The doctor is in

Shortly after I brought Sunny home, I wanted to take him in to be checked out by my vet.  It was one of their techs who had suggested P.A.T.C.H. (Pet Adoption Through Caring Hands) when I stopped in to ask about pets they had up for adoption.  The cats they had there were all special needs and after what I had gone through at the end of Nala's life, she thought I would be much happier with a healthy cat.

So, I made an appointment for Sunny's first checkup.  The thing you need to understand is that Nala was so ridiculously easygoing, and loved car rides so much, that vet visits were a breeze.  I would put on her harness and leash and carry her out to the car.  I would set her on the passenger seat where she would promptly plop down in a comfortable sprawl.  We would make the 1/4 mile drive to my vet's office, the wonderful Pompton Lakes Animal Hospital, I would scoop her up and we would walk in.  She would calmly lounge in my arms among other cats, the yipping puppies and the huge, curious dogs.  Nothing fazed her.

I was not so sanguine about Sunny's response to such a situation.  I bought him a carrier.  It's a soft-sided one that can even be strapped into the seat belts.  One side unzips to fold down completely, while the other only unzips partially.  It also opens from the top and has one zipper on the long side that is just big enough to get a hand through to pet him--that one's important.

So, the morning of his appointment arrived.  Now, something that most cat owners know, unless they have one of the mushball mutants like my Nala was, is that cats hate being put into carriers.  Trying to put a cat into a carrier is akin to stuffing an octopus into a box half the creature's size with one hand tied behind your back.  Seriously, if you don't own a cat, I dare you to try it.  I thought I was being smart.  The carrier had been out and open so he had a chance to get used to it and I wouldn't have to do anything with it that day.  I scooped Sunny up and scritched him to make it look like I was just being affectionate (yes, deception is a necessary component to this process) and casually walked towards the carrier.  All of that was good.

There was one tactical error.

The carrier was in my dining room...which opens directly into the kitchen, the living room and contains the door to the basement.  This was not a good plan.  Suddenly as I walked towards the carrier, for no discernible reasons, in an instant Sunny's FCA triggered.  That would be the "feline containment alert."  He knew to the core of his little kitty being that this was NOT GOOD and the fight and flight (with cats, there is no OR in that bit of primal programming) mechanism engaged.  The flight part was literal as he launched himself out of my arms, leaving behind the signature thin red lines of the feline defense system.  I tried to calmly follow him and soothe him back into my arms, but once that FCA triggered, there was little hope.  He eventually retreated to his first hiding place in my house, beneath the shelves under the stairs in the basement.

Sigh.

So, I decided instead of calling to just go over to the office, since it is so close.  I walked in the door and the office manager looked up.  Quickly noting my empty hands, she asked with a smile, "didn't you forget something?"  Yeah, yeah, everyone's a comedian.  I told her I had come in to re-schedule because of my tactical error.  She laughed and told me not to worry.  I was not the first person to have something similar happen.  We rescheduled for a few days later.

This time, tactics were different.  The carrier got moved to my bedroom, so the door could be closed behind me to prevent escape.  I entered and closed the door.  Sunny looked at me warily, but I moved swiftly.  He was scooped up and plunked butt-first into the upended carrier as quickly as I could.  Paws pushed out of the seams as I flipped the end back up and started zipping, but were quickly confined behind the nylon mesh.  Success!!

Of course, once he was in the carrier, he expressed his distress.  Now Sunny has his own little language.  There are different meows to express different emotions, wants and needs.  The two that are guaranteed to reach straight into my chest and rip out my heart in tiny little bits are his freaked out meow and his distressed meow.  They both kill me.  Let's just say that for my sake, it's a very good thing the ride to the vet's office is so short or I would wind up in an ICU.

As we sat in the waiting room, the distressed meows continued.  I kept talking to him soothingly, as did the crazy cat-lady receptionist (God bless her, she has 25 or so cats, most of whom are special care needs).  As I sat there, however, I reached a decision.  I would risk coming out with nothing but a bloody stump and use that zipper just big enough to get a hand through.

That did the trick.  He settled in the carrier and while the meows still happened, they were less frequent and less intense.  Whew!

They showed me into an exam room and I put his carrier on the table and opened it.  He came out warily, sniffing at the strange smells.  I kept petting him, trying to keep him calm.

Now my vet is a wonderful guy.  He told me when I first brought in Nala that he would always remember my pet's name, but apologized that he would probably forget mine.  I told him that was fine, since my pet was the one who was his patient.  He was wonderful to me and to Nala all through her final illness, as were all of his staff.  (When the staff is in tears when you have to put your pet down, you know just how much they care.)  He is also, however, that figure of terror in Sunny's world...a human male.  As near as I can tell, the person who originally abused Sunny was a man because male voices scare him...and doc has a big loud one.  He's a bluff, genial man, with a big voice.  While he has a wonderful all-animal practice, his specialty is big dogs and you can tell why.

Doc walked in with a friendly greeting on his lips and Sunny did something I've never seen him do.

He froze.

In all of my visions of how this vet visit would go, that had never figured into the picture.  I was imagining elbow length leather gauntlets, hissing, howling and mad chases around the small examining room.  None of that eventuated.  Sunny held perfectly still through his examination as Doc listened to his heart and lungs, checked his teeth and gave him the update for his shots.  Jim, the tech came in with the scale and weighed him, petting him and telling him what a big handsome boy he was; not a peep, not a scratch, not a bite, not a howl or growl issued from Sunny.  I was stunned.  Exam finished, I presented the carrier again and unlike the two previous times, he went in not just willingly, but gratefully.  I zipped him up, carried him out to pay for the visit, then back out to the car.  Of course, once the zipper had closed, he felt safe enough to vocalize his distress again and again, I was grateful for the very short trip.

We arrived back at the house and I immediately put the carrier down and opened it.  With one last call of distress, Sunny shot out like a streak.  Once he got to the living room, he shook himself out and settled down for a good grooming, pausing only to accept a consoling stroke or two which he greeted with a purr.  Bath complete, he hopped up onto the couch and curled up for a nap.

Going to the doctor is exhausting.

What the heart knows

There are differing opinions about animals and emotions.  Many people say that they have no real emotions and don't respond to them.  I'm in the opposite camp.  I think they do have emotions and are quite sensitive to human emotions.  Maybe it's the smells produced by our bodies' physical response.  Whatever it is, they know strong emotion.

In my first story, I spoke of my previous cat, Nala.  She had belonged to a friend who gave her up to me to spare her new husband's allergies.  That friend is as much a sister to me as anything else and her husband was very much like a brother in law.  I was actually renting a room from her parents when they married.  It was quite convenient given that I was making her wedding dress.  I could call her and ask her to come upstairs whenever I needed a fitting.  I also got to see them often and see how much they were in love.  When I bought my house, Nala and I moved out together.

So, why I am I telling you this as part of Sunny's story?

It was a few months after I had adopted Sunny that my friend's husband became ill.  It all started with a cold.  He was wonderful about taking care of other people, but not very good about taking care of himself.  The cold became bronchitis and eventually pneumonia.  He wound up in the hospital when on top of the pneumonia, he contracted H1N1.  Things went from bad to worse.  He was transferred from a local hospital to a regional medical center.

One evening I called my friend to check in and see how he was doing.  She answered the phone crying.  He was gone.  She asked me to meet her at her parents'.  I dropped everything and went straight there.  I spent the evening calling friends, letting them know what had happened and working with her on all of the practicalities immediately following the death of a loved one.  Mostly, I was just being there for her, offering her my strength.

It wasn't until I started the drive home that it hit me.  He was my friend too and the grief hit me hard.  I arrived home exhausted and hurting.  I wanted someone to be there for me, the way I had been for her.  I went upstairs to find Sunny curled up on my bed.

Now, thanks to his time in the wild and his time in his cage at the shelter, Sunny doesn't like to be confined.  He lets me hold him on sufferance and there is very definitely a time limit to it.  He looked up at me, but stayed where he was.  I laid down on the bed, put my head on him and cried.  There is nothing worse in my book than crying alone.  The warm softness of his fur and his quiet purr were comfort and balm to my aching heart.  I don't know how long I lay there crying.  Eventually though, I needed to breathe which meant blowing my nose and drying my eyes.

I sat up and reached for the tissues.  Sunny promptly got up and left the room.  I thought rather wryly that I had hit the tolerance point for him offering comfort.  It had been nice while it lasted, but I couldn't expect my boy to change his tabby stripes.  I managed to clear my nose and dry my eyes and had just taken a deep breath.

As I sat there, I heard the telltale sound of running paws coming up the stairs.  I looked up just as he jumped up onto the bed.  There he sat, with a little toy mouse in his mouth.  He leaned over to put it in front of me and sat up with a quiet meow.

The tears came anew and I scooped him up for a momentary cuddle and scritch.  He protested after a moment or two, but I didn't care.  He had given me what I needed in that moment and offered comfort in the only way he knew.

Don't ever try to tell me animals don't have emotions!

Tales of a Mighty Mouser

So, once Sunny claimed his place in my bed and my house, our bond was established.  It was pretty humbling how quickly he trusted me.  There are still holdovers from before our time.  He freezes if he's anywhere near my moving feet, which tells me he used to be kicked.  He also heads for the hills if I pull out the broom or Swiffer, which tells me that he used to get hit with one.  Those are two things that break my heart any time they happen.

Anyway, it was the first Saturday in May that I brought him home to my old house.  My place is about 100 years old and a bit drafty.  I also happen to live in a town that is on the verge of a huge rural area.  Are you getting ideas here?

So, at about 4:30 in the morning on the Monday after Mother's Day I was rather suddenly awakened with SCRABBLE, SCRABBLE, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!!  This was a bit of a surprising wake-up to say the least.  There being only one possible source for the the sound, I asked, "Sunny, what are you doing?"  The response I got was a low growl.  THAT certainly got my attention.

I sat up and turned on the light.  There he sat, next the bed, oh so proudly holding the mouse in his mouth, with the tail hanging out.  I think my brain literally froze for a moment.  Thankfully, it came back online quickly and I realized that he was bringing me a gift and having a mouser in my old house was a very good thing, so I managed not to freak (pretty good for 4:30 am!).  Instead, in the nicest voice possible, I told him what a good boy he was and asked him to put it down so I could get rid of it.  It took a bit of coaxing, but I did get him to put it down so I could grab it by the tail through a wad of toilet paper, take it downstairs and toss it out into the bushes.  I brought him several treats and gave him lots of pets and scritches and again told him what a wonderful boy he was.

When I went to crawl back into bed, I noticed something.  There were several tiny red dots on my white comforter.  That was when I came to the realization that he had actually brought the mouse to me on the bed and the noise I heard was him catching it again when it tried to get away.  (Ewww...not the last time he's done that, but that's a story that deserves it's own entry.)  I managed to clean up the mouse blood and Sunny returned to the bed, oh so proud of what he had done.

As Mother's Day presents go, it was definitely unique.

As I sit here typing, he is stretched out on the floor on his back, daintily pulling his front claws through his teeth to clean them.  He needs to make sure they are prepared to protect me from any rodent invaders.  I think he'd be willing to take on an ROUS for me.

That's my boy.

The Rescue Story

So, I decided to do something a bit new.  Being home and unemployed, my one companion is a beautiful 14 pound American short hair named Sunny.  He's been keeping me sane.  I decided in the world of internet fame, that he is just as deserving as any other feline, so he should have his own blog too.

Sunny is a shelter adoptee.  I had been forced to put down my previous cat, Nala, a few months before.  I couldn't stand the quiet anymore.  Nala had belonged to a friend.  When the friend married and her husband was allergic, I volunteered to take her on.  I had two years with a sweet, mouthy girl who was insanely affectionate.  

When I went to the shelter, I told them I was looking for an adult female.  I walked around a corner and this beautiful white and orange tabby stood up and stuck his nose between the bars.  As I pet him he purred like crazy, nearly falling over in his efforts to get my attention.  He looked at me with his big yellow eyes and I could hear him in my head asking, "Are you the one?  Will you be the one who gets me out of this prison, please?"  That was it.  I was a goner.

I found out later that Sunny had spent two years at that shelter.  He had appeared in a pack of feral cats and a woman who tracked the pack caught him and brought him to a vet to be altered.  He was altered and his ear was clipped.  Dealing with him in recovery though, the vet realized he wasn't feral and told the woman that he wouldn't survive in the wild.  She brought him to Pet Adoption Through Caring Hands (PATCH) in Pompton Lakes, NJ.  It's a wonderful, cat-only, no-kill shelter.  Unfortunately his time with the feral pack had taught him to be highly aggressive with other cats.  He could not be let out unsupervised and spent a great deal of time in his cage.  In short, he was miserable.  As wonderful as the volunteers are, he was terribly unhappy.

I brought him home and set him loose in my basement with a litter box and food.  I left him alone most of the day, checking on him occasionally.  He found a place under a set of storage shelves to hide, but whenever I came down, he would come out, looking for attention.  The next morning, I came down from my bedroom to find him under an end-table in my living room.  That night, when I was stretched out on my bed I heard a meow.  I called out to let him know where I was.  He came running up the stairs to find me.  He explored the second floor, meowing every few moments to check where I was.  He came back into my room and looked at me questioningly.  I patted the bed next me.  He jumped up, curled up and never looked back.  My bed is his safe place, where he comes begging for treats and affection.  

He's not the cuddle beast Nala was.  He is the Lord of the Manor who deigns to share his home with me (never mind that I pay the mortgage).  He is smart and knows how to get what he wants from me.  He can be silly and funny; arrogant and imperious; or lazy and languid.  

In short, he's a cat.  What makes him special is that he's mine.