SALTY OLD MAN .COM

This is a human interest story. Or… if you are not interested I suppose this is a human disinterest story. lol

A friend of mine recently asked me how I met my cats. I thought many of you might like to hear the story.

Bubby, Mindy, Grady and I are family in every sense of the word. How we became a family is the stuff of legends.

Bubby

I had a little black and white, female, spayed, polydactyly cat named Pooky who was the joy of my life. The male cat who I would later name ‘Bubby,’ used to come by my place and ‘admire’ Pooky. I would run Bubby off for fear of his hurting Pooky. Little did I know that tragic circumstances would eventually lead to Bubby becoming my best friend.

Pooky became ill from hyperthyroidism. On my vet’s advice I switched her to a dry food prescription diet. Long story short, and after years of studying cat nutrition, I came to understand that the dry food exacerbated Pooky’s illness and eventually took her life. I’ll never feed another cat dry food as long as I live.

After Pooky left, I was so distraught, that I gave away every cat-thing I had in my home. I didn’t want anything left behind to remind me of her. I gave away $300 worth of cat food, litter, and toys. I even gave away the bird feeder I had erected outside her favorite window where she would ‘chatter’ at the birds she saw there. I was heart-broken.

Back to Bubby

A few months after Pooky passed, Bubby came around to my place again. It wasn’t unusual for him to stop by; he was known throughout the neighborhood as ‘the neighborhood cat.’ He seemed to be a stray who had been wandering throughout the area for years. No one knew where he lived, and it seemed that everyone was putting a little food out for him daily.

It is hard to know what prompted Bubby to start coming to my place so often, but he did. Who knows, maybe, just maybe he understood the loss I had suffered with Pooky. Heck, maybe he missed Pooky as much as I did.

Bubby came and repeatedly came and repeatedly came to my door. Eventually I began to wise up and pay attention to him. Having given away all of Pooky’s food, I went to the store and bought Bubby some cat food. He began to stay at my place.

Thinking he was a stray, I went to all of my neighbors and asked about the little caramel colored cat. No one knew where he lived, and the apartments maintenance man told me he thought the cat had been abandoned and left behind after someone had moved out.

Without other evidence, I assumed the cat needed a home, and I named him Bubby. (All those things that I had given away before - Pooky’s food, litter, toys, etc.? Yep, I would re-purchase it all over again for Bubby.)

Bubby - the rest of the story

One morning a raccoon showed up outside my door. I immediately panicked and wondered to myself, “I don’t know if Bubby has had a rabies shot. I don’t know ANYTHING about this cat!” I put him in the (newly re-purchased) cat carrier, and headed off to the vet. 

I put the cat carrier up on the vet’s examining table, opened the door, brought Bubby out, and the vet’s assistant said “That’s my cat!”

I nearly fell on the floor. She said, “You live in (such and such) neighborhood?”, and I immediately knew I had found Bubby’s original owner/caregiver. I told her how I had searched the area, and how everyone thought Bubby was a stray.

Now here comes the miraculous part of the Bubby story. I’ll cut the details and go right to the point.

The woman said to me, “I have two other cats and this one is a pain. Would you like to have him?”

Bubby and I became family.

Mindy

Mindy simply showed up meowing at my door one day. I was working at my computer when I began to hear mewing outside. I walked out to find this tiny kitten sitting on the stairs.

I have no idea where she came from. She was so small that I doubt that she could have come very far on her own, and a canvas of my neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods turned up nothing. No one knew anything about her.

The mystery of her arrival was further intensified because of her condition. She was disheveled and her fur was a matted, filthy mess. One might therefore assume that she was a lost community/feral cat, but I wasn’t so sure about that. Instead of being standoffish the way one might expect a feral cat to be, Mindy was a warm, loving companion from the start.

That day at my doorstep she had fleas, but she was so in need of care that I brought her inside, fleas and all. She devoured the cat food I put out for her and then promptly went to sleep. She had finally found a little peace and comfort.

Later I tried to clean her up, but I quickly found the job was too much for me. She was too matted and too flea infested. I called a professional groomer and took her for an appointment.

Cleaned up, the little kitty was a joy to behold.

Now that she was 'little miss presentable,’ I took her picture, made up ‘found cat’ signs and posted them all over the nearby neighborhoods. I also began searching the internet’s lost cat websites hoping to find her original home. After five days, I found nothing. No response from my cat signs and no results from the internet search.

I made up my mind that I could not financially afford to care for another cat in addition to Bubby. I made the tough decision to let her go. I put her in the cat carrier, and took her to my vet to be put up for adoption. My vet accepted her, and I signed the release paper giving her up. I drove home with tears in my eyes.

What happened next was pure heart. That night all I could think about was that poor, little, innocent, beautiful cat. The next morning I drove back to the vet and adopted her myself. (The vet waived the adoption fees.)

Yep, I was in love.

How Mindy got her name

I had recently gone through a year of oral cancer procedures which included dental work. At all of my dental visits I was greeted by a dental assistant who I felt was one of the warmest, most sincere and most professional people I have ever met in my life. To say I was smitten is an understatement. Her name was Mindy.

Grady

Grady came along about two months after Mindy. Grady also just ‘showed up’ at my door. Read all of the description about Mindy’s arrival above, and apply that ditto to Grady. There is one big exception however. I instantly decided that I would not take Grady to the vet for adoption. No matter the financial cost, no matter the circumstances, I decided that Grady was here to stay.

Grady looks almost exactly like Mindy. Given that Mindy had already been living with me for two months, and given their relative ages when they arrived, I doubt very much that Mindy is Grady’s mother. I rather suspect that they are both from consecutive litters of the same mother.

Grady has become a wonderful addition to the family. He playfully annoys Bubby and Mindy, and they can often be found romping, cavorting and chasing each other around.

As I said at the outset of this story, we have become a family

It’s a common sight around my household to see the cats preening, licking and cleaning one another every day. It is wonderful. It is also not unusual for me to wake up in the morning and find my cats lying with me at the foot of my bed.

We also go on walks together. There is a stretch of woods behind my place that is about 50-60 feet wide and about a half mile long. There is a deer path down through the center of the trees nearly the entire length of the woods. As I walk the path, Bubby, Mindy and Grady follow along with me (not on a leash), and usually stay within sight of me. Sometimes, of course, they will be distracted and go into their own separate world, however we are usually all together again as we arrive back home. If they haven’t arrived home, I’ll retrace my steps until I’ve found them and make sure that everyone arrives home safely.

After all, Bubby, Mindy, Grady and I are family.  

- Doug Hines

I just made a big discovery!!

(Just remember folks, you heard it here first)

Cats Leak.

You heard that right.

Now this may not be earth shattering news to those of you who are 28th degree cat aficionados, those thoroughly versed in the ways of cats, but it was a new revelation to me. (I only consider myself to be a 27th degree cat aficionado.)

I always assumed that cats peed with a purpose. I always assumed that cats peed intentionally, I.e. they had a lot to get off of their little minds.

I’ve recently discovered that intentional peeing isn’t always so. Sometimes a few little drops just ‘escape’ - (the same as it does for you and I - if one is brave enough to admit it in a public forum).

I’m an old ex-Navy man who, while in the service, did my share of swabbing decks, making perfect racks (racks are navy slang for beds), and cleaning everything and anything that didn’t move. I somehow retained this healthy respect for keeping my living quarters spotlessly clean, an attribute applauded by my ex-wife and others. (Hehe - that’s a story for another occasion.)

I recently had a visitor to my apartment who said, (and I quote because I want you to understand how radiantly my ego was beaming when I heard these words…) “Your place is so clean… It smells so clean… One would never know that there are cats living here!”

Fast forward in my story to early this morning. As soon as I awoke, I, with my superior sense of smell that must indicate that I am a Harvard graduate with my nose in the air (Nooo), I smelled cat urine.

I jumped out of bed. “Oh, no… I’ve been living here 10 years and this has never happened”, I said aloud frantically.

I then started searching for, what had to be, the crater-sized splotch somewhere on my carpet.

My mind was ablaze. Which of my cats was the culprit? (I will not share that part of the mystery with you in an effort to protect the innocent.)

The point is, I was about to learn something about ‘cat leaks.’

I looked everywhere and couldn’t find a wet spot. The bedrooms? No. The hallway? No. The bathroom? No. The living room? No. The dining area / kitchen? No. The three cat boxes in various rooms? Nooooo.

What the hell? My search turned up nothing.

That’s when all of my former ‘cat education’ turned on, and I remembered seeing a video in which acclaimed "Cat Daddy" - Jackson Galaxy - used an Ultra Violet LED Black Light to suddenly reveal the places cats had done their dastardly deeds, places normally hidden from human sight.

My nose may have been prominently attuned in this story, but my eyesight only betrayed me. (Ya gotta love it… nose… prominent.)

As soon as the stores opened this morning I was off and away to purchase a U.V. Black Light.

And this is where my story gets enlightening. (I just can’t stop.)

As I rushed through my apartment for a preliminary Black Light inspection, I was shocked. 

While there wasn’t evidence of a gusher like a city-street fire hydrant being fully opened and flushed, there were plenty of places to support the notion of ‘Cat Leakage” - a few drops sparsely spread about here and there.

So I learned something today. Cats leak. They not only let loose a solid golden stream, but sometimes, just as with you and I, a few drops just get away from us. (Maybe I shouldn’t generalize for all of us. In fact, I’m a senior citizen and this revelation may have more to do with my personal experience rather than with my assumptions regarding society in general. I:-)

I guess the real lesson to be learned from my recently acquired practical knowledge is that, in my humble opinion, every cat caregiver/guardian/parent should run out and buy an Ultra Violet LED Black Light. You will be astounded at what you will find with it. It will reveal the mysteries of the universe.

By the way… Does this experience enable me to graduate from a 27th degree cat aficionado to a 28th degree 'Black Light’ Belt?  LOL LOL LOL

Ps. The odor was coming from the bathtub. And it was a gusher. Believe that?     - Doug Hines