The cat who fought thunderstorms

When I was a teenager, some of my friends liked to go fishing. One day they convinced me to join them, to show me how much fun it was. I managed to catch a small fish, but once I got it off the hook it slipped out of my hand and back into the water. Frankly, it seemed more like work than play.

Bored, I took a walk through the woods to pass the time while they fished. There I encountered a feral cat, maybe 10 or 12 months old. For whatever reason, she decided to follow me around. When my friends were ready to leave, she wanted to go with us. The driver didn't want the cat in his car, but I brought her home anyway. We discussed possible names for the cat. On the way she prowled the interior of the car and climbed all over its occupants. Repeatedly tossing her off his lap, the driver finally suggested I name her with a well-known colloquialism for excrement. I didn't agree the name suited her. Besides, I had some difficulty picturing myself calling her home for dinner. It might have given the neighbors a bad impression.

For lack of a better name, I just called her Kitty Cat. She turned out to be an unusual pet. She broke one of the most popular stereotypes about cats, that they only hang around for the food and they don't really care about people. This cat wouldn't touch cat food, or any cat-friendly table scraps, or anything cooked, or anything out of a can. We tried many times to feed her before we finally gave up. All she ever did was try and bury the food bowl, which didn't work so well on the kitchen floor. It was clear that she intended to try and pull the floor over the food bowl until she could no longer smell it, so we just picked it up. Kitty Cat only ate what she could catch. Her attachment to us had nothing to do with food.

She was a contributing member of the household, too. She was diligent about hunting down any insects that might find their way inside, and generous in bringing her leftovers home to share. She never seemed to understand why we didn't appreciate her gifts of half-lizards and bird heads, or why we discarded such perfectly good morsels after she had worked so hard to catch them for us. Fortunately, she never let that interfere with our generally positive personal relationship.

When the time came for her to reproduce, she scoped out a secret place to deliver her kittens. We didn't think that was a particularly good idea. We watched her closely, and when the time came we kept her inside the house. We prepared a clean cardboard box lined with newspaper for her to use. She protested, wanting to go to the place she had prepared, somewhere out in the neighborhood. In the end, though, there was nothing she could do to forestall the inevitable, and she settled into the box.

She wouldn't have survived had we let her go to her hiding place. The first kitten got stuck on the way out, and had to be pulled out by hand. We thought the kitten was stillborn, but the mother would not let us put it into a bag. She licked it for a couple of hours, and it began to stir. In the end, she delivered four healthy kittens.

When they were small, she was very protective of them. She answered any perceived threat immediately and fearlessly. One day, a thunderstorm was approaching the town, and she could hear its rumble from far away. She ran outside to confront the storm, looking up and around to try and find the rumbling beast. She was ready to take on anything, no matter its size or power.

Kitten number two had the fur coloration of one of the local toms, but the personality of her mother. She was always the first into the fray and the first to try new things.

We were keeping them in the bathroom at one stage, and they liked to climb my legs when I was seated there. For my own comfort, I put them into the bathtub. Three of the kittens cowered at the far end of the tub, staring at the drain at the other end and trembling. Number two stood in the center of the tub, looking first at her siblings, then at the drain, over and over, as if assessing the situation. Suddenly, she pounced on the drain and swiped it mercilessly with her claws. It was as if she wanted to demonstrate to the others her superior courage, quite intentionally.

When they were old enough to start on solid food, it was number two who was the first to figure out what to do. She stood on three legs, holding a front leg out horizontally to block anyone who might try to take her food. Her siblings didn't solve the mystery of solid food for a couple more days.

Five cats were four too many for us, so I don't know what became of the kittens. We gave them away when they were old enough to be separated from their mother. My guess is that number two gave some other family a few tales to tell.