The Pondering Absurdist

I want to write about my girls, but I also want to give a brief history of me and cats first, though. So I will write this in (at least) two posts, as I don’t think single post blogs that are pages and pages long are the norm.

During my teen years my parents ended up adopting a couple of cats, and one of them had a litter of kittens, so we ended up with more. During previous marriages I have either “married into” a cat’s life, or we adopted one or more together.

In 2014 my twenty years of working in front of a computer had finally caught up with me. This resulted in my needing to take advantage of the FMLA and undergo bilateral Carpal Tunnel Release surgery (I had both wrists operated on to cut the ligaments covering my carpal tunnels). I was not supposed to use the “cut wrist” while it was healing, so I had them done one at a time, in succession. While I was out on leave I slept in every day, watched a lot of TV, and surfed the Internet a bit as well. I also started to think that it would be a good time for me to get a cat. I had not had one since my divorce in 2007 and leaving my ex-wife behind in Delaware with the cats (she had brought cats into the relationship). I had been single for those several years, and living in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house alone for the past few.

I’ve always loved animals, and have had pets most of my life, both cats and dogs when I was a child. As an adult I prefer cats over dogs for a few reasons. With a dog you need to walk it daily, not only for exercise, but so that it can eliminate its bowels (to use a nice way of saying it). With a cat, you give it a litter box and voila!… no need to take it for a walk. With a dog, depending on what you feed it (i.e. “normal” dog food), they tend to start to smell funky after a while and require a bath. With a cat, for the most part they tend to be fastidious and take their own “spit bath” whenever they feel the urge. With a dog you need to have someone watch it, either in your house or in a kennel, if you plan to leave the house for over a day. With a cat, you can just provide a full, clean litter box (or a couple of them) and enough food and water to last a few days… and they pretty much take care of themselves while you’re gone. Vacation?… no problem! I do love dogs, too, but as a pet owner I prefer cats because I’m selfish that way.

In 2014 I started looking (online/website) at the cats available for adoption at one of the city’s animal shelters. I saw one that I thought was beautiful. She was supposed to be around 1½ years old, and was white and gray with big blue eyes. I went down there as soon as I could, visited with her for a little while, then paid my $50 and took her home. At the pound they had named her “Yoko Ono.” When I got her home I said “Umm, no. We’re not naming you after the shrew who broke up the Beatles.” So I changed her name to something that sounded similar, “Coco.” She was very timid and scared of the big guy who had brought her home. She peed on the carpet the first night, never leaving the spot where she had laid to hide. I didn’t get mad at her or yell at her, I just bought some Resolve, cleaned the carpet, and moved her to the tile bathroom (where I should have put her in the first place). After a week or so in the bathroom, with me visiting her often, she came to realize that I wasn’t going to hurt her. Soon she became curious, and I let her venture out of the bathroom and into the rest of the house again. After that, things were good. She ate, she played, she looked out the windows, and she only pooped on my bed a couple of times (over the next several years), and only when she was mad at me. Hey, I must have done something to deserve it, right?

After about a year or so, I started to feel guilty. Here I had gotten this cat, yet I was working at least 8 hours per day, sometimes more, and away from the house we shared. Then another 8 hours or so I was asleep. I started to think that maybe she was lonely and needed a playmate. So… I started looking on animal shelter websites again, for another little darling to share our lives with. I found one who was jet black with yellow eyes (after searching later, I found out she was a Bombay). She was still a small kitten, about 6 weeks old or so, and had apparently lived outdoors before ending up at the shelter. The woman at the shelter had named her “Tuesday” (why? because she had found her on a Tuesday, of course). Her new name became Onyx, my little black gem (little black devil was more like it).

I kept them separated at first, as recommended. Then slowly introduced them. Coco didn’t seem to care about Onyx so much, she just wanted to continue on with the way things had been. Onyx, on the other hand, seemed rabid to be in the same house with Coco. I thought that they would eventually become friends and get along, living my ideal… Coco and her new playmate. After the weaning period, leaving Onyx in her own small room for a week or two, I started to let them enjoy the house together. I could see that Onyx was still aggressive towards Coco, but again, I thought they would get along eventually. I started leaving them alone in the house when I went to work. Then sometimes I would come home and find that Coco had scratches all over her face, or she was hiding somewhere. After several months it got to the point where I contacted the woman I had gotten her from and asked if there was a possibility of returning her. I felt bad because I had committed to something, and I didn’t want to “reject” Onyx. The woman hemmed and hawed, and I could tell she didn’t want to do it. Finally, I just sucked it up and kept both of them. However, I decided to build a floor to ceiling, see-thru “fence” (gate) in the hallway to separate the front of the house from the back of the house. Then I started keeping one cat on each side of the gate. They could look at each other through the slats if they wanted to, but Onyx could not get right up in Coco’s face and scratch the hell out of her with her claws. Coco never voluntarily walked up to the gate to look at Onyx, but anytime Coco was visible, Onyx was right there at the gate, as if she was hunting prey.

At first, I traded their spaces each week, moving the one in the back of the house to the front, litter box and all, and vice versa. After many weeks, I gave up on that and just kept Onyx in the front of the house and Coco in the back. My reason was partly selfish. Whenever Onyx was in the back, she would jump on my bed during the night and either meow or play with my feet (“play” being with teeth and claws), waking me up. Coco did neither.

So, that was my life until 2017, when I foolishly started watching a show called “90 day Fiancée.” Soon I was thinking “hey, I could do that… I could have a Russian bride.” A little over a year and several thousand dollars later, I did, indeed, have a Russian bride. She and her daughter moved immediately into my house when they arrived. Both of the cats had to get used to two more human occupants sharing their space. This was one of those aforementioned times when Coco left me a gift, on “her” side of the bed.

A few years later (in 2023), after a huge mistake on my part, my wife decided that she and her daughter needed to move out of the house and into their own place, with eventual plans for divorce. They had both grown very fond of Onyx and Coco, and wanted to take both of them when they left (even though they were MY cats from the start). I let them take them both away from me, leaving me alone in the house again. I thought that maybe it was for the best, and I could always get more cat(s) if I wanted to. After a few months, my wife let me know that Coco didn’t seem “normal,” like she was sick or something. She thought that Coco might be better off back at her “home” of 9+ years. Of course I took her back; she was my baby. The only problem was, after a visit to the Veterinarian we found out that Coco’s kidneys were failing. Sadly, a couple of months later, on August 23 of 2023, Coco passed while sleeping in my closet. She had only lived about 10 years or so, way too early for a cat to go. We were all devastated, of course.

Onyx remains with my wife (yes, still, but only legally) and stepdaughter in their new place. They adopted another cat that kept showing up and looking for food where my stepdaughter works. That cat is bigger and less timid, so while Onyx doesn’t necessarily “like” sharing the space with her, she puts up with it without attacking the other cat like she did with Coco.

A couple of months after Coco passed, I decided that I wanted to share my space with two more cats. I planned to adopt them TOGETHER, at the same age, and preferably from the same litter. I did not want to build the Berlin Wall in my house again!

Well, this post should have been done before my previous post “The Usual Suspects,” but sometimes my mind works that way. If you haven’t read that post yet, maybe go take a gander at it before continuing on to Part 2 of “My Three Girls,” coming soon.

PA