Cats, People

 

Every Thursday morning, I get up early (for a man or 77} … 7:00 am to be exact … and drive to the Best Friends Animal Society Lifesaving Center in the Sugarhouse neighborhood of Salt Lake City for my shift doing Morning Cat Care.   Typically, there are between fifteen and thirty cats to take care of, which means clean their kennels, feed them, and spend some time with them, since many of them are traumatized to be in another rescue facility.  After all, there is no way for them to know that they have ended up in the best place they could, a facility that will give them medical care, food and a warm bed, and human attention until they can be adopted or placed in a foster home.   The cats I care for are typically a mix of new arrivals from other shelters with no room for them, cats that are too sick or agitated to be in foster or adopted, or … and these are the cats I want to talk about … cats that have been adopted then returned. Now, I am happy that most shelters will take back cats that, as their temporary owners say, haven’t worked out … after all. it’s better than simply dumping them somewhere or dropping them at the Humane Society.   The favorite excuses for returning adopted cats seem to be:  the cat bit me or scratched me, unprovoked; I discovered I’m allergic to cats; the cat required too much attention; or the cat was too aloof.

Going to the Cats

When I lived in California, I volunteered at a cat rescue at a local Petsmart that was managed by Cats in Need.   Once a week I would go in during the evening to clean cages, feed the felines their dinner and give them some human attention.   There were typically 6-10 cats ranging from kittens to seniors and the goal was to find them homes.   Adoption events were held every weekend.   I adopted my first cat from Cats in Need, a senior tuxedo named Claude that cancer took almost exactly a year after he come home with me.   You can read about him in Friend for a Year.  When we moved to Utah, I adopted another tuxedo, this one only two years old by the name of Tyson.  You can meet him here.  Like all the tuxedo cats I’ve known, Tyson has a lot of personality and loves … sometimes demands … attention.  I love him.

Going to the Dogs

Ten years or so ago, when I was a regular blogger, one of my readers told me that she liked the way I started out as if I were going to write about one thing, then pivoted to my real subject in the second paragraph.  As this post will show, I still do it, not because it is my signature style but because I am easily distracted by shiny words, interesting figures of speech and sidelights.   For example, this post set out to talk about how my wife Muri and I (who are cat people) ended up dog-sitting three dogs.  But when Going to the Dogs came up as a possible title, I was distracted by the origin of the saying, which according to theidiom.com originated as follows: As far back as the 1500s, bad or stale food that was not thought to be suitable for human consumption was thrown to the dogs. The expression caught on and expanded to include any person or thing that came to a bad end, was ruined, or looked terrible.   On the other hand, according to phrases.org.uk , if you speak of ‘the dogs’ in the UK you be assumed to be talking about greyhound racing, a popular pastime since the early 20th century.  For the roughly 4 million people/year who go to the track, ‘Going to the Dogs’ suggests a good adventure.  Hmm.  Not for the dogs.  Mistreatment of dogs in greyhound racing has led to the closing of many dog tracks in the US and we’ve all seen dog lovers walking their rescued greyhounds in the park.

On Sadness

I try to read one poem from Garrison Keillor’s poetry collection, Good Poems, every morning.  I open at random to a page and start reading.  I admit, at least half, I don’t get, nor do I know why they are good poems.    But this morning I opened to John Updike’s poem, Dogs Death and found myself crying.  It is an incredibly sad piece about a rescued dog that has an undetected illness.  Beyond the sadness of the poem, it reminded me of losing my beloved Tuxedo cat, Claude, to cancer 2 years ago.  But when I was still crying 5 minutes later, I knew I was about to relearn a lesson that I’ve relearned many times before:  If I continually stuff feelings of sadness, they will come out as anger or disinterest in life or in isolation.  And eventually find their way out as sorrow, triggered by some totally unrelated (and probably minor) sad something.  An old friend and psychologist once told me that the reason we like sad songs is that they allow us to indirectly process sadness we can’t (or won’t) deal with directly.  Obviously, sad poems work, too.

Meet Tyson

Yesterday, we picked up my new feline pal from his foster home. His name is Tyson and you might say he is a long distance rescue. When we lost my friend Claude to cancer last August, we decided it made sense to wait until we move to Utah before I found another kitty. I continued to work at the Cats in Need Rescue in Yorba Linda to get my kitty-time and even met a few new cats I’d have brought home, but I waited. You might say I mostly waited because I discovered a website, Petfinder, that allows you to search for pets to rescue in most cities. And so I began to search in the Greater Salt Lake area, where we were moving in December. It was mostly just for fun and to discover where there were rescues I might visit after we moved. That is until early November when I came across Tyson at the Friends of Community – Cat Rescue (FOCCR) in the Salt Lake suburb of Centerville. This was his profile.

Black and White (Cats)

If you’ve been coming around here for the last year, you know I am a cat lover, and the cat I loved most had to be put down because of cancer recently. I chose Claude … or rather he chose me … at the Yorba Linda Cats in Need Rescue, where I have volunteered for about a year and a half. At any given time, there are three to six cats staying at the rescue and dozens more being fostered in the homes of other volunteers. Adoption events are held every Saturday and Sunday. It is a joy to come in on my appointed evening and find any cat has been adopted but especially a cat that I like. But it is discouraging to see cats returned by people who adopted them, after promising to give them a forever home. And is sad to see cats that remain week after week, living in a cage.

Friend for a Year

Almost a year ago, a big tuxedo cat sauntered out of his crate at the Yorba Linda – Cats in Need rescue as I was doing my weekly stint caring for the kitties. He strolled right up to me purring and climbed on my lap. The tag on his crate said his name was Claude, so named because one of his previous owners had declawed him. It was almost as if he knew I was looking for an adult cat to rescue. Claude was a double-rescue who’d been rescued then returned by his supposed forever family. I liked him, a lot, but I’d been looking foe a glamour-cat like a Siamese or Himalayan. The next week he greeted me the same way and I made a mental note that if he was still at the rescue one more week, I’d bring him home. He was and I did.

Oils Again

Back in November of 2017 in Linseed Oil Memories, a post on my art blog, Artsy, about my Mom teaching me to oil paint while I was in high school, I wrote this: If I were asked, “What’s your favorite art medium?” I’d answer, “Oils.” Yet, I haven’t done it for years. Hoping to encourage my Inner Artist to try it again, I asked Santa for oil painting supplies and, with the help of my wife, Muri, I received a wooden artist’s box and easel, along with an assortment of paints and brushes. Yes even a bottle of linseed oil and a can of turpentine. But as November 2018 rolled around, my art supplies were still sitting unused in my office. I needed … if you’ll pardon the expression … a kick in the ass which came from my daughter, Amy. One November afternoon when we were talking on the phone, she asked, Would you want to paint watercolors of my dogs for me for Christmas? Although I paint quite a lot in watercolors, my work tends to be on the impressionistic side in part because I don’t have the patience to do a lot of details in watercolors. So, before I could think, I said, How about if I do them in oils? After all, I’d painted two kittens sixty years ago. It’s like riding a bike, right?

Rescue Cats

For several weeks now, I have been dealing (not very well) with a sprained foot and ankle.  It began with what seemed to be a minor sprain in the arch of my left foot and was aggravated when I had to lunge to catch a cat that was attempting to make a run for it.  I caught the cat but rolled my ankle painfully.  The cat’s name was Mittens, a resident at the Cats in Need cat rescue where I volunteer.   When I saw my doctor about my ankle, he asked how I hurt it.  He must be a cat lover because he said this: Some cats don’t want to be rescued.  It certainly would seem that way but the truth is, to a cat being locked in a cage in a strange place hardly seems like a rescue.

Meet Claude

For months now, I have been volunteering at Cats in Need, a local cat rescue. I clean cages and cat boxes, feed the cats and (best of all) I get to play with the temporary residents. I try to take a photo of every cat I meet there but I’ve probably missed a few. What is gratifying is to see cats, especially older cats, go home with a new owner. But I admit, in addition to helping the Cats in Need, I had an ulterior motive. A while back, my son’s cat, Elvis, was diagnosed with a massive tumor and had to be put down. While I got over the loss of Elvis, I was keeping an eye open at the rescue for my next cat, who would really be my first cat. The cats in my past have belonged to my mother and my kids. They are, in order, Bambi, Purry, Norman, Mr. B, Kitty, Mr. P and Elvis. Last Saturday, I brought home Claude, six year old Tuxedo.