Cats We Have Known

By Dale Grant

"This book is a sharing of the experiences that the author and his wife have had with some of the cats they came to know over the past thirty years.

It is at times humorous, at times sad, occasionally informative and always interesting because of the furry spirits who occupy center stage.

Cat lovers, and even people who have never come to know a cat, will find the anecdotes and photographs contained within absorbing because of the little creatures wearing fur coats who they will meet.

And, for the cat lovers among you, these extraordinary animals will rekindle bittersweet remembrances of cats you have known."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499003208

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Dale Grant. 615491

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4990-0318-5

Hardcover 978-1-4990-0317-8

EBook 978-1-4990-0320-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/10/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Fluffy

Chapter Three

Junkfood

Chapter Four

Buster

Chapter Five

Oscar

Chapter Six

Other Cats Who Have Stayed in the Office

Chapter Seven

Marmalade

Chapter Eight

Blackie

Chapter Nine

Scooter

Chapter Ten

Miss Kitty

Chapter Eleven

Cosmo and Sassafras

Chapter Twelve

Cosmo and Sassafras—The First Four Months

Chapter One

The title to this book originally was to be Cats We Have Owned. On second thought, however, it seemed it might not be accurate to use the word owned in describing a person’s relationship to a cat. Just because you feed a cat, clean its litter box each day, try to keep it reasonably free of loose fur, try endlessly to find food that it will decide to eat and struggle to get it to the vet’s when necessary doesn’t irrefutably establish that you own the cat. It just establishes that the cat thinks enough of you to remain in the household allowing you to do those things for it. If it can find what it considers a more desirable place to stay, it will probably not remain in the household.

That’s not to say that cats aren’t capable of forming close bonds of affection with their human hosts. Some of them are. But even those cats would assuredly not, assuming they understood the concept of ownership, be other than dismayed to even consider that the humans with whom they live think they own them.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, if you don’t mind that cats will not sublimate their personalities to conform with the habits of humans, there is much about cats that makes them worthwhile to have in the house.

Often it’s enjoyable just to watch your cat doing something, like trying to catch snowflakes that are blown by the wind during the season’s first snowfall. A cat can strike out with speed too fast to be counted. But try as it might it cannot capture the snowflake which vanishes at its touch. Of course a cat who has experienced many snowfalls knows that it can’t capture the small white objects that come down from overhead. But the inexperienced cat will put on a show that is beautiful or hilarious depending on your point of view. However, the show won’t last long because the cat will soon realize that it is not possible to get hold of a snowflake.

Now something like a button is another matter. Should a cat come across a button that has been dropped on the floor and forgotten, it will provide a longer show.

When a cat dies, one who has lived with us, we are reminded that we have grown older, that time recently passed can never be again and that perhaps our mortality is catching up with us.

Cats have a chimerical quality that can make it appear that they could never perish. They are intractable, indomitable, insouciant, irrepressible essences of spirit.

The grace with which cats move is something like the movement of tall grass that is being swayed by a soft breeze. There is a gentleness and elegance to their movements which, when recalled with respect to a cat who was with us a long time, can bring tears to our eyes.

It might seem strange that memories of gentle elegant movement should produce a melancholy mood. For months, sometimes years, after a cat has gone away, the memories of it remain etched indelibly in our subconscious waiting for some external occurrence to make us remember.

What has been lost, if we have cared well for our cat, is a rather small furry presence in the household that has required with increasing insistence that we feed it only that special brand of food which, at least for the time being, is deemed edible; that its water bowl be kept filled with fresh clean water; that we make no sudden movements if it is close by; that we keep the number of household guests to a minimum; that we don’t drop anything on the floor if it is closer by than twenty feet; that we don’t leave the house for more than one day at a time; and, that we clean its litter box regularly, including the area around the litter box.

But what has also vanished is something that was familiar and soft and graceful; that had the magical ability to make us feel special by its soothing presence; that, when it sat with us, responding to our touch by making its heavenly purring sound, made us forget for a while that we had a really