The Cattery

Neelix – acquired in 2002 as a sick kitten from a co-worker. Now 14, has been living with a nasal 

adenocarcinoma for nearly two and a half years, which has not increased in size. When I mentioned this yesterday to the original veterinary practice that diagnosed him, they were puzzled. “Usually those things grow fast.” He’s been on chemo pills all this time, which may have stopped it from growing and bought all this time, but may have also have made him thin and frail. On the other hand, he is 14, which is like being a 72-year-old man. (Named for the Star Trek Voyager character. Another character in that series named his cat Neelix after Neelix.)

Neelix

Chatterbox – acquired as a one-or-two year old cat from a Petco sometime between 2003-2004. I thought Neelix needed a friend and bought him for $90. He has been a good friend to all my cats except Neelix, who has always gone it alone. He went unadopted for nearly a year at Petco due to gastrointestinal problems (giardia) we quickly resolved, and because they thought he had bonded with two other cats there and the trio needed to be adopted together. Turned out Chatterbox just likes all cats a lot. We’re thinking he might be around 12-13 years old now. (Kept the name given to him by the rescue organization that handled the Petco sale.) Chatterbox had to have his tail amputated after it was cut worse by a vet's assistant while shaving it to clean a smaller cut, and the tail died and snapped off. We thought at the time that $600 was the worst thing.

Chatterbox

Kira – We know she was having kittens in 2005, so she herself may have been born sometime in 2003 or early 2004. She belonged to a girl renting a room next door to my sister-in-law and was just left behind to live in the woods and keep having kittens. In the summer of 2006, after already taking two of her kittens the year before, I saw her in a weakened conditioned in my sister-in-law’s backyard and just took her home. She has been the greatest cat ever, everything you’d want in a cat, equal parts independent, cuddly, and easy to manage. (Named after Deep Space Nine character Kira Nerys because she was so thin at the time we rescued her.)

Kira

Seven and Sulu – Kira’s sons. Born in spring 2004, so they’re both 12, and huge, Maine Coon looking cats. Sulu is extraordinarily mellow but adventuresome and will wander the farthest when he gets outside. Seven is nervous and apprehensive and had an expensive bout with a bladder infection a few years ago. (Named after Star Trek character Sulu because it rhymes with Zulu and his coloring was mostly white with some head-dressy darker head colors, and Seven named after the Star Trek Voyager character Seven of Nine because he was our seventh cat. And eventually we did get nine.)

Sulu (top) and Seven as kittens

Mackie took a year or so to decide to be a housecat

Mackie – aka Blackie. Age unknown. He started showing up at our house looking for food, already an adult, unfixed tom cat. There were cats before him that looked similar – Sylvester, Whiteface, that eventually disappeared, but for two or three years, we had a crowd of black and white toms hanging around in the evening. Mackie was unusual because he would go into the backyard and look through our windows and sleep on the deck furniture. I tried several times to bring him inside when he was in a weakened state, but he was clearly miserable and desperate to get back out. One day I caught him and managed to get him neutered that same day, then let him go again. He came back. Finally, I just moved him into the house and after bribing him with treats and sleeping on the floor with him a few nights, he decided to become an indoor cat. He likes my husband, and he loves some of my other cats, and he sleeps in our bed. But he is still nervous and apprehensive. At least he isn’t outside in the rain and snow, looking in our window anymore. (Named changed from the identifier Blackie to Mackie because Mackie is more politically correct.)

BeeGee – aka the black girl cat. She would come running down the block when I was feeding the
tomcats and want some, too. Then she would return to a foreclosed house that stayed empty for a couple of years. We think her owners just left her behind. She never showed up pregnant or brought any kittens around, and sure enough, when I finally caught her and took her to a vet, she had been fixed already. Her age is also unknown, and she despises all other cats. So she either sleeps in a box in a closet or under the bed, and the rest of the time, she wants to stay outside. She still goes down the

BeeGee has no interest in being a housecat

block to her old house, but comes back to us every day. I have to carry her in because she won’t walk past any other cat. (BeeGee is the first letters of Black Girl, which is how we described her when she was one of many strays in the yard, and Baby Girl, which is what my husband calls all female cats.) May 7, 2016 I noticed with alarm a huge wound near her anus, even though she was displaying no sign of pain or discomfort. I took her to the in-and-out quick vet who was open on Saturday mornings and they couldn't tell me what it was, and just gave me products to clean it. It may be cancer, and I don't have the money to save her, and it's probably too late anyway at this point.

Jordy

Jordy – Last summer (2015), I was going in late for work and decided to drive through the neighborhood next to ours just for no reason. There’s an open field across from a cemetery in there, and I saw three cats walking across the field, three different sizes. Big, middle and small. Jordy was the middle-sized one, the only one who didn’t run away when I stopped my car. He let me pick him right up. I took him home. I thought he had already been fixed in a feral catch-and-release program because his ear was clipped, but he still had one testicle. At the vet, we found the other one was undescended, so he had to have the female operation to be fixed. To acclimate him to my yard, so he wouldn’t run back the five blocks to that field, I would keep him in a cage in the yard during the day for an hour or two. He was probably born in the fall or winter of 2014-15. (He had an infected eye when I caught him and I should have named him Popeye because he always squinted, but since we had a Star Trek theme going, he was named for Geordi LaForge, who is a blind Star Trek Second Generation character, but Geordi is an unpronounceable spelling of Jordy. I didn’t want the vets calling out “Geo are dee.” My married last name Jorgenson is always mispronounced as George Jetson or George Johnson. Jordy has issues with getting feces stuck in the dense fur around his hindquarters and screams and fights if you try to clean him, so he had to be shaved. Now he has a respiratory infection he caught from Cat Daddy.

Odo

Odo – Odo followed Jordy. I think Odo was the little cat in the field. A week after I caught Jordy, Odo just showed up in my backyard, sitting next to Jordy’s cage. He hid under the deck for a month before I was able to catch him and bring him in the house, but it’s been nine months now and he hasn’t let me touch him since to get him to the vet. He adores Jordy and Mackie and hangs with them and has never tried to escape. Odo was probably born in the spring or winter of 2015 since he was pretty small when he first showed up, and played like a kitten. He would push a pebble all around the deck. That was his toy. He still looks like a kitten. The big-head and shoulders of a tomcat have yet to happen. We were positive he was a girl and didn’t see his underside until he’d been in the house for a month. (Obviously, the shape shifter from Deep Space Night. He shifted from female to male, here to there, outside to in.)

Cat Daddy – May have been the third, biggest cat I saw in the field. He showed up about a month after Odo, in the fall, sitting in my front yard and yelling loudly every time I came outside, even though he ran from me if I approached. So I would feed him. I thought a very pretty cat I called Fluffy would be the next stray I took in, but Cat Daddy would eat all the food and Fluffy stopped coming around. Another similar cat, Fluffy II, would pass through occasionally. And two more black and white tomcats that look less healthy than all the rest. Lokai, who has one all white leg and one all black leg, has been the most persistent in waiting out Cat Daddy. But then Cat Daddy became deathly ill, so ill, I was able to pick him up and bring him inside. The first vet thought he was just tired, maybe had worms, so I got him shots, wormed, and flea meds. But he was still too weak to go back out, so I took him to another vet, who said his red blood cell count was almost non-existent, he was so anemic, and had a cold virus, too. They kept him and pumped him full of antibiotics for three days. So $800 dollars later, Cat Daddy is still in the house, still kind of lethargic, and still not fixed. He has a great appetite, and another round of antibiotics to go through, but he’s still anemic and I don’t know how he would do as a free-roaming outside cat again. But he doesn’t seem real thrilled to be inside. Age unknown, but was a fully grown adult male when I first saw him. (Named Cat Daddy because his coloring is just like Jordy’s, so we pretended he was Jordy’s father.)

Cat Daddy

Update: After Cat Daddy pulled down the drapes and peeled up the linoleum by the front door, I finally decided to let him back out. He seemed better health-wise, and I assumed he might stay around and I could get him back in at night. Jordy caught his virus, and even Seven has sneezed a few times, so the house was getting toxic with 10 cats. Because he's still unfixed, he has a male cat odor that was permeating the house. So I let him out. At first he stayed in the front yard, but then he disappeared. Maybe he went back to his home, if he has one. They will be surprised to see him again after a month, with a shaved front leg where he got IV antibiotics.

Update January 2017: He came back, we got him fixed. He stays indoors now content, and if he goes out, he doesn't leave the yard. He's getting really big. 

RIP: My cats, Niki and Yoda, who lived to be 18 and 17, grew up with my son, left with me when I got divorced, and were my only companions for six years between the divorce and my next husband.

RIP: Red and Merly, the two one-year-old cats that came with my current husband. Red lived a long, full life to 17, although Merly got cancer when she was around 12 or 13 and died in a couple of months after the diagnosis.

RIP: Arbee, the first cat my current husband and I acquired together. We had her for nearly 15 years. Born feral, she was never a lap cat and almost as impossible to handle or touch as Odo, who is impossible. Because of that, we seldom were able to take her to the vet, and missed whatever made her die, but she was around 16. Might have been a tumor inside her cheek.