Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

The Cats and The Dog

We have four cats: Mickey and Marjie, who are from the same litter; Lucy, the cutest of the group; and George, The Beast Of Terror. Mickey and Marjie were adopted from a cat rescue outfit where they’d been kept in a cage since they were young kittens. Apparently as a consequence, neither of them ever learned to jump up onto countertops. The whole idea of jumping that high is just unimaginable for them. A lot of people would be thrilled to have cats who won’t/can’t jump up on the kitchen counters but to us it just seems weird. Lucy, who is now about 14 years old, came to me as part of a litter needing a home when I lived in Minneapolis. I adopted her and her brother, Roy. Roy died a few years ago from cancer. Lucy remains healthy, though, and we hope she sticks with us for many more years. She’s very small for an adult cat and she likes to curl up in a little ball on my lap. George showed up in our back yard one day. My mother was still alive then and, at the time, I was thinking of getting her a cat to have as a pet. (It seemed like a good idea at the time. The truth is, she never liked cats all that well.) At any rate, here was this cat in the back yard so I figured I go check him out. I sat on the deck stairs and waggled my fingers at him and called him over. Sure enough, over he came. I was surprised to find that he had been let outside to roam even though he was declawed. I was appalled to later discover that he is deaf! Can you imagine leaving a deaf declawed cat outside to fend for himself?! He’d clearly been out for a while, too. His paws were rough and dirty and his fur–which turned out to be almost entirely white–was dirty. Poor little guy. Well…he wound up living with my mother for a few weeks but when she was hospitalized for a long time I decided to just bring George home to live with us. George is a great cat. Really he is. He just hates all other animals and tries to kill them if given the opportunity. So…George lives upstairs in the master bedroom “suite” and he seems to do just fine.

The dog is Ashley. She’s an elderly miniature dachshund who was adopted by my mother about 3 or 4 years ago. Ashley had belonged to an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease. The man’s son told me that his father had reached a point where he no longer recognized Ashley as his own dog. He’d say, “I don’t know whose dog this is.” He wouldn’t feed her. So…Ashley wound up being boarded at our vet’s office with a sign up saying they were looking for a new home for her. My mother really needed a pet and Ashley turned out to be the perfect match for her. The last couple of years of my mother’s life she had this sweet little dog to keep her company and to keep her motivated. We always figured Ashley would wind up as our dog and, as it turned out, once my mother started spending more time in the hospital than out, Ashley came to live with us full-time. She is a good little dog. Even if she does sometimes bark too much.