A Rescue Poem

Rachel Kall and Sammie...

Sammie the King Diva

 I have three special cats: Leo (tabby), Willow (calico), and Sammie (black tripod). They’re all rescues, and have touched my heart in so many ways. Each one of them has unique personalities. Today I’ll tell you Sammie’s story. Sammie was a stray cat that I fed for over a year until one day I saw he was badly injured. I trapped him and took him to the vet where they had to amputate one of his back legs. But that didn’t slow him down! Now he thinks he’s a cat king diva who rules the other two cats and the two dogs. Helping animals is very close to my heart. Here is a poem I wrote about animal rescuers.

A Rescue Poem:

 When you think you can go on no more

when you feel you’re at your wits end

of death, desperation, and despair

the eyes of the longing helpless dog

the whimpers of the abandoned kitten

But who speaks for them?

who fights for them?

we are all tired, overworked, distraught and forlorn

but it’s for those who have no voice

those that only have their longing eyes

their special ways

a whimpering prayer

a desire for love

they bring so much to us

and ask for so very little in return

food, warmth, and just a bit of love

we continue to open our hearts

even though we have so little to give

our pockets are empty, our hands are tired, are hearts are broken

and yet

in the end

we still give

we still try

we cannot give up

because in the end

they

the silent ones

are counting on us

—Rachel Kall

Two Happy Endings

Patricia Rosemoor and Blossom and Blitzen...

Blossom aka MsB

Blossom, or MsB as I call her, is now eleven. I got her from PAWSChicago when she was five and I was volunteering in Kitty City. I mostly write on my laptop now, and she doesn’t try to get between it and me, but when I use my desktop computer to work on my website or build a new cover, she definitely jumps on the desk to see what I’m doing.

For a couple of years, it was just MsB and me. Then I fostered Blitzen (also known as Bgrrl) from PAWSChicago. MsB retreated to my bedroom, and worse, my closet. But I didn’t have the heart to NOT adopt Blitzen, who thought I was okay but really, really loved the apartment. She was so happy here, I knew it would break her little heart if I sent her back. So, with faith that they would someday become friends, I adopted her, as well, a few days before Christmas.

Blitzen aka Bgrrl

Blossom continued to be moody and reclusive, striking out at Blitzen if she tried to play with her. It was many months later before I found out why MsB had changed so drastically. She was sick. She went into the vet for dentistry and came out with a double mastectomy after they found a lump in her breast - and yes, it was cancer. I didn’t know if she would survive. Now, a year later, MsB is healthy and the girl she was when I brought her home. Even better, she and Bgrrl (who is four) amuse me by chasing each other around the apartment.

I’m so glad I could give them both happy endings.

Patricia Rosemoor

The Alpha Male

Kay Hooper and Felix...

Felix the Alpha Cat

My name is Felix, and I am the Alpha Male in the multi-cat household of my person, Kay Hooper. I was what she refers to as “one of the original seven,” meaning that when she finished this dream house of hers, there were seven of us felines who moved here with her (plus two canines). I was the Alpha even then, of course, by virtue of my size (18-19 pounds, none of it fat), and my calm but assertive attitude.

Nobody messes with Felix.

Renny the Beta Cat

I am nine years old this summer, a birthday I celebrate with my littermates Renny and Isabel. Renny is Beta to my Alpha, content to be the “sweet and affectionate” one who also takes it upon himself to welcome the (really bordering on too many!) rescued cats and kittens Kay has added to the household over the years. Isabel, far more standoffish, has a tortie’s spitfire personality, is all of half my size – and possesses my meow. Yes, she does have my meow. Something got mixed up in our mama before we were born, and Isabel ended up with my deep-throated, husky meow.

Me? I sound like a squeaky hinge. A small and rusty squeaky hinge. It’s embarrassing! I try not to use my voice very often, but Kay and others have discovered I have a...soft spot...just at the base of my tail, and when they gently pinch, I for some unknown reason have to meow. If I were a mean cat, I’d smack them for that. But I’m not mean. And I’m the Alpha, after all, with an image to maintain. So I merely stroll away without a backward look.

Isabel

Anyway, my duties as Alpha Cat are many, but I make the job look easy. I keep watch from several good vantage points around this large house, from the back of the couch in the living room to Kay’s desk in the study. I’ve never broken anything on her desk, but I do admit to having the knack of napping on just the piece of paper she needs for the WIP. How should I know what’s important? Alpha Cats can do many things, but we can’t read. Is it irony then, that my person is a writer?

I do move when she asks me. Okay, I move when she nudges and pushes and mutters under her breath. Or when she finally resorts to putting on hand lotion. I know, I know, it sounds like I’m a wuss to be driven away by the scent of hand lotion. But it’s patchouli. And green tea. I just don’t like that smell, and she knows it. It’s getting to the point where she only has to hold up the bottle and wiggle it, and I move off her paperwork.

Bandit

One of these days, I’m going to roll that bottle off her desk and encourage the dogs to play with it.

Ahem. I was talking about my job as Alpha Cat, wasn’t I? Right. Right. So I keep watch over this clowder of cats, and I generally keep order. Generally. Some of the youngsters get too full of themselves from time to time, but I usually only have to head in their direction for the fracas to die down quickly. Sometimes the dog Bandit plays referee, bounding into the middle of a melee, which I don’t mind at all. (Don’t tell anyone, but I adore Bandit, who is only a year older than me.) It’s usually a peaceful house, though, especially when you consider how many cats make their home here. And I don’t mind the crowd, really.

Just as long as they remember that I’m the Alpha Cat.

Felix

Interview with a Multi-Genre Author

Meet Jane Toombs and Kinko...

Cat's name: Kinko


Sex: Female


Age : 17


How long have you had the cat?: Since she was a kitten.


Where did you get the cat?: Private home. The lady put seven kittens down in front of us and this white calico with the black tail walked straight toward Elmer and me, then sat down to check us over She’d picked us out, so of course we had to take her home.

Favorite pastime: Kinko used to be hang on the back of a wooden chair batting at her tail, She still does this occasionally even as an old lady.

Interesting quirks? Kinko’s not really fond of anyone except us--Elmer and me. She’s learned to be a great traveler in her cat carrier because we always took her when we went places. She’s been everywhere. But she always wanted to be safely in the carrier, never outside it when in the car.

How does he or she like being a writer's cat? She curls up in an adjacent chair so she can keep an eye on me, making a remark now and then so I know she’s still there. She isn’t interested in in what I’m doing, just wants to be close by.

Has he/she ever been in one of your books?: Not her, but I do put cats in my books.


Anything you else you might want to say about your cat or your cat about you? 
Both Elmer and I have been cat people from the get-go. I got my first cat, a black and white tom, when I was four. My father, a Conservation Officer at the time, picked him up in the woods as a half-starved kitten who’d tried to climb up his pants leg, named him Merriweather, because that was the name of the town he was near and brought him home to me. Merriweather grew up, spent nights out tom-catting around and come home tired out. I’d put a doll bonnet on him and wheel him around the house in my doll buggy. He’d sleep soundly all the while. I loved him dearly and I’ve never been without a cat since. And the first story I ever wrote at seven was about Merriweather.

Elmer grew up on a farm where there were cats in the barn to keep down the mice. His mother would let the kids in the family bring kittens in the house to play with, but they always were banished back to the barn at night.

Note: Kinko survived surgery for a cancer on her eyelid three years ago. The vet told us white-faced cats tend to get this from lying in the sun. He removed it without her losing the eye and, yes, it was malignant, but not the kind that metastasizes, thank heaven. He calls her his miracle cat.

Other cats: The only really vocal cats I’ve had in my eighty-six years were Siamese. I loved how they’d talk to me. They were smart as well. I had a big tom named Zorro who once, when we went from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to California for Christmas, we had shut in the basement where his sandbox and food were. We had a neighbor check on him and give him more food while we were gone.

Well, every time the neighbor came in, Zorro would happily greet him at the door as he entered the house. He couldn’t figure this out because he shut him back into the basement every time he left. Once day he pretended he was leaving and snuck back in to stay and watch, Pretty soon he noticed the doorknob of the basement door jiggling. Then it started turning, the door opened and out Zorro came. Checking inside the basement door, he noticed a small shelf with nothing on it right beside the doorknob on the stair landing. Ah, problem solved. Zorro had gotten onto the shelf and learned to paw at the doorknob until it finally opened and out he came. With the door ajar he was free to use the sandbox or eat whenever he felt like it.

Then there was my female Siamese we finally named Kitty because the kids couldn’t agree on a name. After I was divorced and living alone with the kids, who were in school, Kitty decided it was time to have her kittens. They would be Siamese, I knew, because when she went into heat a male Siamese appeared out of nowhere and mated with her before leaving. I was headed out the door, but she followed me, obviously in the throes of birth. So I walked back to her birth box and sat on the floor. She got back in. I thought maybe after she had one kitten she’d be content to stay there while the rest were born. No such luck.

The first kitten was born and she cleaned him up. By then another was being born, a much smaller one than the first, so I figured it had to be the runt. Well, she wouldn’t clean this kitten up no matter how many times I put it under her nose. Three more were born and cleaned up. When I finally again put the poor little runt under her nose after she was through with the others, she finally cleaned him up. Then I gently put him where he could reach a free nipple. He found it and began to suck. After than Kitty accepted him as part of her brood.

He turned out to be a feisty little thing despite having the sniffles, a crook in his tail and crossed-eyes--all common afflictions in Siamese. I wondered later if somehow Kitty knew he was defective. Still, as they grew older, though smaller, he held his own against the tumble mock fights with all his brothers. Yes, they were all males--not uncommon with Siamese litters.

When the time came to give them away, I decided to sell them for a dollar each, which would pay for the ad in the paper. All but the runt were snapped up quickly. I had decided I’d have to keep him, when a woman called me and said she’d been away and she’d just seen the ad in an old paper. Her daughter had been begging for a Siamese kitten, but all they’d seen had been too expensive. I told her about his defects, saying that’s why he was left over. She said it didn’t matter. When they arrived, the little runt, tail up, walked right up to the little girl and charmed her. They left with her cuddling him to her and the kitten purring loudly. I didn’t want to take the dollar, but the mother insisted.

“It’s like he was saved for us,” she said.

Which brought tears to my eyes.

Jane Toombs

From the Catio

Rebecca York and Ozzie and Beevel...

Last year I read an article in the New York Times that changed my life. It was about city dwellers who constructed “catios,” safe places for their cats to enjoy the outdoors. Basically they were decks or patios enclosed with mesh or screen where cats could safely take the air.

Ozzie looking out the "catio" door

I thought it was a great idea and decided to try it. Cautiously starting with a test run, I bought one of those ten-foot-square pavilion tents with fabric screens. I set it up on the patio outside the sliding glass door to the walk-out basement and used bricks to hold the screen sides down. I positioned it directly against the house so that cats and I could walk right out into the tent. The two adventurous cats, Ozzie and Beevel, followed me out immediately. Ozzie is a female rescued part-Maine-Coon. Beevel is an Abyssinian, the daughter of two grand champions but not quite show quality. The scaredy-cat, Harriet (Ozzie’s daughter), ran screaming from the strange new contraption. I brought her out and held her in my lap. She was doing okay until a gust of wind blew the top of the tent around. In response, she promptly peed in my lap.

But I didn’t give up on her, and soon all three cats were coming out on the catio with me. Since the idea was a success, I went on to the next step–hiring a contractor to build a screened porch in place of the tent.

Harriet & Ozzie with Mom

The four of us are sitting on our catio porch now. It has turned out to be a high point in the cats’ lives and also a wonderful place for me to sit and write, outside with no bugs and pretty scenery. I have always loved gardening, and the catio plans included some garden modifications. A friend helped me construct a fishpond with a waterfall. (No, I do not let the cats go fishing.) As I sit here with the cats, I’m listening to the sound of running water and looking up from time to time at the greenery around me.

All three cats are relaxing at the moment. Other favorite activities out here include sunning and watching birds and squirrels.

Rebecca York
On Writing Romance blog