The Cat Tree

This post explains, in as few words as were possible (for me), how I came to have three cats, then eight cats, then six cats, all at once.  No one really needs to know this, but you get to anyway.

When I graduated from high school in 1987, my sister, brother, and I rented our childhood home from our parents (who were then living in what had been my grandparents’ home), and we each got a cat.  One was adopted from the Veterinary hospital where my lifelong friend, prom date, and eventual sister-in-law worked. My sister named the grey-and-white tabby Monty, after Montgomery Clift.

The second cat was a gift from my aunt for my graduation—a female calico that my sister also named. I wanted to name her Dinah, the name of Katharine Hepburn’s sister in Philadelphia Story; it was also the name of the cat belonging to Alice (of Wonderland fame).  She named her Gwendolyn after our grandmother, and twenty years later still claims she thought it was my idea.  

The third cat, Reggie (as in Jackson), was adopted by my brother from someone who decided a neurotic one-eyed cat was not for her—coward.  He was neurotic, but who wouldn’t be when it was so easy for anyone to sneak up on him with just that one eye?

So there you have the original three.  Move forward to spring of 1988—Gwen went into heat (a nasty-sounding phrase, I think).  We kept her locked up and scheduled an appointment for Monty’s cat vasectomy.  Someone left the door to her room open and I didn’t discover this until I saw the two of them dash into a crawlspace under the house. 

Forty-five minutes later they came back into the house, Monty strutting and smoking a cigarette (okay, but he would have if I’d offered him one) and Gwen flaunting the fact that she was doing better than me. Two weeks later the vet x-ray-ed Gwen and said “There are five kittens . . . that I can see.” I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was probably not nice, so it’s just as well I don’t remember.

On May 24, 1988 five kittens were born. They were, in no particular order:

Jean Louis, an orange tabby named for Audrey Hepburn’s nephew in Charade.

Brick, after Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, an orange and white tabby.

C.K. Dexter Haven, a grey and brown tabby named after Cary Grant in Philadelphia Story

Maggie, named for Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, was Dexter’s female twin.

Patsy Cline was the lone calico, with her mother’s coloring and her father’s solid build.

It began in the middle of the night when Gwen’s water broke on my Zebra-print sheets (they seemed like a good idea at the time). Monty paced.  Truly, he did; he walked back and forth in the hallway like he was worried about the cost of kitty litter and catnip. He would occasionally go over to offer support but he never stayed long; I think he was afraid she was going to blame it all on him.  (She did eventually, but that was once they were all weaned and she had the time to think about it.)

Reggie was fascinated by the whole thing, but Gwen never liked him and he was afraid to get too close.  When he did, Gwen licked his face (since she was delirious from the pain) and her being nice to him scared him all the more, so he joined Monty in the hallway.

Dexter was the first to be born and he was fat, something no one who knew him later believed. He was followed by Brick, Patsy, Maggie and finally Jean Louis, who was tiny and not breathing.  We massaged him, cleaned his nose of fluid, and gently blew air into his mouth; despite the fact that my then-future sister-in-law worked at a vet and lived two doors down, we relied on what we had learned from 101 Dalmatians.

I write that matter-of-factly, but I was a complete wreck when it was happening, and I actually left the room for a few minutes when it looked like our efforts weren’t working. Once Gwen had nursed all the kittens, she napped while Monty climbed in and washed them and allowed them to nurse off him.  Reggie sat by the door and watched them; despite his fear of nearly everything, I am quite convinced he’d have chased anyone off who tried to harm those kittens. 

Later that day, Pinkie showed up.  Oh my God—I have never told you about Pinkie.  This is an absolutely necessary digression. Pinkie was the mother of a childhood friend; between the ages of about seven and thirteen, he was I suppose, my closest friend. 

I think most of us had a Pinkie in our childhood.  She was the mother who never flipped out when one of her kids invited friends for dinner and didn’t tell her—she just figured out a way to stretch it.  And when five of us showed up wanting a ride to school, she somehow crammed us all into her VW Bug. They had no more money than we did (maybe even less) but her generosity never showed it.

She chain smoked, drank rum and Coke while she drove, and told us about a dream involving skinny-dipping with Tom Jones; today she would be in prison. But she truly looked out for us, and she would have walked through fire for someone she didn’t even like if they were in trouble. (I base this assertion on the time she beat up a guy (a really big guy) who was beating up his girlfriend (a women she had once called a tramp with bad taste) in front of 7-Eleven.)

There was a knock at the door, I opened it and there was Pinkie, cigarette and Screwdriver (the beverage, not the tool) in hand, asking “Where are they? I heard you got kittens.”  I pointed and she led me to the room with the kittens.  She grabbed Dexter out of the bed, gave his backside a gander and said “This one’s a boy.”

She did it with all the kittens while Gwen gave me looks that amounted to “Who is this woman?”  Pinkie was right on every count, and when kittens are only a few hours old it can be hard to tell. Then she told me which ones were going to be cute and which one (Dexter) was probably going to be weird looking.

She was right that Dexter never would grow into his ears or feet, but she was wrong when she predicted it would make him look weird—he just looked like a cat with jack rabbit tendencies. It worked for him.  

When the kittens were a few months old we took them to the vet and they hung out in the waiting room, playing in a kitty condo, trying to get adopted.  Maggie was the only one anyone wanted.  I was given a couple of reasons: Some said I waited too long and they had lost that fuzzy, kittenish look (never mind I box-trained, spayed and neutered, and vaccinated them for you); some said that tabbies are very common and a harder sell.  Whatever the reason, no one wanted them. 

So I thought we were keeping all but one, until Jean Louis adopted himself out.  Maybe he wanted a house to himself or maybe he just didn’t like us, but one day he got out through an open door and never returned.  About a week later I found out he was living a few houses down and was going by the name Buster.  I saw him walking on a fence a few months later and he acted like he had no idea who I was (that’s what I get for giving him a French name—aloof).

Except for Reggie, whom my brother took with him when he got married and moved out, the remaining cats spent the rest of their lives with me.

That in a nutshell (if 2,277 1,200 1337 words can be called a nutshell) is how the original cat family came to be.  I could continue this story to include the origins of Alexandria, Rose Louise, and John Morgan, but I think this is enough for now.