Pre-empting Nature

The decision had been made, but we still had to wait until he was old enough to undergo the neutering operation. And so life went on at our house. Quint continued to give us joy and entertain us with his explorations and fascinations. As the holidays approached we had another decision to make. Not as serious a decision as surgery, but a decision nonetheless: Do we dare put up a Christmas tree with a curious and very active kitten in the house? The visions I had of tree decorations scattered and broken all over the living room were probably somewhat exaggerated, but I felt that some damage was inevitable if we put all those tempting little objects anywhere that Quint could reach them. What I needed was a solution that would allow us to enjoy some holiday decorations, but would keep Quint from getting himself in trouble. After much consideration, I came up with an idea that may well border on genius: I would decorate the ceiling! It was the perfect solution. Our living room has a high, beamed ceiling, so I strung bead garlands across the room and hung the glittery stuff ten feet in the air. It was perfect. Everybody won. Quint had a great holiday helping unwrap gifts and playing with the ribbons and the living room got a lovely, if unconventional holiday makeover. Actually, we liked the decorated ceiling so much that we left it like that. There was no reason not to.

We figured we'd wait until after the new year rolled around to take Quint in for his operation, so early in the morning of January 19, 2009, I loaded him back into the carrier, lugged him out to the car and drove over to Highland Park. We had an appointment, so when we got there he was admitted right away. For Quint it would be a strange, busy morning, but for me there was just the waiting until later in day when we would get the call to come and pick him up. If everything went okay, he would be ready to go home after 5:00 p.m.

A couple of hours later I got a call. The vet who was working on him had discovered in the course of the pre-surgery exam that Quint had a problem with his gums. Apparently, he was allergic to the plaque on his teeth and this was causing his gums be become inflamed. If the condition wasn't remedied or controlled it could mean that he would have to have all his teeth pulled. The first step was to do a thorough cleaning, and the vet wanted permission do the cleaning while he was knocked out for the neutering. Of course, I said, "Yes, do whatever you need to do." That's just what they did, cleaned his teeth and removed his, well, you know.

Carol took off from work early so we could both go over and pick Quint up to bring him home. We had a meeting with the vet when we got there and found out what our part of dealing with Quint's gum and tooth problem would be. We were told that if we could get the plaque under control and get his gum inflammation handled, he might grow out of his allergy. Our part of that was to brush his teeth to remove the plaque and start him on food that would help scrub the teeth and gums. In addition to the brushing, we would have to spread antibiotic gel on his gums after we had brushed away the plaque. We left the hospital with a bag of the new food, a tube of poultry-flavored toothpaste, and some liquid antibiotics that we were to give him twice a day while he healed from his surgery. We were warned that the liquid antibiotic medicine did not taste good and that Quint would, no doubt, not care for it at all. That turned out to be an understatement.

A Decision

It wasn't so much a matter of if but when to do it. I knew that before he got too much older, Quint would have to be neutered. Ouch! The very thought of it made me shiver. Sure, it's the right thing to do, and, yes, it will most likely prevent some sort of future behavior problems if it's done while he's young. The question is: Will he ever forgive me? Quint and I feel pretty much the same way about visits to the doctor. We both recognize the necessity in some extreme circumstances, but for the most part, we both believe that the fewer visits we make the better off we'll be, and that none at all would be the very best. I mean, what do we go to the doctor for, really? Well, we go to the doctor to find out why we don't feel well and to get some sort of remedy so that we do feel well. That seems simple enough, but we both believe that it's just better to feel well all the time and not see the doctor at all if possible. In Quint's case there wasn't anything wrong with him. He was feeling just fine. He was a normal male kitten, who, very soon, would grow up to be a normal male cat.

The problem is that normal male cats perform normal male cat activities, like finding normal female cats to help them make more cats, and marking their territory as they roam around looking for those female cats. Quint was destined to live the life of a pampered, happy, healthy, indoor cat, the keyword being "indoor." There are great many very good reasons to want your cat to be an indoor cat, rather than an outdoor, or indoor/outdoor cat. These reasons include: no fleas, no ticks, no cat fights, no being run over by a car, no gifts of recently dead small animals or birds, no expensive vet bills caused by any of the aforementioned hazards and especially no being run over by a car!! Indoor cats live much longer than outdoor cats, and can be perfectly happy doing so, given loving, attentive human companions. A neutered, indoor cat often never develops the undesireable marking behavior that would be normal for a non-neutered outdoor cat. All the logical reasons say that a neutered cat would make a happier indoor cat. Still, I wondered if he would ever forgive me when he came back from the veterinary hospital missing two of his favorite parts. We'd just have to wait and see and hope that he'd blame the vet and not me.

Learning to Listen

Some cats are pretty quiet, only making sounds when they are hungry, hurt, or angry. Jasmine, our dearly departed Abyssinian, had a very soft, hoarse meow sound which she made if she was hungry. The sound was so soft that sometimes she would open her mouth and nothing could be heard, though you knew she was trying. Another of our cats had a special sound she would make when she had caught something and was carrying it home to present it to us as a trophy. It was a rather muffled mew sound that escaped around the edges of whatever she might have in her mouth. That cat's name was Muss. We didn't name her, she was a hand-me-down cat from my sister-in-law. Muss had some quirks, oh yes, she had some quirks. One of them was that she liked to hunt, kill and bring home socks from our neighbor's clothesline. She would march proudly into the kitchen with her dead sock trophy in her mouth, all the while making the muffled mewing sound. She was very proud, and we were embarrassed. We would retrieve the poor dead socks and hang them over the fence between the backyards so that our neighbors could match them up with their missing mates. One year, we gave our neighbors a bag of clothes pins for Christmas. The number of their sock losses declined drastically once they started using them. I'm not sure that this explains where all the missing socks go, but it certainly explains a whole lot of the ones in Hollywood for several years.

Quint is the most talkative cat we've every had, and has the ability to produce quite a broad spectrum of sounds. He makes a sort of warbling chirp, very bird-like, that means "Hi, I'm here. What are you doing?" There's an annoyed sort of loud ROOWWWRRR that means "Hey!! Come here! There's something outside you should see!" Then there is the MEOW? with the question mark ending that says "Is it time to play?" Of course, there is the MEOW! with the exclamation point that means "Feed me now!" There is also the long plaintive Meeeoooowwww! which can mean "Okay, enough is enough, can you please play with me!" or just "Will someone please pay attention to me now?" It's his very own language and he combines the various sounds into what I would have to call sentences, short sentences, granted, but still definite intentional sentences which we try very hard to understand. He made one statement just a moment ago which I interpreted to mean, "Hey, Carol's trimming the plants outside the dining room window, could you ask her to come in and pet me?" To which I replied, "I know, I know, I waiting for her, too. We'll just have to be patient." I'm almost certain I got that one right. Some others we have to guess at.

Kittens are Fun Wrapped in Fur

It had been a long time since we'd had a kitten around the house and we'd forgotten what that was like. What a wonderful thing to rediscover! Kittens like to play -- all the time. They don't really need to sleep, although they do quite a lot of that, too, but playing is always the right thing to do. Anything that is small and not attached to anything else is a potential toy, which means that any small object that is no longer where Carol or I thought we had seen it last is probably somewhere on the floor, or under a couch. Though he wasn't very big, there would soon come a time where nothing was safe, no matter how high above the floor it rested. He was always testing his limits to see how high he could jump. He couldn't quite make it to the top of the kitchen counter yet, but you could see him thinking about it and biding his time and practicing his skills.

He soon found a favorite toy among those we offered him, a tiny mouse-shaped thing made from some sort of fur, probably rabbit. He batted that little thing all over the house. The kitchen soon became the favorite playground, probably because when Carol and I are home we spend quite a bit of time there cooking, washing dishes, making lunches in the morning, and dinner in the evening, plus that's where Quint's water and food dishes are. More and more the little mouse thing would wind up under the stove, which meant that either Carol or I had to get down on our hands and knees and poke a stick around under the stove to retrieve it. It got so bad that Quint was spending a good part of his day sitting in front of the stove waiting for someone to come and get his toy for him. I gave that problem a bit of thought and then contrived a sort of shield that would fit across the front of the stove to keep the toy out from under it. It was quite an effective solution, but sometime thereafter the tiny mouse thing disappeared and, though we searched, we have never been able to find it since, so we've had to move on to other less satisfactory toys. I suspect that someday, when we are doing a bit of spring cleaning, we will find the little mouse thing. I'm pretty certain that Quint will remember it and be very happy to have it to play with once again. But in the meantime, he was running and jumping and eating and sleeping and playing and growing stronger and longer. All of that was fun. It was fun for him to do and fun for us to watch. Being the clever kitten that he is, he found ways to get Carol and I to play with him. The best games are those where all three of us are crawling around on the kitchen floor chasing one of his toys. Yep, kittens are pure fun!

Realization

It's an oddity, but still a truth that you don't know what you are missing until you have some of it. Carol and I had a very nice life during the thirteen months from the time Jasmine died until the time that Quint arrived. We went to work, had some meals together when our schedules permitted, went for walks, talked about politics, and just generally enjoyed another year or so of married life, a year not so very different from the thirty-one years before it.

We have always divided up the chores so that each of us does what he or she does best. I like to cook, Carol doesn't mind cleaning up afterwards, and we both like to eat what I cook. I know how to keep the cars running, so I do what maintenance is needed. Carol likes things neat and tidy, so she cleans and dusts, though I've been known to help out with those kinds of chores on occasion. I have had a tendency to be less than thrifty, so Carol is in charge of the finances, though, lately, I've been helping with some parts of that job. Mostly, we have a fairly even division of labor and life runs on rather smoothly around our house, with only minor complaints, and those are easily remedied. But there was a hole in our lives, something missing, a emptiness that we didn't even know existed, didn't know, that is, until Quint arrived.

Now that he's here, the house is more alive. When we go off to work, we have someone else to say goodbye to, and someone to look forward to seeing when we arrive home. Before Quint, we'd arrive home from work and it was just a house, a place where we keep our stuff. Certainly, Carol and I enjoyed seeing each other at home, but our schedules didn't mesh very well at that time, so, often, Carol would get home when I was already at work and I would come home after she was already asleep. With Quint in the house, there is someone there to greet us as we walk up to the front door. We both look forward to getting home to be with Quint, and we always make sure we say goodbye to him when we leave. Usually, we assign him a job as we leave, such as house guard, bird watcher, or bug catcher, and we try to give him an approximate time when we'll be back. It's just common courtesy, and I believe that he appreciates knowing that he has a job and that we'll be coming back at some predictable time. We're pretty sure that he understands what we say to him. He's an important part of what makes our house a home and we want him to know that we appreciate all that he does to make our lives better. I think most of all we want him to know that, of all the things that he does, making the house feel alive is the thing he does the best.

A Check-Up and a Name

The second thing that crossed our minds, right after we realized how cute our new kitten was, was that we needed to get him to the veterinarian and have him checked out as soon as possible. After all, he'd been living in an abandoned house, so he was probably infested with fleas, worms, and all kinds of other horrors. The third thing that crossed our mind was that he needed a name. Now, please realize that I was still a bit reluctant to get too attached to this little guy until we found out how healthy he was, and that had to wait until Monday. In the meantime, we showed him where the litter box was and dug out a couple of toys that we had saved after Jasmine had died.

This formerly wild cat fit right into our household routine. He spent the weekend exploring every square inch of the house. He played, he followed us around, he took naps, he acted as if he had always lived with us. From that first day, he knew where his litter box was and it's purpose. He did everything right. He scratched on the scratching post, he purred when petted, he played with his toys and he made quite a amazing number of different sounds. He was perfect.

Carol and I talked about what sort of name to give this new kitten, but we couldn't come up with anything that seemed to fit. We agreed that it might be wise to give him a few days to settle in and see if something in his behavior would help to name him. So, we watched, and played and waited to see what sort of things he would do.

On Monday, Carol went off to work and I loaded up the new kitten and headed to the animal hospital. We've been going to Highland Park Animal Hospital for a great many years now and have always been happy with the treatment they've given to our cats. It's a bit of a drive, but they know us and we know them, and so, naturally, that's were we went. I had collected the appropriate samples before we left, so we could get a complete picture of our new cat's health. The kitten wasn't exactly happy about being in the cat carrier on the front seat of the car, but I've had cats who voiced their complaints at much higher volume and with much greater frequency, so the ride to the hospital wasn't too bad for either of us.

It was the most straightforward visit to the veterinarian I've ever experienced and one of the most pleasant as well. The kitten was easy to handle, the vet was pleasant and the results were all good news. His only problem was a few ear mites. After vaccinations for all the things kittens are susceptible to, a blood test and a topical treatment for ear mites, fleas and worms, I left our sample to be sent to the lab, wrote my check for the visit, loaded up the kitten and headed home with a clean bill of health. Hurray!! I called Carol on the way and gave her the good news. We, apparently had adopted the perfect cat. We got a call the next day stating that our sample had tested negative for any parasites.

Now that we knew that we had a healthy kitten, likely to live to a ripe old age, we could move forward with the naming. As we watched and played over the next couple of days, we realized that this kitten possessed all of the best qualities of every cat we'd ever know. He was affectionate, unafraid of strangers, playful, handsome and curious. He was also extremely photogenic, which I consider an essential characteristic in a cat. He really was the quintessential cat, and he named himself simply by being who he is. We call him Quint.

Homecoming

In April of 2007, our Abyssinian cat, Jasmine, was diagnosed with Diabetes. By the time we became aware of her condition, the damage had been done and it was too late to save her. I was devastated by her loss. I feel it to this day. It took a long time for me to even consider adopting another cat. Carol, my wife, is a bit more resilient than I and, after a few months, she began exploring with me the possibility of acquiring a new kitten. About a year had passed since Jasmine's demise before I began to feel more amenable to the idea, though I was in no way enthusiastic about it. I do love my wife, though, and will do almost anything to make her happy. So, if she had her heart set on adopting a cat, I knew that I would eventually agree. It wasn't long thereafter that we decided it might be time to begin exploring the possibility. Thus were let loose the hands of fate. We didn't know it yet, but there was a kitten on it's way into our home and our hearts.

Carol let it be know among friends and associates at her workplace that we might be in the market for a cat or kitten. Once you put an idea like that out into the universe, there is really no stopping it. One of her friends had an aunt who had a friend who had a cat to give away. The problem with that one was that the cat was currently living in Riverside, which is pretty far away. I suggested that perhaps we should look a bit closer to home, while keeping the Riverside cat as an option. Carol kept talking to people and the Riverside cat found someone else to adopt him.

Meanwhile, Leticia, or, Letty, as she likes to be called, was still seeking a home for the poor homeless kitten living in the abandoned house next door. Now, Letty has a boyfriend named Evan. Evan's mother is named Valerie. And Valerie is one of my wife, Carol's co-workers. You probably see where this is going by now. Valerie is also part of our extended family. She and Carol occasionally meet for lunch or go for a walk over the noon hour. On one of those occasions, the subject of cats came up and, as a result, Carol received some pictures of a small kitten in her e-mail. Of course, Carol had to share the story of this kitten with me and I agreed to look at the pictures. A few snapshots of a small grey and white cat arrived in my in-box. He looked perfect to me, so we set up a meeting with Letty, Evan and the kitty to see if we all got along. Letty wanted to make sure the kitten was going to a good home. Carol and I wanted to see how he would react to us and our house.

Letty and Evan arrived at our home on a Saturday morning carrying the little grey and white kitten. Carol and I introduced ourselves to Letty, we had already met Evan, and, after all the greetings were exchanged, we all sat down around the dining room table. Letty set the kitten down on the floor and he immediately jumped up onto the bookshelf that sits under the dining room window. We had always put a towel on the top of that bookshelf for Jasmine to sit on when she jumped up there to look out the window. In preparation for the new kitten's visit we had, once again, put the towel on the bookshelf. And there he was, the new kitten, previously an unknown quantity, never having been in our house before, sitting on that towel in that window. He looked around a moment and lay down facing the dining room so that he could watch us all. That was the moment that we all knew that this particular kitten had found his new home, and that a new adventure had begun for he and I and Carol.