Chapter 17 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

Tommy and Gusty

There were always one or more cats in my home in Woburn. Poor old Juney cat finally had a stroke and fell off the roof of the back entry. After that she acted very strange and walked in circles. Mom knew the best thing to do would be to have her euthanized but kept putting off the inevitable until one day when she wandered under the wheels of a garbage truck, solving the problem. The driver and his assistant felt awful about it, and Mom had to comfort them in explaining the cat’s ill health and even suggesting that perhaps the cat knew what she was doing.

My mother let us keep a couple of stray cats shortly after Juney’s death. One was a tri-colored female that was taken away from its mother too soon, and wanted to suck on any earlobe if a person made the mistake of cuddling it against his or her neck. My younger by three years brother Peter paid most attention to the calico, named Gusty for short, as it was named Augustus for being born in August. He let the cat get away with his ear lobe sucking habit once in awhile; therefore it would attempt to suck your ear even when it was an old, old cat.

I owned the yellow or red striped kitten--the breed of common housecats people have called Marmalade cats. These striped cats are almost always male, and whereas all those we had before, Mom called Reddy, I called this one Tommy. Ironically, this was the first male that was not a “Tomcat” as we had it neutered. Gusty was neutered also, as we didn’t want any more kittens for which we’d have to find homes. We were lucky with Juney, our past kitten supplier, as she only had one litter of kittens a year, and hadn‘t had kittens towards the end of her life, whereas female cats can have several litters a year. Mom thought that it was a medical reason and also why she had such difficulty with the labor each time she gave birth.

Tommy cat was a good companion, recognizing me as his favorite person. I once heard that people couldn’t legally own cats, as they are so independent. Whether this was ever true or not, I agree with the philosophy. Cats adopt us, not the other way around. Tommy adopted me. Tommy was gentle and only scratched me once when I stupidly held him up to climb on the grape arbor, and the only toe hold for him to use was my arm, so he dug in to climb up as I waited as if that was what I’d expected. Not so smart on my part, and not his fault on his part. I used to try to get him to go under the blankets on my bed in the winter, hearing of some wonder cat that did this, keeping someone’s feet warm and not suffocating in the process, but Tommy was only content to lie on top of the blankets. Before natural gas was piped into North Woburn, we had an old coal furnace, and the closest radiator was down the hall from my room. I’d go to sleep under piles of blankets in the winter, and make a mad dash for the kitchen to get dressed each morning next to the oil stove. Many a morning I would be able to see my breath before my face when I awoke. It took courage to get out of bed on mid-winter mornings.

Tommy wandered off when he was about five years old. Later someone had seen a dead cat across the field that fit Tommy’s description. I hoped it wasn’t him and he was keeping someone else’s feet warm, as by then we had the gas heat, and I had a hot air vent in the floor of my bedroom. We were coming up in the world.

Augustus lasted through many moves as my mom and dad moved to Rhode Island in 1963. Dad died in that same year. Seven years later, my Mom married Rocky--Sherman Rockwell. They moved to Boon Lake, Rhode Island, then a year or so later, to Belgrade, Maine. Augustus disappeared after that move, and Mom had given her up for dead. Miraculously Gusty showed up thin and hungry MONTHS later, and just to be sure it was the same cat, when Mom picked her up, and held her close, delighted that she was back, she started sucking on Mom’s ear lobe. She must have been around thirteen or fourteen years old by then, and she lived for several more years.