The Cat Who Forgot Where She Lived

There really was no way for anyone but Carol and I and our friends to know how old Müss was, no one could tell by looking at her. You certainly couldn't judge her age by her actions. She was as lively and eccentric at 19 as she had been at 3. Just because she no longer hunted and captured socks, or slept in trees, didn't mean she had settled down to a dignified and sedate old age. No, Müss must have gotten bored, or decided she hadn't done enough with her life. Whatever her reasons, she took to visiting the neighbors with a mind to having a bit of a slumber party at their house.

She would wander off into one of the neighbors' yards and seemly forget to come home. At suppertime, we would have to go walking around calling for her. We'd find her in someone else's yard, or asleep on someone else's porch. She'd be fine for a couple of days and then she would disappear again. At one point, though we looked and looked and called and called, we just weren't able to find her. We suspected that a coyote had gotten her, or a car, but we never really gave up looking for her. After a couple of weeks, though, it seemed likely to us that she was gone for good. She certainly wasn't anywhere we could find her.

For some reason or another, in a conversation with one of the neighbors, the subject of cats came up. This neighbor said that a young cat had just wandered into her house and made herself at home. Upon hearing a description of the cat, we knew it was Müss. Apparently, she had decided she needed a new home, or forgotten that she already had one, and had found our neighbor's house to be a great place to live. We disagreed, of course. We gathered her up, took her home, and closed up the cat door.

She was quite content to be an indoor cat from then on. Eventually she went deaf, so someone had to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention when it was time for breakfast or supper. In her last year she began having occasional convulsions. Whenever she had them and I was with her, I would hold her and tell her that it wasn't time for her to go just yet. She was in her 20th year the day I came home and found her on the floor, cold and stiff. It was the one time I wasn't there to tell her not to go. I put her little body in a shoe box and put the box in the freezer. Then I sat and cried for awhile.

I just couldn't bear the thought of having her little body in the freezer, though, so I called a friend who works for a veterinary hospital and made arrangements to bring Müss's body to her that evening. I had a very hard time talking to my friend as I made the arrangements and it was very hard to drive the 20 miles or so to where the hospital was, the tears made it very difficult to see where I was going. Still, it was better to take her body to a place where it could be properly disposed of, and I felt a bit better after I left the hospital and drove back home. It was a difficult evening, but by the next morning I was at least able to talk about her without breaking down.

It's been quite a few years now since we lost Müss. I still miss her, of course.
She is a cat of legend now, climber of telephone poles, mighty sock hunter, sleeper in trees, adventuress. Her adventures make for wonderful stories that we can tell to our fellow cat lovers as we talk about our beloved pets past and present, and, thus, she lives on in our memories and in the stories we tell. I take some comfort in that.

The Cat Who Slept In Trees

Müss, after she passed through her infamous sock-hunting phase, began sleeping on a variety of perches at various heights from the ground -- table tops, dressers, shelves and, eventually, trees. She started with Edges. Edges: as in as close as possible to the edge of any horizontal surface on which she happened to decide was a perfect napping place. If she was on the table, where she wasn't supposed to be, she would lay right along the outside edge. If on the bed, she would carefully position herself on the very edge of the mattress. Occasionally, she would forget where she was and fall over that very precarious edge. Whenever that happened, her body language said it was obviously the table's fault or the bed's fault that she had ended up on the floor. She would sit where she had landed and lick her fur back into order, all the while radiating indignation at the offending object. She would then avoid that particular place for a time and find some other napping place that she considered more trustworthy.

When I would see her laying on the edges of things around the house, I would point out to her the safer middle area and encourage her to move inward.

"Edge, edge, middle," I said, as I pointed to those places.

She didn't listen. Müss was a very stubborn cat.

During this Napping Dangerously period, we had to move from the house in Hollywood to our present location in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silverlake. There were, in addition to the usual furnishings inside the house, several small trees on the property. There was a spectacular Hibiscus in the yard, just off the front porch. It featured quite lovely leaves and flowers on the outside and a tangled network of bare branches inside. As soon as she adjusted to her new house and yard, Müss decided that the Hibiscus tree was the perfect spot for napping. We would often find her asleep inside the web of branches in that tree. She paid little attention to the sparrows that perched on branches nearby or to the hummingbirds that whirred from flower to flower just a few feet from her perch. At first she would sleep in branches five feet or more from the ground, but as she inevitably found herself rudely awakened by crashing through the foliage to the grass below, she wisely chose lower and lower branches for her arboreal napping. After she had fallen off all of the accessible napping spots in that tree, she'd give one of the other trees a try, always progressing from a high perch to a lower one until that tree has also proven completely unreliable.

Eventually, she retired completely from naps in the trees and chose indoor places that were softer and closer to the ground. In spite of, or, perhaps because of, her penchant for high-risk napping places and other sorts of adventures, Müss went on to live with and entertain us for a very long time -- twenty years, which is very old for a cat. The day she lay down for her last nap was one of the most difficult days of my life. Even though she turned rather grouchy in her later years, her determination and her spirit of adventure never left her. Those were the characteristics that made her unique. In addition to forgetting where she was while she was napping, later in life, she sometimes forgot where she lived. But that's another story.

Müss

When Carol and I first moved to Los Angeles, we rented a room from her sister, Terry. Part of Terry's household included three cats - Max, Müss and Scooter. When Terry moved away, we took over the house and adopted the three cats. The two boys, Max and Scooter, were the same age. Müss, being their mother, was a little older. The two boys were quite normal indoor/outdoor neutered male cats. Müss, by contrast, had a few little quirks. The most remarkable of these was her affinity for socks. Not our socks, please note, but the neighbors' socks. When it was laundry day next door, the clean, wet stocks would be hung on the line to dry. Once they were dry, Müss would slink over and nab a few off the line and carry them home. She would march triumphantly into the house with a nice clean, dry sock in her mouth, mewing her little heart out to let us know that she had once again successfully brought down her prey. Yes, she would leap up from the ground and drag those socks right down off the neighbor's clothes line. I guess she thought they were alive, waving there in the gentle breeze.

We would praise her when she brought one home, telling her what a mighty hunter she was, and then we would take the sock and hang it over the fence between the two houses for the neighbors to retrieve. We thought that this was a pretty clever solution to a rather embarrassing problem and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.

What we didn't realize was that the socks Müss was presenting to us were just a small percentage of those she was actually capturing. One day, the sink in the kitchen became clogged. I tried to unclog it from above but to no avail, so I decided to crawl under the house to see if there might be a clean-out below the floor that would allow me to clear the blockage and get the drain flowing again. With my trusty pipe wrench and a flashlight I proceeded to crawl under the house. That's when I discovered the true extent of Müss's sock predation. I would estimate that there were at least 100 socks on the ground under the house, big ones, small ones, white ones, black ones, argyles and even baby socks. I was horrified. I left the socks there under the house, but that Christmas we gave the neighbors a large bag of clothes pins to use to keep their laundry on the line where it belonged. Once they started using the clothes pins, the sock ravaging stopped and Müss found other ways to amuse herself.

A few years later, after we moved from that house, Müss took up sleeping in trees, but that's another story for another day.

The Hand-Me-Down Cat

Some fourteen or so years ago, my nephew pulled into the driveway of my mother and father-in-law's house on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. In the back of his vehicle, nestled among the suitcases and other belongings, was a momma cat and her kittens. After a few days stay, it was time for him to load the car and continue on his trip. When it came time to put the cats back in the car, one little black kitten refused to go. Rather than force the kitten into the car, my nephew left him there in Boulder. Bob and Ardis, my mother and father-in-law, had taken a liking to the little cat and he to them, so they were more than willing to adopt him. They named him Ebony.

You'd think a cat named "Ebony" would be black and, in most cases, you'd be right. This Ebony, though, wasn't exactly black. Each hair of his seemingly black fur is actually white about half way up its length. It doesn't show unless you "rub him the wrong way." Then you can see the underlying white. In bright light, he has brown spots on his fur like a panther. He's not a very big cat and he has always been rather thing, almost boney, like a cat version of a fashion model.

Ebony lived quite contently for a few years in the house in Boulder. Bob and Ardis eventually sold their home in there and moved to Temecula, California so as to be nearer to their grown children and grandchildren, most of whom lived in the Los Angeles area. From there they moved to Laguna Woods and finally to Verdugo City where they rented a small apartment. Ebony adapted to all the changes and was a good companion to Bob and Ardis through the years.

While living at the Verdugo City apartment, Ebony made friends with another cat, Lovey, who lived down the hall. He would visit Lovey quite often and sometimes stay for dinner. When Bob and Ardis would travel, Ebony would stay with Lovey and her human, Murel. When first Ardis and then Bob passed away in 2008, Ebony went to live full-time with Lovey and Murel, and when Lovey and Murel moved to Long Beach, Ebony went with them. Carol and I received periodic reports from Long Beach that Ebony and Murel and Lovey were getting along just fine.

A few days ago, we got a call. The situation in Long Beach had changed and Ebony could no longer stay there. Would Carol and I be able to take him? Of course Carol immediately said, "Yes, of course, he's family." I thought about it for awhile, after she told me about the call, and decided that Quint would be up to the task of integrating another cat into our little family and that Hedge would go along with whatever Quint decided to do, so I agreed. We'd already made Hedge a part of the family, why not Ebony?

On Saturday morning, Ebony arrived at our door, safely contained in his carrier. We set the carrier down in the living room. Quint trotted in, looked into the carrier, gave Ebony a couple of sniffs, stepped back a bit and started grooming himself. There was no growling and no hissing, so I figured it would be okay. I took Ebony into the bathroom where we had already made up a temporary litter box and let him out of his carrier so that he could take care of anything that might be necessary after his trip up from Long Beach. A little while later we loaded Ebony into our own carrier and drove to the veterinary hospital to have him checked over. Since we didn't have an appointment, we discovered that the waiting time was upwards of an hour, so we rescheduled for the following Monday with an official appointment.

We took Ebony back home and left him in the carrier for awhile again. Since there didn't seem to be any undesirable or unfriendly actions occurring on the part of any of the cats, we decided to let him out. Ebony explored a bit and then hid under a couch for awhile. He would venture out from time to time to explore different areas of the house, and then retreat back to his hideout. At one point he hissed at Quint, but Quint knows that he is the head cat so he held his ground but didn't otherwise react. Hedge did a bit of hissing back and then retired, temporarily, from the game. Still no fights, though. And so it went for the first day.

By the second day, Ebony had found a favorite spot to nap in the sun and Quint and Hedge didn't seem to mind very much, though it was one of their favorite spots, too. For now, I guess we'll have to see how it goes, but I predict that, given how good-natured Quint and Hedge are, Ebony will learn to get along and ultimately will become a contributing member of the group. Of course, Carol and I will do whatever we can to help make that happen.

So, to Ebony: Welcome to your new home.

My Greeting Committee

I'm working swing shift right now which means I get home, usually, between midnight and 1:00 p.m. I try to be as quiet as I can when I pull the car into the driveway, but the devices attached to the ends of the exhaust pipes on my dune buggy, though they look like mufflers, don't really quiet the exhaust sound so much as deepen and mellow it. The noise only bothers one of my neighbors, but then all noise bothers him. I discovered some time ago that, for some reason, my very existence bothers him. Since nothing I do will make him happy, I've stopped trying.

After I get the car parked, I grab all of the stuff - books, drawing pads, lunch box, pencils - that I take to work to keep me from succumbing to terminal boredom, and I trudge up the driveway to the front door. As I unlock to door and push it open, I'm nearly always greeted by a "thump" from somewhere in the house and then the "jingle" of the bell on Quint's collar as he trots through the house to find me.

"Hello, Big Guy," I say as I put my bags and boxes down and hang up my coat. I pick up the book bag and take it into my office. Then I drop my lunch box off on the kitchen counter. Finally, with both hands free, I can reach down and scritch Quint behind the ears as he rolls around on the kitchen rug.

He's not just there to say hello, though. He's on a mission, because when I get home after work it's Tooth Brushing Time. I pick him up and cradle him along my left arm as I walk over to the dining room table. (Geez, the house sounds huge when I tell the story, but all these places are just a few steps apart.) I sit down in my chair at the table where I keep the little tray that holds Quint's tooth brush, poultry-flavored toothpaste and antibiotic ointment (for his gums). As I brush his teeth, Hedge usually shows up and begins purring and rubbing against by legs. There's no "thump" when Hedge jumps down from wherever he might have been sleeping. He's very light on his feet, but he has a bell on his collar, too, so I can hear him coming. Once I've finished with Quint's teeth, I brush his head for awhile. He likes that. Hedge will let me brush him a bit as he walks around and around by legs, but as soon as Quint jumps down, Hedge follows him to wherever he might be going.

That's my nightly ritual and I do look forward to it. It always makes me smile and I can't think of a better way to end my day.

Shadow

I realized the other day that we probably should have named Hedge "Shadow." Not that "Hedge" isn't a good name for the little guy, but, in reality, he was living under a fern when he first appeared in our yard. Of course, "Fern" is a terrible name for a cat. Carnivores should not be named after plants. "Shadow," though, would have been a perfect, if trite, name for him. Not so much because he's a black cat with the ability to disappear at will, but more because of the way he mirrors whatever Quint is doing. When I saw them the other day, they were both asleep on the bed in almost exactly the same position, parallel to each other and lined up equidistant from the sides of the mattress. I quietly exited the room and grabbed my camera from the office so that I could capture the moment. They both awoke at the snap of the shutter and in a wonderfully synchronized movement looked up to see what I was doing.

Hedge eats when Quint eats, naps when Quint naps, and always is ready to play, even when Quint would rather not. However, Hedge isn't always the shadow, sometimes he the invisible presence waiting to pounce as Quint walks by. Hedge is also more inclined to play with the multitude of cat toys available to him, whereas Quint's interest in all the dead toys waned once he got Hedge to play with.

But then, Quint has always preferred to play with his housemates rather than with a toy. Quint is more of a social critter and always very curious about what is going on around him. So curious and playful that he makes it quite difficult for Carol to get anything done around the house. He particularly likes to help her wrap gifts and write in the cards. He enjoys making his mark on each envelope by perforating one or more of the corners with his teeth. Quint also seems to enjoy watching movies with us, or at least being in the room while the movie is playing. He doesn't really watch. What he does is lie down on the couch next to Carol and take a nap while we watch.

Hedge, in shadow mode, will sometimes join the movie audience briefly, but when he discovers that Quint is napping and not ready to play, he usually finds something else to do on his own. Quint continues to be a good influence on the little black cat and so Hedge is finding himself more and more inclined to be in the company of his humans. So much so, that, of late, I am able to scoop him up and trim his claws regularly. Hedge's claws grow into needle sharp little hooks that he has trouble controlling. If I don't keep them trimmed, the poor guy gets hooked on the blankets and towels that we have put on all of the furniture to keep the cat hair deposits at a minimum. A cat's natural reaction to getting a claw hooked in something is to pull back against it, which drives the claw further into whatever it is he's grabbed. I'm sure this works very well on mice and birds when you are trying to catch and eat them, but having a blanket attached to your foot makes it difficult to move around easily, so I try to keep his claws trimmed to a manageable length.

We're thoroughly enjoying the interaction of the two animals, and since I'm not at home as much I used to be, I'm glad they have each other as playmates. It's also rather rewarding to see Hedge's continuing evolution from recluse to contributing group member. It's a lot more fun having him around when we get to interact with him, too.

Adjustments

After my long stretch of unemployment, I have finally returned to the ranks of the employed, or the over-employed in this case. Carol and I and the cats are still trying to figure out how to deal with my swing-shift schedule. We might have been able to get a workable routine established had it not been for the understaffing problem that exists at my new jobsite. In the last few weeks, I've gone from bored at home to 52 hours my first week, 56 hours my second week and another 56 hours this week. Not that I'm not happy to have an income, but it would have been a bit better to ease into the world of employment instead of being swept into 6 and 7 day weeks and 12 hours days all at once.

All my well-established routines are no longer possible. Brushing Quint's teeth now sometimes happens at 12:30 a.m. or even 4:30 a.m. He doesn't seem to mind. If he's around after lunch, sometimes that's when the brushing happens. Most mornings I still arise between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. and Hedge still looks for me at that hour, though he's less interested in chasing the laser pointer light and more interested in being scritched behind the ears for as long as I'm willing to spend doing so. If I'm up too late and rise early to see Carol before she leaves for work, I'll try to take a bit of a nap in the afternoon. Often, one or the other of the cats will join me. One day last week, when I went to lay down, Hedge was already on the bed. Instead of his usual "hop down and go somewhere else" behavior, he stayed where he was and then snuggled up against my leg while I rested. He's still a bit skittish and we never know how he will react when we approach him. His reaction seems to be running about 60/40 in favor of moving away, but that's a vast improvement from how he was when he first arrived. He's made tremendous progress. Hedge is also getting bigger. I suppose all that food he's been eating is finally starting to do him some good. I haven't weighed him lately, but he is noticeably heavier, and it looks like he's added some length to his body as well. He may well turn out to be around the same size as Quint.

I miss my routine sometimes, but I'm sure we'll adjust to our new situation. We're all trying very hard to make it work. I've taken to driving to Carol's office a couple of times a week and walking with her over her lunch hour just so that we can spend some time together. I'm glad that Quint and Hedge have become such good friends and can keep each other company while Carol and I are away at work. We'll all just have to make the most of the time we do get to spend together. It helps that we're all willing to do that.