Cat Tales

 

How does a responsible cat owner go from one cat to 20? Without one stray? It is a long tale.  It took a few generations to finally get the majority of the offspring sterilized, and now we are one happy family.

               MeiLi was born at a neighbor’s farm.  There was no attempt made there to limit the propagation of those cats, but attrition occurs naturally.  They seem to drift away, be killed, or adopted.  One had lost a leg in a conflict with a coyote.  Taking away one kitten would have no impact, one way or the other.  She was old enough to feed herself, so she came home with me and started her new life, the first kitten on my new farm.

               I already had one dog, Chula, curly-locked Maltese cross with bangs down to her snout.  Chula was already living in the proximity when I arrived, but she seemed abandoned.  She shared her flea infested yard with a black and white cat, which would prove fecund.  The bordering neighbor actually lived in town, and only came to the countryside to cultivate on the family land.  This friendly little dog had a great bald spot on her neck and shoulder.  I went online to find out what it could be, and learned that it was the effect of a flea infestation.  I bathed her and disinfected her, after which she drifted away from the neighbor’s yard towards my front door.  After some weeks, when the neighbor noticed her missing he was somewhat annoyed.  But after a couple of months of feeding and grooming her, when we showed up in our little village, he was embarrassed to hear folks’ reactions at her transformation. 

“Oh what a cute dog, where did you get him?”  This followed by raised eyebrows when I told them who she was. 

I took her to the veterinarian for spaying.

In time the one cat at the neighbor’s farm grew to four.  I would take kibble to mama and kittens, but this required me to cross over the fence to my neighbor’s yard.  He was not the friendliest of fellows, and not used to outsiders.  He thought I did not speak Spanish, in spite of the fact that all communication between us was indeed in Spanish.  Figure that one out.

I started putting kibble out, at a neutral spot on my land.  It didn’t take long before I was feeding about six strays.  They were of all colors, but mostly combinations of black, white and ginger.  One of these ginger males was particularly well-tempered and friendly.  Another was large and menacing, and hung back until I was out of sight.

I kept this up for the better part of a year.  In March I took a trip north to a cousin’s funeral, leaving the place in the hands of friends from town.   When I came back the cats were no longer coming around.

MeiLi and Chula got along just fine.  But one day I lost Chula when she rode with me to the big city.  It was Valentine’s Day, and someone couldn’t resist taking home this perfect gift, just sitting in the WalMart parking lot while I was inside shopping. As an aside, this is a perfect example of the Mexican culture I’ve discovered here, which I think of as socialist.  The taker would not think that he stole anything.  The concept of theft is a vague one, not likely to awaken conscience much less guilt.

I thought about sterilizing MeiLi, but she had gone through many cycles in heat and never conceived, so I thought she was sterile.  Once I closed her in a room for a few hours with a lovely ginger stray cat, in hopes they would hit it off and do the Thing.  Instead, they both were really bored and just waiting for the moment when I opened the door and let them out.

I kept advertising Chula, and learned a lot of the private rescue network in Durango, in the form of several Facebook groups.  I did not think I was ready for another dog.  However, after a few months someone brought me a new pup, whom I named Peanut.  She was a short-haired short-legged nondescript white dog. 

               When Peanut went into heat for the first time, and a few dogs started coming around wanting to have at her, I decided to limit her access.  I chose a nice black dog with longer legs, who belonged to my good neighbor Julian.  I drove them down the dirt road a couple miles away where they could have privacy.  They mated, and she started incubating the pups.  During the couple months of her gestation, the sire was killed while fighting some wild boars.  Julian then said he would like one of Peanut’s offspring, to remember his beloved dog.  That was Peanut’s one and only litter, three little pups, before she was sterilized.  Unfortunately, she was hit by a vehicle on our country road, and had to be put down.  Some months later the same thing happened to her son.  He was hit in the head and died instantly, in my arms.  This left only the one I gave Julian, and his identical twin sister adopted by Julian’s friend.

               As Peanut’s belly grew, I began noticing a growing bulge in MeiLi’s abdomen as well.  Two weeks after the pups were born, MeiLi dropped five beautiful kittens.  When they were old enough I started finding homes for them.  The oldest was about three months when I finally allowed him to go.  Soon I discovered that MeiLi was pregnant again, and she made it perfectly clear that our home was not a safe environment for her offspring. 

               One morning when she was sitting on the kitchen counter, and I noticed her abdomen was hard. While I was cleaning the house she slipped out, found a safe place and delivered her babies far from my grasp.  Search as I may, I could not find her nest.  She would come back for food, I would see the swollen mammaries, but never got a glimpse of the litter until after about two months.  Then one day I saw her walking past the back door with four kittens trailing behind.  This was the fist litter born in the wild, and I never was able to domesticate them.

               She had one more litter that year, before I managed to get her to the vet.  Those kittens were born in the house, MeiLi and I having restored our previous trust.  Those five were a joy to have in the house, and grew up feeling very comfortable in the house before I turned them out to live as outside cats on our three acres.  I put kibble out for them twice a day, when they would wind in and out of my legs, arch their backs to be petted, and in general show affection.   We live in the country, after all, with  woods, farms and stream nearby, providing plenty of prey for them to hunt.  But then these daughters began having litters. 

               In MeiLi’s second litter she bore one cat that had Siamese markings.  I was drawn to this cat, and wished for more offspring like this.  But she was a wild cat, not willing to come into the house.  She got pregnant.  I watched her grow, and she came to feed each day.  One day she looked ready to deliver, so that evening I placed a cage out back at the far edge of the farm, under shelter, where she could keep her litter safe.  Sure enough, the next morning when I went to fill the kibble bowls, there she was in the cage with her litter!  This was great for her, but not so for the other cats.  She chased them all away from the kibble bowls.  Therefore, and to strop molesting the other cats, I carried the cage into the house so she would have ready access to food and clean bedding, but after a week she decided she needed to leave.  She never could get comfortable.  Starting with MeiLi, the three-drawer dresser in the bedroom had become a favorite place for mother and kittens.  This little girl, however, went to extremes and moved her kittens to behind the drawers.  The slide on these drawers was tricky, and I could not simply pull out the drawer and release the kittens.  Man alive, had she found a safe hiding place!  I eventually, with help, freed the kittens and put them back in the cage and outside. That litter grew successfully, and produced one cat that had even more clearly Siamese markings.  It looked promising for developing a strain of mixed Siamese cats.

               Her second litter did not fare as well.  She insisted on hiding them in the woods.  One day the neighbor dogs came to have sport with the cats.  She saw them coming and must have made herself a decoy, to keep the kittens safely hidden.  They attacked her, tossed her around like a toy.  They broke her spine, and left her for dead.  I found her, but not the kittens which were a week or two old.  I took her into the house to clean her and assess the extent of the damage.  I saw she was beyond saving, so I made her comfortable and calm, so she could pass peacefully, which she did that night.  Those shared hours of agony are unforgettable. Apparently one, perhaps two, of the kittens survived, because months later I started seeing another Siamese-like cat.  It was quite like the one of the earlier litter, for which I mistook it until I saw a large black spot on its side that the other does not have.  A lot of my cats are ginger coloring.  A little after that siting I started noticing another odd ginger cat who stood with the other cats at feeding time, mewing for my attention while also running from me.  His face had unfamiliar white markings, and so I speculate that he and the Siamese are brothers.  Amazing to me, that after losing their mother so young they were able to survive.

               Two of MeiLi’s third litter got pregnant at the same time.  One of that litter was almost identical to MeiLi, a calico of black, orange, gray and white markings.  I called her Chloe.  Her sister was, for this group of cats, of unusual markings.  She tried to be a light grey tiger stripe, but also had a lot of white and a little ginger.  I called her Willy.  Having been born in the house, they were content when I welcomed them to give birth inside.  Chloe’s litter did not do so well.  One was still-born, and two others died in the first week.  Willy had just two kittens, who thrived.  I decided to collect some data, and so I weighed all of them regularly and kept close records on how they grew.  As I mentioned, two of those died but the four lived.    Of course they did not know who belonged to whom, and two cousins, both black, became fast friends.  Willy’s son has white markings like a tuxedo, a white chest and four white paws, so I call him Tuxedo shortened to Tuk.  They are inseparable, except that Tuk decided he wanted to be my inside cat.  He and I have forged that precious bond; he follows me everywhere.  But he also has to spend time daily with his brother, so he goes out daily.  Sometimes I don’t notice which cat comes home at night.  Sometimes in the day they both slip in and sleep, curled up together on the bord or sofa.  If I leave the front door open and fail to lock the screen door, my house is totally vulnerable to invasion because they all have learned how to dig their nails into the screen and pull trh3 door open.

               At the same time, maybe two weeks after Tuk was born, one of the pregnant wild ginger cats  (MeiLi’s second litter) gave birth.  It took me quite some time to find out where.  Eventually I followed her, and saw her climb the outside ladder to the roof.  There, in the small space under the brick base of the water tank, so deep in the shadows they were hard to see, were three little kittens.  One of them was a female who would acquire the name Dolly.

               Then began the program of sterilization.

               Trapping the animals and carrying them into town was the goal.  I went to the vet and asked if he had any traps to lend.  He did, but none were cat-sized.  He had no nets, nor anything else to contribute.  I went online, and for about a hundred bucks I was able to get a trap. 

               The more domesticated cats were the easiest to catch, though even they were wary of being picked up and held.  By twos and threes, each Tuesday I delivered cats to the vet for sterilizing.  This is still rural Mexico, where veterinary work tends towards large animals.  One of the first female was delivered back to me so dosed up with anesthesia that she was drugged until the next dawn.  After that I reminded the vet to cut back on the drugs.  The vet, the only one in town and having a reputation for being expensive, got on board with the program.  He gave me amazing deals on the price of the operations.  Whereas one spay would cost 800 pesos and a neutering 400 pesos, he would do three of mixed gender for 1000 pesos, for example.

               Some of the wilder cats were more difficult to catch.  If I set and baited the trap, there was no way I could single out a wild one to spring the trap.  One of the rooftop cats, Dolly, was unapproachable.  Yet we built up a bond of some sort, because when she got pregnant and was ready to deliver, she came to me.  Not with the first litter, however. 

There is an unfinished house in the back of the property, with one window blown out.  For the first litter she chose this location.  After some weeks I thought I should bring some food and water to her for them, so I approached the window to see if she was visible.  Instead, I found a kitten outside, a few feet from the window, gasping its last breath.  I found another at the foot of a nopal tree.  He was so frozen with terror that I was able to pick him up.  Then I noticed, at eye height, another kitten clinging to the fork of another nopal tree.  I was able to gather him up, and these two came to my house for care.  They didn’t stay many days, but the experience was enough for the mother, Dolly, to understand.  I was not her worst danger.

I made an appointment with the vet to bring Tuk for neutering the following day.  I brought him in the morning, and picked him up around 5 pm. He was heavily sedated.  Usually the males need only mild sedation and a local at the hinder parts.  They rebound quickly by the end of day.  I was concerned when Tuk was still limp and deeply asleep when I picked him up.  He stayed that way through the night.  I looked at the wounds, and discovered that he had a sliced abdomen, as well as stitches near the anus.  An idiot apprentice technician had at first thought he was operating on a female.

A few months later, Dolly gave birth to her second litter I know not where.  A day or two later I found her and her litter curled up on the dirt of a fallow clay bowl, in a sheltered corner of my patio.  I lifted the kittens and brought them inside, and she followed uncomplainingly.  I installed them in that favorite cage, covered by a sheet for privacy.  Over the next month I was amused by the game we played. She would carry them outside by the cat door, which is in one of the bedroom windows.  I would fetch them and bring them back in.  She never took them far.  She was fast as lightening.  One time I was in the house, and heard the noise of the swinging metal cat door.  I came running, and by then she had the third kitten in her mouth and slipped through my fingers.  I kept the fourth kitten with me for another few days, and then she brought them all back inside.  Eventually, however, they went outside to stay. By this time they were eating kibble, and ready to start learning how to live outside and fend for themselves.  Still, it can be brutal out there, and I remained concerned.  I set up a feeding station in the empty house, and put their favorite bed there.  I swept up enough dust to make a litter pile for them.  While they were with me, I gave them names.  I don’t usually do that with the undomesticated ones, but these were just so cute and willing to be held.  They became Joe, Moe and Curly, and Patches.  The three were ginger cats, and the female was a mostly black calico.  Joe and Moe are undistinguishable, being purely ginger with no white markings.  I carried them to their new shelter, and mom came on her own steam.

Once Dolly had come into the house at postpartum, I carried her to the vet.  I was a little concerned at leaving the two-day old kittens without milk and warmth for twelve hours, but it had to be done.  It turned out fine.  Mother did not hate me, and that will be her last litter.  It remains to be seen if I will be able to capture the four babes a couple of months from now for their trip to the vet.

At the height of the season of these tales, I counted 20 cats eating at the trough.  The number gradually diminished, as the older cats drifted away.  I never forgot MeiLi, the Matriarch, and wondered how and where she was.  One time, about a year later, I thought I had double vision.  I was at the feeding spot, having just filled the bowls.  I was leaning down, and as I lifted my head I saw Chloe twice. I was actually seeing mother and daughter.  It was MeiLi, making a visit.  Maybe she wondered how I was doing, too.  It was joyful to see her again, alive and well.  The visit was brief, momentary, and then she was gone.  I have not seen her since.