesia for a haircut (a yearly necessity – his hair developed terribly mats in the winter). Faced with thousands of dollars in medical bills, we were forced to put him down. He sat right between us when they did it – all shaved and sad looking. It broke me down - I sobbed all night. I didn’t think it would affect me so much – but he was something special. He was one of the nicest, biggest cats I have ever met. But hey – as my mom said, he had two extra years with us that he probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

So that’s my cat history. I did leave out the cat who walked into our house in Florida during a rainstorm and never left (we named him Cat), but if we’re being honest, I barely remember that cat. He did used to sleep with me in Florida, and he did ruin some brown shag carpet after we moved to Indiana. Good times.

Anyway, nowadays Charlotte has to compete with our kid – but to tell the truth, she seems to enjoy his torture. She likes to be around him, even if sometimes he gets a really tight grip on her tail or a chunk of skin. She is getting old (like I said, 17!), but I think she’s still got several good years to go.