We didn’t ever mean to have five cats. But how could that happen by ACCIDENT, you ask. Well, here’s the thing.
When we took this job managing an RV park, the job came with a house. We’d lived in an RV our entire marriage, so we moved into that house without a stick of furniture.
After living for so long in much tighter quarters, the three bedrooms, two bathrooms, living-room-dining-room-kitchen-space felt downright cavernous. I felt like we should take home the maintenance crew’s walkie-talkies:
“I’m in the front room. Over!”
We hadn’t wanted to deal with a cat (and litter box, etc.) when we were in smaller quarters—but once we got settled into the house, I began a campaign for getting a kitty. Every house needs a cat, in my opinion. It wasn’t a subtle campaign; my ongoing tactics included things like adding Cat Toy to the weekly grocery list.
My husband steadily resisted, and the campaign continued. Then suddenly, one day, he marched out of the bedroom and said, “You can have your cat!”
I meant to say “Yay,” but was startled into saying, “Why?” instead. (It was quite a sudden reversal, after all.)
Turns out there had been a mouse in his pants.
He picked up his pants when he got out of the shower, and a mouse jumped down and ran off. So yes, I could have a cat. Happy dance! He added some modifiers, though. We had just been visiting my mom, who had a very tiny, very sweet little black cat called Mila. “If we’re going to have one, it should be like your mom’s cat,” he specified.
So when we arrived at the local animal shelter, PAWS (Pendleton Animal Welfare Society, isn’t that cute?), I half-jokingly announced that we were in the market for a very small female black cat. “I think we have one,” she answered.
As it happened, the choice was taken out of our hands, and into the paws of a very small female black cat, who trotted right up to us when we walked into the Cat Room. It’s an enormous room, full of shelves and ramps and cat condos, and dozens of cats roaming and hiding. And one cat who jogged right up to our feet and looked up at us expectantly. Small and black, just like we’d specified. The decision was made for us!
We took her home and named her The General (because she clearly outranked us both), and had no more mice in our pants.
The story wasn’t over, though. While we were filling out our adoption paperwork, the lady at the front desk asked if we would be interested in volunteering to foster kittens.
Somewhat to my surprise, Jon said “sure.”
As we found out the next spring, PAWS receives dozens upon dozens of kittens—in ones and twos and whole litters—who need care and feeding (bottle-feeding for the itty-bitties) until the weekly cat-shuttle (driven by a volunteer) could take them all to Portland where there’s a more robust adoption market.
We became a collection-point, our collection growing every week by ones and twos and whole litters, and then they’d all be taken off and we’d start over. For a couple months, our house was the way-station for orphaned kitties. And ohmygosh they were all SO CUTE! We reveled in their antics, named them according to their looks or personalities, and saw them off every week in the shuttle piled with cat-crates.
It was understood that none of them would be staying. I’d already gotten My Cat, and these were all going to be transient. The danger period, as we found, was late in the “kitten season” when the shuttle was no longer running so regularly and the kittens stayed with us longer and had a chance to worm their way into a heart. (Or two.)
There was one little guy who was an absolute ugly duckling, fur sticking out in weird directions, a little hairless tail sticking up like a radio antenna… But he was the sweetest little cuddle-bug. And he was with us long enough to start growing into his looks. Like the ugly duckling, he turned out to be a swan. Or, actually, a Norwegian Forest Cat, cousin to the Maine Coone, enormous (twenty pounds when he grew up) and majestic with beautiful long hair.
And still a cuddle-bug, as if he never thought he was bigger than the handful who used to curl up under my chin while I read. Well, I began to campaign again, to keep one more cat, to keep Foofy Kitty. Two cats is reasonable, right?
And so it went, year by year—my husband growing more emphatic, each year, that the number of cats we owned was the absolute maximum number of cats we were going to own… And every year that “maximum number” creeping upward anyway.
The final year that we fostered (and I’m sure I don’t have to explain why we stopped!), Yoda arrived, and stole my heart at first sight. (I’m also sure I don’t have to explain his name—the photo will do the job.) Whether or not a cat-mom is “supposed” to have favorites, I confess that I do. Yoda’s adoption was the perfect note on which to wrap up our years of fostering.
We returned the big cat-cage, and the various kitten-care items we’d accumulated, and thanked PAWS for a good run. (They also did not have to be told why we were bowing out of fostering. Siging the fifth set of adoption papers pretty much said it all.) And that, my friends, is how you accidentally become a Cat Lady! We lost Foofy Kitty to illness a couple years ago, and we still miss his enormous cuddle-bug-ness… But when Jon sits on the couch with his feet up, and four cats curled up on his legs in series, like a furry choo-choo train, we think we probably have enough cats to be going on with.
Kana's Chronicles 
Join the Conversation!