Chapter 42 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

PICKLE-PUSS

Pickle puss was a scrawny orange striped cat with a protruding belly-button and chronic digestive problems. Joanna and her friend Linda had gotten this kitten for free (“Y-I-P-E-E“) from a pet shop in Endicott. They had bicycled over there from her girlfriend’s house and brought the little kitten back ducked down inside one of their shirts. Linda’s mother who had a neat and shiny house (and wild and disrespectful kids) wouldn’t let her keep the kitten.

[I once said of this woman that if she ever had a creative thought, she’d had sprayed it with Windex and wiped it away.]

Joanna pedaled home with her new kitten. I don’t know how she convinced me to keep the cat, but it may have been easy, as I was afraid it had been a drop-off, and the pet shop owner would probably have had it destroyed if she returned it. Of course, it was Joanna’s responsibility, but mothers know how that goes: With school and the busy social life now that she was in Junior High her scope of friends extended for several miles further than ever, she had no time for the cat.

Walking the dogs in the woods was no company for myself, as they would be off following their noses while I walked along on the path. Then I had Pickle-Puss… and every day for almost a year he walked my path keeping me company. The poor cat wasn’t healthy, but had an unusual zest for life. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t live long, and felt that his few days on this earth were therefore more valuable and to be treasured. I took him back and forth to Dr. Norris trying one medication after another, all disguised in milk, to try to perk up the health of the cat. In the long run, it turned out that he was allergic to milk, so the very thing we were putting the medicine in was slowly killing the cat. He had probably been weaned early having no source of milk for long enough so the enzyme that digests it was no longer in his system. But he didn’t let his health get him down, and enjoyed our walk in the woods below our property and to the right on the path I had carved between no trespassing signs across the hills above Route 26 in Vestal.

I had figured it was No-Man’s Land on that small strip of land not claimed to the right or left with their signs not quite up to my path. With a booted foot, I had kicked at the pine needles and the ground under to make a narrow path, and when I came across a rock, I put it on the down side. After a few months of that, I had a nice path which otherwise would be just a hillside slippery with years of fallen coppery pine needles. It had been necessary when I had Claude to take him out for exercise where he wouldn’t get into trouble. Before he came along, I hadn’t been much of a walker. Perhaps he was responsible for my becoming addicted to the healthy habit of daily walks. Now I had a virtual park and I felt like it was mine… a place all to myself… to now share with my cat.

Pickle-Puss would perch on a sawed off branch near a place where I’d leave seed for the wild birds. He’d teeter almost losing his balance, his eyes searching the limbs above for a hungry bold blue jay who may make that fatal and wonderful mistake of coming too close.

Laughing, I’d walk on and soon he would cry for me to wait. In the cold of winter, he would cry for me to pick him up and tuck him inside the front of my jacket, and at those times he resembled a joey in it’s kangaroo pouch more than a kitten. And he was as content as a prince carried in a hand carriage.

Other times he would make his kitten attempt at climbing trees, and, honestly, he tried to climb up a small beech tree. Its trunk looked like the pipe to a church organ, and he couldn’t get his claws in once his momentum upwards stopped, he slid down like a fireman down a pole.

That ugly scrawny allergic, misshapen cat captured my heart and taught me a great lesson about life. Even as I think of him now, I think that however he felt, he wouldn’t let his spirit be wilted by poor health. He seemed to be amazed at life… Each day he seemed surprised to be alive, and it seemed to me he thought each day was created for him… as a special gift.

When he could no longer eat, and listening to him breathe, I could hear the rattle of pneumonia, I knew that we had lost the fight. I tried once more to have the vet give him a boost with a shot of penicillin, but it was too late. Rather than prolong his life, when his lungs began filling and he had to struggle to breathe, I had Dr. Norris euthanize him. I felt so badly that as soon as I got home, I went down to our path to be alone where he used to watch for squirrels and blue jays. (Once a squirrel stood on a branch facing us and scolded us for being in his area--that had been exciting.) I just let my mind go with thoughts of that kitten, and then in the midst of my tears, it hit me. He was now a part of it ALL. He was a part of Nature. That zest… his spirit was what never got sick, would never die. He was there in the breath of the wind through the pine; he was in the chatter of the angry squirrel, and the clapping leaves of the poplar. And he lives with me still, as do all my animals, and family, and friends I‘ve lost throughout the years.