Category Archives: cats

Sir Boinks-a-Lot

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All our cats have nicknames. Some more than one.

Louise was The Queen of Everything.

Garcia was Mr. Underfoot.

Dushenka is Ms. Crazy Eyes.

(Everyone was Baby-Cat except Louise. Other memorable cats have been Matches (Badness, Checkers), Chelsea (Chips), Shaker (What-a-Pie), Maggie (Gelfling, Gertzie-Girl), Laurel (Keet), Joliet (The Silly Pet), and Bijou (Angel Kitty). But I digress.)

Then there was Django. (He was named after guitarist Django Reinhardt. I figured if Dan could have a cat named after a guitarist, so could I. But I digress again.) A robust gray-and-white male, he was the one we called Sir Boinks-a-Lot.

Would you like to guess how he got his name? Hint: It wasn’t because he boinked a lot.

No, he just tried to boink a lot.

Gender didn’t matter. He would go after either boy-cats or girl-cats – neither with any degree of success. He was neutered. His intended didn’t even have to be another cat. Or even animate. We once caught him trying to mount a feather duster.

But the escapade that earned him his nickname was when he tried to have carnal knowledge of my husband’s elbow. Never mind that there was no orifice. Sir Boinks-a-Lot was determined to make one. He kept drilling and drilling, but he never struck pussy (so to speak).

Dan’s theory was that when he worked on his computer, his forearm resembled the shape of an aroused female cat. His hand and wrist were the head, his arm the body, and his raised elbow the…er…target zone. Or it could be that Django was near-sighted with no sense of smell.

My theory was just that he was a horny bastard. (Django, I mean. We will not discuss how pets come to resemble their owners. But I digress yet again.)

He was also camera shy, which is why there’s a stand-in for him here, but then again, who wants their sexual peculiarities displayed all over the Internet? No, wait. Don’t answer that.

Alas, Sir Boinks-a-Lot is no longer with us, though he proved as determined about fighting cancer as he was about finding someone or something that welcomed his advances. We still miss him terribly.

I think even Dan’s elbow misses him a little. Although it’s tough to tell with an elbow.

The Bird Who Spoke Cat

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My husband and I were strolling through the mall after having a lovely fish dinner with a glass of wine. Well, a couple of glasses, really. We ended up at a Woolworth’s, which back then you could find in a mall. (Woolworth’s is what was known as a five-and-ten-cent store. Kind of like a Dollar Store that mated with a Target store, only cheaper, though nothing there actually cost five or ten cents. Except maybe candy. But I digress.) Once we were there, we browsed our way to the pet department, which five-and-dimes had back then. Mostly fish, turtles, and birds.

We stopped in front of the parakeet cage and gazed admiringly at the tiny flock. “Let’s get one,” Dan said.

“You’re forgetting that we have four cats,” I replied. “A parakeet would hardly be a snack for them.”

“We’ll hang its cage from a hook in the ceiling.” There was at that time no hook. Dan loves even the tiniest home improvement projects.

“I want the blue one,” I said. “I’ve always wanted a blue parakeet. We could name him ‘Blue Boy.'”

“He could be a she. How would we know?”

“If he talks, he’s a boy,” I said confidently. “Mostly the males talk.” (I wasn’t totally sure about this, but I was betting on the fact that Dan didn’t know either.)

“I’d rather get the yellow one.”

“Blue.”

“Yellow.”

“Blue. How are we going to decide?”

Then we made one of our famous deals.

“Let me pick the bird, and you can name him,” said Dan.

“Anything I want?” I asked.

“Anything? Even J. Alfred Prufrock?”

“Yes. Even that.” (Well, really, we were pretty sloshed. I don’t recommend buying a pet while drunk, but this turned out okay. But I digress again.)

So J. Alfred came home with us and lived safely in his cage near the ceiling. One of the cats, Maggie, made an ambitious climb up the drapes after him, but couldn’t figure out how to get from drape to cage and had to be rescued.

We tried to teach the bird to talk. “Hi. I’m Alfie,” we’d repeat to him. “Alfie-bird.”

We were also talking to the cats. Not that we expected them to repeat what we said, but we had interesting conversations nonetheless.

“Shaker, what’s a kitty do?” (Shaker was another of the four cats.)

“R-roww.”

“Yes, that’s right.” (We weren’t always drunk. Sometimes we were just silly. Still are.)

Eventually, Alfie started talking. But bird of very little brain that he was, he got a little mixed up. First, he changed his name.

“Ralphie-bird,” he said. “Hi. I’m Ralphie.”

What could we do at that point? We changed his name to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh, no.

Pretty soon he was saying, “Shaker-bird” and “R-roww.” 

Great. We had a parakeet with an identity crisis. And a cat that was hearing voices from above. From her natural prey, no less. (I was going to write that Ralphie also said, “Here, kitty, kitty,” but he didn’t. Also, it’s a very old, very bad joke. But I digress some more.)

I could just imagine the little conversations Ralphie and Shaker could have.

Ralphie: “R-roww.”

Shaker: “R-roww.”

Ralphie: “R-roww.”

Shaker: “R-roww.”

Pointless, boring conversations, but what can you expect from animals that will never master sign language like gorillas do? Sometimes Dan and I don’t do much better when it comes to conversation. After all, we were the ones who had pointless dialogues with the cat for the parakeet to overhear.

Come to think of it, I don’t really know if their conversations were pointless. They may have been plotting against us. But the cat was cool and never said a mumblin’ word. (H/t Hoyt Axton.)

Terms of Endearment

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“What’s for dinner, Ler?”

“I don’t know, Doodle. See what’s in the freezer.”

Conversations like those are what keep our marriage strong.

Back when my husband and I were dating, we had a reputation for inspiring a need for insulin in everyone around us. To say we were sickening would be an understatement. We addressed each other with a plethora of cutesie names and endearments. I don’t remember if we ever actually said “kissy-lamb,” but you get the idea. “Sugar,” “Sweetheart,” “Darling,” and other standards were definitely within our repertoire.

Since we’ve been married, not so much. I suppose it’s because no one can keep up that level of goo and drivel for too long. Oh, we still call each other by affectionate names, but they’re more likely to be odd ones.

First, I must admit that, aside from that dating phase, I never had a lot of experience with terms of endearment. My father’s favorite thing to call my mother was “Old Squaw,” which would now be objectionable for any number of reasons. My mother never objected to it, though, so I don’t see why anyone else should get a vote.

Dan and I started out along the same lines. One of his favorite names for me was “Old Boot.” (No, I have no idea of how that started. I suppose it sort of made some kind of sense at the time. And I didn’t mind, so again with the no one else getting a vote. But I digress.)

Over time, our endearments got even stranger. We took to calling each other “Doodle,” “Cake,” “Bug,” and “Ler” (no, I have no idea what that means either). Dan calls me “Rabbit,” “Bunny,” and sometimes “Rabbi.” (“Where’s the Torah, Rabbi?” he’ll say. We also have a scrap of dialogue that goes like this: “Friend.” “Thing.” “Friendly Thing.” And yes, I sometimes do say, “Thank you, Thing.” But I digress. Again.)

We mostly skip old standards like “Honey,” except in compounds: “Honey-Lover,” or “My Own Sweet Honey-Lover,” which is still pretty icky, now that I think about it.

Recently, we tried out “Bae” and “Boo.” (I’m Bae. He’s Boo.) But I’m not sure it will ever really catch on with us. It must be out of date anyway, now that we’re saying it. Along those lines, one endearment I don’t like is “Baby.” It raises my hackles. I’m not a baby. Of course, it’s different when combined with something else – “Baby-Bunny,” “Baby-Cake,” “Baby-Bug.” Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you.

The truth is, I’m really bad at terms of endearment, other than the occasional “Honey” and the silly ones. I prefer to call Dan “Dan.” (And for some reason, he can call me “Jannie,” but I can’t call him “Danny.” I think he’s afraid I’ll burst into a chorus of “Oh, Danny Boy,” although I sing like a bird. An off-key bird. I do, however, occasionally call him “Fuzzer-Bear.” But I digress yet again.)

Of course, we do know people that stick with the sticky, as it were. One couple of our acquaintance call each other “Wifey” and “Hubby,” though they’ve been married for quite a number of years.

Just don’t get me started on the terms of endearment we have for our cats. Toto-boo-boo-baby (Toby) is a bit icky even for me, though I have been heard to say it. Toby doesn’t mind, and I don’t see why anyone else gets a vote.

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Chill Out, Kitty!

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My husband’s big orange-striped cat, Matches, was so chill that Dan once put the creature into an empty birdcage and hung it from the ceiling. Amazingly, the cat voiced no objections. He just looked around calmly from his unique new vantage point.

Not many cats are that agreeable about being put in a cage – especially when it signals a trip to the vet. Even the cardboard boxes that pass as pet carriers are useless. Just try to put a cat in one and you have a (Your State’s Name Here) Chainsaw Massacre. And cardboard carriers aren’t designed to stand up to a massacre.

We had a black-and-white cat named Shaker, who started with one fang hooked into an air hole in the cardboard carrier and demolished the entire thing until it was a pile of Shredded Wheat. We had to drive the rest of the way to the vet with one revved-up, pissed-off cat. For later visits, we just let her sit on my lap while we drove and while sitting in the waiting room. While we waited, Shaker hopped off my lap and made a break for it. She waddled (she was chubby, okay?) as fast as her little white feet would carry her toward the door. She just hadn’t counted on it being glass. She bonked her head against it and while she was stunned, I scooped her up.

Another cat, Julia, was okay with going to the vet. It was what they did to her there that she objected to. The vet tried to demonstrate to us the proper way to give a cat a pill or liquid medicine. Julia went into her act. She demonstrated her own little invention – projectile drooling. Soon the exam room was dappled with gooey patches of sticky saliva. And so were we, when we tried it at home.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that her cat, known as Mrs. Bompstample (I may have spelled that wrong), had been voted the second-worst cat at their vet’s office. And that was despite Mrs. B. being sedated before she came. I don’t even want to contemplate what the worst cat was like. There was a note on its cage that said, “Do not open!” which probably made it difficult to treat the cat. (Personally, I think most vets coat their hands with a Valium salve that is absorbed through the animals’ fur, which is why vets don’t shake hands with pet owners. Although maybe they should in some cases. But I digress.)

We’ve never had a cat that needed Valium to go to the vet, though we have had cats be naughty. One jumped off the examining table and holed up between it and the wall. We had to get down on our hands and knees to coax her out (something we couldn’t do now). Well, and Drooly Julie can’t strictly be said to have been on her best behavior. Django once scratched my face and various other cats have bitten me. Once it was so bad that I had to ask the vet to treat me too.

Matches, of course, was so chill at the vet that he should have worn shades. He loved riding in the car and never had to be put in a box. Maybe that was why he was so cool.

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I Tried Not to Love Her

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Dushenka came to us as a stray. She hung around the neighborhood for about a week, with my husband trying to coax her closer. Then she disappeared for a week. One day, though, she came trotting through our garden and up to our door. She had chosen us as her family.

It turned out that her former family lived just a couple of streets away from us, which we found out because the vet discovered that she had a microchip. (We also found out that her original name was Carmen, which isn’t a bad name for a cat, but we had already started calling her Dushenka because we couldn’t keep calling her Li’l Bit. “Dushenka” is Russian and means “little soul.” But I digress.)

I tried not to love her. I really did. We had recently lost our darling cat Julia, another little calico, and Dushenka reminded me so much of her. I just felt I wasn’t ready to give my heart to another one yet. But there Dushenka was with her little pinky nose, her smudgy chin, her crazy eyes, her super-long white whiskers, her floofy white belly, and her gorgeous, silky calico fur.

I began to suspect that I was falling in love when a neighbor (not Dushenka’s former owners – they never responded to us) lost their cat, also a calico, and came to inquire about the one we’d found. I found myself quizzing them closely about what their cat looked like. He said she was female. Check. I asked if she had a dark smudge under her chin. What were her eyes like? Then I brought Dushenka out for him to look at, and he said that she wasn’t his. I began to suspect she was ours (or we were hers) and that I was in love with her.

It turned out she is different enough from Julia that I was able to think of them as individuals. Dushenka has shorter fur than Julia did. Julia had a distinctive, bitchy meow. (She wasn’t actually bitchy. She just sounded that way.) Dushenka almost never meows, but she has a strong purr. And she snores. Daintily, but she snores.

She has acquired nicknames. (Baby Cat. Pretty Grrl. (Occasionally Naughty Grrl when she goes walkabout.) The Incredible Pettable Pet. Ms. Muss (rhymes with puss). Shenka-doo. (I may or may not have once called her Shenka-Doodle-Doo.) She even has her own song (“Shenka-Shenka-Doo, where are you? On your little kitty adventure!” ttto the Scooby-Doo theme song.) But I digress. Again. At length.)

I’m not sure exactly how old Dushenka is because she came to us fully grown, though still youthful. Now she seems more like a little old lady, or at least on her way past middle age. Lately, she’s been in poor health. She just can’t seem to pee. She eats and drinks just fine, but nothing comes out the other end. Several vet visits later, it seems – no big surprise here – to be a problem with her kidneys. I hesitate to say how much we’ve spent, what with the weekend emergency vet visit, the blood tests, and the x-rays.

We’re giving her subcutaneous (subQ) fluids, a process we learned how to do over the years with other cats. It involves immobilizing the cat – no easy matter – and sticking a needle under the skin between her shoulder blades. (That’s always my job. Dan can’t bear to do it). We have a bag of fluids and a drip set and let about 150 ml run in. The fluid occupies the space between skin and flesh and makes her look lumpy and weird until it gradually absorbs. Repeat the next day. The idea is to flush out her kidneys. The process exhausts us and Dushenka, too. Afterward, Dushenka has a little snack for her nerves and then we all go have a lie-down. These are the things we do for the little soul we love.

Every so often we look at Dushenka and say, “Who could not love this cat?” Other than the people who had her originally, I don’t know. I couldn’t not love her. I tried.

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Winter: A Revelation

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I’ve never been that fond of winter. For one thing, it’s cold. For another, I once lived where it occasionally got down to -30. I lived through the winter storms of 1978. One winter there was so much snow that my car was in the shop for five extra days because the body shop was snowed in. (The damage was caused when someone slid into my car in a parking lot.)

My husband and I occasionally travel in the winter, mostly for visits to relatives. (This led to my worst birthday ever, when my husband swore he’d get home for my birthday. In the evening of that day, my husband called from the middle of nowhere, from a hospital (he wasn’t actually hurt), saying that he had crashed his car. I had to drive to West Virginia to pick him up. Once we traveled to Illinois on Thanksgiving weekend, and the car’s heater went out on the trip back. We had to stop along the way to buy gloves and blankets. But I digress. At length.)

Our travels abroad have included Mexico in the sweltering season and Ireland in the rainy season (insofar as they actually have a separate season for rain). And when we went to Croatia, we went in the off-season, but not one that promised bad weather.

We had figured without the Dinaric Alps. Our tour included a national park known as Plitvice Lakes. The further our bus went up in the mountains, the colder it became. It began snowing by the time we got there. It was wet snow, the kind that sticks to everything. It looks very pretty when you’re inside and warm and don’t have to go out in it. It’s probably the very best snow for building snowpeople and snow forts – not that I do either anymore.

This photo shows what it was like when our guide took us out to the lakes. That is to say, it was cold. Most of us hadn’t figured on this weather and were bundled up in sweaters and light jackets. Our guide knew better. We followed him to the lakes. Actually, we had two guides. The other one was a small black cat who went ahead of us, trot-trot- trot, all the way to the lakes. (The guide who didn’t have four legs had a habit of saying “Once upon a time” when he talked about the history of the country, which I found charming. But I digress again.)

When we got to the lakes, it was magical. The snow enhanced it, and we forgot about how cold it was. Plitvice Lakes is an interconnected network of lakes, separated by rocky waterfalls. We were just at the right point in the season when the snow was all around, but the waterfalls were rushing with snowmelt. The glistening snow and the tumbling waterfalls were insanely beautiful. The waterfalls were flowing so strongly that some of the wooden walkways between the lakes were not usable and we had to take detours – cautiously. The guide didn’t want to lose any of us and managed not to.

The photo at the left shows one of the areas that the little black cat led us to.

Our visit to Croatia (and Venice, Slovenia, and Montenegro) was wonderfully memorable. (We had a banana split in Split, then split Split before we split our pants. But I digress yet again.) A small black kitten tried to climb into our souvenir bag in Dubrovnik, obviously begging to come home with us. Our stop in Montenegro impressed us so much that we’ve actually discussed retiring there.

I still don’t like winter. All of the things I said about it are still true. But I learned that winter has a beauty all its own.

It took Plitvice Lakes to convince me.

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No Bitey!

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Our cat Dushenka is really a sweetie. In fact, she’s a love-muffin. She’s a part-time lap cat and is given to nose touches, head bonks, and loud purring. She slurps my husband’s forehead. Sometimes at night, she walks back and forth across our (formerly) slumbering bodies, making sure that each of us gets some of her attention. We call her the Incredibly Pettable Pet.

But, once in a while, she goes a little wild. If we rub her belly a bit too long or scritch and fuzzle her head a bit too much, she changes. When she gets overexcited or overwhelmed by all the play, her teeth come into play, too. She bites the hand that pets her.

Most of the time this is just a love-bite, with no attempt to harm. She just places her teeth on your hand or wrist. When that happens, I tell her, “No bitey” and withdraw my hand. She knows that when she calms down I’ll go right back to adoring her and demonstrating it with more caresses.

This week, however, she didn’t follow her usual pattern. This time she chomped down on my forearm. And drew blood. There was nothing different in the way I was petting her. I wasn’t pulling her tail or touching any of the places she doesn’t like to be touched. (Not that there are many.) I immediately stopped petting her and went to get a tissue to mop up the blood. The mark was gone by the next day. It didn’t get infected the way it once did when Dan’s cat Matches bit me on the web between my thumb and forefinger. And since then she’s been perfectly agreeable.

Why did this happen? Well, the BCSPCA (2022) says, “Many cats exhibit what behaviourists call ‘petting-induced aggression,’ an instinctive reaction to something they find unpleasant, even painful. Compared to dogs, cats are generally less tolerant of petting. When, where and how long cats can be touched before they become overstimulated vary from cat to cat.” Another source compares it to being sensitive to being tickled. When it’s just too much to handle, the tickle-ee tries to get away. If they can’t, they lash out (Shubin, 2022).

(Yes, I’ve been doing some work that requires me to use APA 7th citations, and I can’t quite break myself of the habit. And yes, I have also been tickled past the point of play into pain and know what it is like. Nonetheless, I didn’t bite anyone, though I probably should have. But I digress. Twice.)

Still, while Dushenka’s occasional bites are almost certainly petting aggression, that isn’t true of every cat that’s ever sunk their teeth into my tender (but apparently yummy) flesh.

Anjou, for example, got to me while I was sleeping. She came to me in bed and gave me the ol’ face-nuzzle. I grunted and tried to ignore her. I failed in this, because she immediately nuzzled me again. I grunted louder. Then she nipped me on the tip of the nose, which startled me nearly awake. Reflexively, I caught her up with one hand and heaved her off the bed. My husband said she flew through the air in a graceful arc and never stopped purring the whole time. It’s a pretty picture and I hope it’s true. He’s been known to exaggerate. But she certainly didn’t seem to resent it and showed no sign of harm or even stand-offish-ness the next day.

Another bitey cat was Louise. We got her when she was a tiny little baby kitten. I bonded with her right away, to the point I could even hold her belly up like a baby in my arms.

When we went to bed, however, it was a different matter. Every night, she wriggled under the covers and attacked our toes. Her teeth may have been tiny, but my God, they were pointy! They were like little needles piercing our lower digits. (Afterward, we referred to her as “naughty baby Fek’lhr,” a joke that almost no one gets. But I digress again.) Fortunately, she grew out of it.

Right now, Dushenka is upstairs cuddling with Dan. If I hear a yelp, I’ll know why. It’s not as likely to happen to him, though – Dan has thicker skin than I do. I know it’s not because he doesn’t pet her.

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Coats of Many Colors

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Once again, I return to one of my favorite topics – cats.

I was inspired to write about cats again by a post that showed a picture of a friend’s new cat, which was all black, except for a few white hairs that appeared on the cat’s chest. I commented, “All black cats are required to have at least ten black hairs somewhere on their body. It’s a rule.” I do believe that, and nobody’s going to convince me otherwise.

Dan a never owned an all-black cat, but we have had one that was what’s called a “tuxedo cat,” all black except for a white bib and, in this case, little white feet and magnificent white whiskers.

As befits a cat wearing a tuxedo, she was very dignified and hated it when anything happened to offend her dignity. You could see that she was appalled.

(By the way, it’s not true that black cats are more likely to suffer human predation around Halloween, despite the rumors. It’s an Urban Legend. Shelters will let you adopt a black cat at any time of year, too. But I digress.)

We have owned black-and-white and gray-and-white cats, a couple of gray tabbies and a couple of orange tabbies, plus assorted calicos and tortoiseshells (calicos are actually a variety of tortoiseshell, with white added to the orange and black). I’m generally the one responsible for inviting the calicos and torties into our home, as I’ve always been attracted to their colors. Dan is partial to the orange-striped cats.

Calicos are particularly interesting because they are almost invariably females. Their tricolored fur is a result of genetics. The calico pattern is determined by two X chromosomes. An XY cat is a male and can’t have two copies of the calico gene required to express those colors of fur. Technically, a male cat can be calico if it has two X chromosomes and a Y, but this is very rare and a male calico is almost always sterile.

Another genetic trick that some cats have is heterochromia, or one eye a different color from the other. (Technically, lots of other animals can have heterochromia, including dogs and humans). We have a cat with one green eye and one gold (a calico), but even more striking are all-white cats that have one blue eye and one of another color.

All-white cats have a greater chance than other cats of being born deaf, but how many are or become deaf varies, partly with eye color. White cats with non-blue eyes have around a 20% chance of deafness. White cats with one blue eye are twice as likely to be deaf, and a white cat with two blue eyes has more than an 80% chance of being deaf. Interestingly, a cat with heterochromia (also called an”odd-eyed” cat) who is deaf in only one ear, is usually deaf on the side with the blue eye.

Another fascinating genetic fact (at least to those of us who are fascinated by this sort of thing) is that orange tabbies are most likely male, by a ratio of about 75%. Tabbies don’t have to be orange, though. There are also gray tabbies with darker gray or black stripes. (We’ve had two of these, and both had tan tummies with spots on them. Don’t ask me why. They’re silly-looking, but kind of endearing. But I digress again.)

There are a couple of different varieties of tabbies. The most common one, called the “mackerel” tabby, has vertical stripes that run from its spine down its sides. The “classic” tabby has thicker horizontal stripes that swirl over the cat’s side parallel to the spine. (I always thought it was the other way around. Goes to show what I know, I guess.) All tabbies have a marking like the letter M on their foreheads.

Nose leather (or rhinarium, as it is technically called) is a thing I didn’t even know was a thing until fairly recently. Apparently, nose leather is a touch-based sense organ, which may be why cats insist on sticking them in our faces. Cats also have “nose prints,” analogous to human fingerprints. The color of a cat’s nose leather doesn’t matter, but some of the various colors are pink, black, gray, and even ones called “red,” “coral,” “liver-colored,” “rose,” and “copper.” (I once had a cat whose nose leather I could only describe as “burnt terra cotta.” But I digress. Again.)

The only cat coat I don’t really care for is no coat at all. I understand that the Sphinx cat is highly prized by many and a breed that is often featured in cat shows. They just look disturbingly naked to me.

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Cats in Space

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Those of you who follow my blog know of my enduring love for cats – and not just my own. Last week my blog post was about cats in mysteries (https://butidigress.blog/2022/08/21/mysterious-cats/), so this week I’m going to tackle cats in another genre – science fiction and fantasy. Because science fiction books aren’t as predominant as they once were, I’ve expanded my source material to include various other media.

Let’s start with books, though. The most famous cat in a work of fantasy fiction is undoubtedly the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (who shared the stage for a brief appearance of Alice’s cat Dinah). Notable for appearing suddenly then disappearing slowly starting at its tail until only its grin was left, the Cheshire Cat is sometimes considered a guiding spirit for Alice, directing her to various destinations around Wonderland.

(The Cheshire Cat is prominently featured on t-shirts and other Alice memorabilia, including a coffee mug that pictures the cat’s scene with Alice. When a hot liquid is poured into the mug, the cat vanishes, leaving only its grin. This is, I think, much more entertaining than the mugs that feature ladies who shed their clothes under the same circumstances. But I digress.)

Superstar writer and opinionated curmudgeon Robert A. Heinlein had a soft spot for cats, which appeared in a number of his works. A cat named Pete appeared in his novel A Door Into Summer, which was inspired by an actual cat that Heinlein once owned. (Or that owned him. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.) Another book, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (shades of Lilian Jackson Braun!) featured a cat named Pixel that mysteriously appeared wherever the narrator happened to be. Cats played minor roles in some of his other books, including one named Mr. Underfoot, which I have been known to call all my cats at various times.

Perhaps best known to modern readers are Hermione’s ginger cat Crookshanks and Argus Filch’s cat Mrs. Norris in the Harry Potter series of books. Mrs. Norris was somehow able to detect student misbehavior at Hogwarts School, which happened a lot. Crookshanks comes to no harm, but Mrs. Norris is temporarily frozen by the gaze of the basilisk in Chamber of Secrets, though she first appeared in Sorceror’s Stone. (She gets unfrozen and suffers no permanent harm.) In the book, Mrs. Norris is described as bony and dust-colored, but in the films she was portrayed by three much more impressive Maine Coons.

Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series of fantasy books features a feline character, Tybalt, King of Cats, a fairy (Cait Sidhe, technically) who can transform from cat to human size and shape, in which form he woos and weds October after an on-again-off-again semi-adversarial relationship. (The character Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet is referred to as “prince of cats” for his sleek and violent nature. But I digress again.)

When it comes to cats in SF&F film and TV, we have Ripley’s cat Jonesy, who along with her manages to survive in Alien. There is Pyewacket in Bell, Book, and Candle, a film about witches that ought to be a Halloween movie but is instead a Christmas film, much the way Die Hard is, because it takes place during the winter holiday. And then there is Orion, the cat in Men in Black, whose collar proves to contain an important plot point.

The overwhelming winner for cats in media, however, is Star Trek. In the original series (or The Original Series as it’s now known), there are two different episodes that feature cats. One is “Assignment Earth,” which features a cat named Isis who may or may not be a human being, and “Catspaw,” featuring Sylvia, a woman who may or may not be a cat.

There are two other Star Trek cats of note. One is Data’s cat Spot in the TV series The Next Generation and the movies Star Trek Generations and Star Trek Nemesis. Spot is an orange tabby, but that’s about all the continuity it has. It has been portrayed as a Somali cat and as an American shorthair. It (I use the term advisedly) has been identified as male or female on different episodes, though I think we have to settle on female, as Spot gets pregnant at one point. In one episode, Data writes and recites an “Ode to Spot,” the first stanza of which is:

“Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses,
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.”

In the series Star Trek: Discovery, the character Booker has a Maine Coon cat named Grudge, which was meant to make a one-episode guest appearance but became a more featured player in a number of episodes. We know Booker has left the ship for good when he leaves Grudge with Captain Burnham. Grudge is described by various characters as “fat,” possibly due to a thyroid condition, but more likely attributable to the fact that Grudge is portrayed by two Maine Coons that are, at 18 pounds, at the top end of the range for that breed.

There’s more that could be said about cats in science fiction and fantasy, from the Tom & Jerry movie Blast Off to Mars to one Simpsons hyper-violent “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoon called “Flay Me to the Moon.” (Scratchy is the cat. I always have trouble remembering that.)

I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, and I’m equally sure that outraged cat-fen will point this out to me. My husband wanted me to include the 1935 cartoon “Dancing on the Moon,” which featured a number of animal pairs including two cats. And now I have.

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The Rainbow Bridge

cats, etc., pets, , , , ,

I know that when pets die, it’s often said that they have crossed “the Rainbow Bridge.” It’s a powerful image, but I don’t know if it’s the right one.

The Rainbow Bridge is a euphemism or a metaphor for passing to another astral plane or a spiritual place – death or an afterlife. Some even believe that the Rainbow Bridge is where they will meet their pets when the pet owner dies. The phrase perhaps originated in a sentimental poem that is often given to pet owners on the death of their pets. Many people find inspiration and comfort in it. Those are good things. I wouldn’t take that away from the people who find solace in it.

I do, however, think that the poem and the metaphor “prettify” death. The death of a beloved pet can be tragic, but it is seldom pretty. I lost my darling Louise, a cat I had for over 20 years, a number of years ago. I held her on my lap. I counted the seconds between each of her last breaths until finally they stopped. I hope I gave her comfort in her last moments, and indeed throughout her whole life. She certainly gave comfort to me.

But, though her death was peaceful, it wasn’t pretty. One minute she was there and the next minute she was gone. I cried for days. Nine years later, I still miss her dearly.

She has appeared to me in dreams and when she did, I took it as a message that she and I had both moved on and it was time for me to find another cat to care for and love. That’s a pretty thought, but it was only a dream, and I don’t know whether I believe that dreams reflect reality or give us a vision of another realm. Mostly I think they are jumbled constructs that our brains make of memories, thoughts, and the firing of synapses in our brains. I know that doesn’t leave much room for deeper meaning, except that the memory of Louise was still deep in my thoughts when I had the dreams.

I know there’s theological disagreement over whether animals have souls. Many people don’t believe they do because animals were not created in the image of God. Other people do believe in animals’ souls because they are a part of Creation.

I strongly believe that animals are self-aware beings with emotions that resemble those of humans, though I know that there are people who disagree with that too. If it means they have a soul as well, I don’t know theologically, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they do.

But do all animals have souls? Sheep and tarantulas and trout and the surly hedgehog that my husband kept as a pet? Will they all go to heaven or meet us at the Rainbow Bridge? Do we imbue our pets with special attributes because we love them so? Are we projecting our feelings onto them or anthropomorphizing traits that we see in ourselves? I surely don’t know the answer to those questions, but they do seem important in some way. I will say that, if we believe that cats and dogs have souls, we should extend that dignity not just to our pets, but to all of them, feral ones included, even though we don’t develop familial bonds with them.

When I think about the death of pets, I also think about the subject of euthanizing them. I’ve seen a post go around the internet that pets shouldn’t die alone, and that it is a form of abandonment not to be with the animal when its last moment comes, that death at the hands of a vet is cold and unemotional. I do know that vets react with compassion to the death of a pet and to the owner as well. But they don’t prefer to have the owner present at the death. They’ll allow it if the person feels strongly about it.

I think the internet post shames people who cannot be present at the death of their pet. It says that there is only one right choice, no matter whether the person feels they are capable of being present at the end. They have their reasons, and I think we should honor them and their grief and pain without judgment.

So, is there a Rainbow Bridge? Do all pets or all animals go to heaven? We each have our beliefs, but whether or not they will be fulfilled is to me an open question. If, after I die, Louise is present for me, along with Django and Jasper and Anjou and Julia and all the other cats I’ve shared my life with, I will consider myself truly blessed. But will they be? I guess I’ll have to wait to find out.

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