The Hobos

Writing about the time our cat was killed by a stray dog, in our living room, with all of the doors and windows closed and locked got me thinking about our other cats. These are mostly bad pictures, but here's Harley in his usual spot and usual pose. As I said, he was a very sweet cat who even had the approval of the otherwise very disapproving Tasha.

Sampson was our first, and our only Pet Shop Boy. We were living in our first apartment together, and I made Mrs. Rodius go and visit him until she couldn't do anything but agree to buy him. He was so small, she carried home in her pocket, but he quickly grew to 20 lbs. We got Harley from a shelter a couple of years later to keep Sampson company. Sampson developed diabetes that we couldn't seem to control with insulin shots, and he didn't live to see the move to Texas.

Harley kept wandering around the apartment meowing, like he thought maybe Sampson was just playing hide-and-seek, so we got Tasha from the shelter in Austin shortly after we moved here to keep Harley company. She was 6 pounds and a year old, and had recently had a litter of kittens, but the kittens weren't with her when the shelter picked her up. She was starving, and apparently made a vow never to go hungry again. She's doubled in weight, and, though she soon stopped immediately eating every bit of food we put down, she still pays very close attention to the feeding schedule, reminding us when it's time lest we forget. Tasha apparently understood that she was moving into Harley's home, and always treated him with respect, and even affection. Puck, however, still hasn't made it into her inner circle.

Shortly after we moved into the money-saving townhouse, a feral cat started bringing her kittens into our tiny back yard. I immediately saw where this was going and begged Mrs. Rodius not to feed them. I knew when I said it that she was completely incapable of doing anything else, and soon we were buying cheap cat food for the mother and her kittens. Of course, what I feared came to pass, and other cats were attracted by the food.

I begged Mrs. Rodius at least not to start naming them. I knew when I said it that she was completely incapable of doing anything else, and soon we were buying giant bags of cheap cat food for the twenty or more cats that regularly returned to our yard. We participated in a trap-neuter-release program that another resident had started. We found an adoptive home for one kitty (Inky), and tried for another two (Eenie and Meenie), but that ended in disaster. The original mother (Mama) was notoriously wary of people and proved impossible to trap and spay, so she went on to mother several more litters of kittens that she taught to eat solid food in our back yard. She was almost always pregnant.

Puck was one of her kittens. He was probably, based on his markings, fathered by Oscar (the Grouch), a big-headed bully of a tom who ultimately did get trapped and neutered, but who always maintained his dominance in the yard. Most of the kitties were happy to come and eat and sleep in our yard, but almost all of them were extremely wary of people. Only a small handful were willing to let Mrs. Rodius touch them. As a kitten, Puck was one of those.

At first he was just willing to be in closer proximity to Mrs. Rodius than the rest. Mama was pretty quick to cut the kittens off to fend for themselves, because she was usually already pregnant again. So the kittens learned to get in there and compete with the adults for the food we put out. Puck's willingness to be within a foot or two of her, and later his willingness to let her pet him, was his strategy for getting his share of the food and more. The more he let her love him, the more he got not only cheap cat food, but cheese, deli meat, leftover chicken, and more. He eventually even started following her into the house. That's when I knew for sure we had a third cat.

Once she finally trapped him, neutered him, and brought him home, his transition from feral to housecat was difficult. We kept him isolated in a separate room, and she spent almost all of her time in there with him. He howled miserably, and it broke her heart. She almost let him back out again. But slowly, he adjusted, and he has bonded to her in a way that is just sickening to those of us (Tasha and me) on the outside of their special relationship.

Soon, though, he developed a urinary tract problem that required surgery to correct. We had been saving up money to take a tropical vacation, but we had to spend it on him. He's felt guilty about it ever since, and has worked hard to keep our home bug-free in order to earn his keep. We sometimes refer to him as the $3,000 Kitty, because, like the $6 Million Dollar Man, we had the technology to rebuild him, to make him stronger. He has never trusted me, only Mrs. Rodius. I think he was probably tormented by kids in the neighborhood when he was still a feral kitten. I never saw it happen to him, but I saw kids throw rocks at the other ferals. Puck is particularly distrustful of me if I have something, anything, in my hand. He only has love, and trust, for his beloved Mama.

There was something very vitally important for Mrs. Rodius about saving those abandoned, wild kitties whose lives were tough, and often short. I'm glad it happened at that townhouse, though. We learned a few lessons in that time, through the disastrously failed adoption of Eenie and Meenie, and the difficult trapping and neutering of Gwynny that kept her from becoming a housecat, though she had much of the same willingness to be touched that Puck had. Maybe Mrs. Rodius' powerful need for them ran its course. Maybe she learned that she couldn't save them all. In any case, now that we have moved, she hasn't felt, or at least expressed, the same undeniable urge to feed the few strays that have wandered across our path since, and I'm glad. Sometimes, though, I miss those hobos, and I wonder how many of the ones we knew are still out there, scraping out a living. Do you think they ever look through the window at the new owner of that townhouse and wonder what happened to that nice lady who gave them a safe harbor in the middle of an otherwise brutal world?