A Tale of Two Kitties

Since I’d met Michael’s Mommy, we’d had one cat in our lives. Our dear departed angel kitty, Ariel. 

We had to put her to sleep in June.

We knew we’d miss her, that part was a foregone conclusion. But after her passing, our house just felt unbearably empty. Her presence filled our lives, and now we were suddenly without that filling. Devoid. Barren. A bitter chill despite the summer warmth. 

We knew there would be no replacement for her, but we knew we needed another little ball of fur to make our house a home again.  

The following Friday I came home at lunch and whisked Michael and his mom down to the pet shelter to investigate kitties needing homes.

There were lots of kitties: playful kitties, needy kitties, happy kitties, sad kitties… but the one that stole our hearts was a brand new addition: an eleven-week old black and white tuxedo kitten. She was a feisty ball of fluff, all paws and ears, curious and cuddly and full of love. 

We were smitten.

We brought her home and gradually introduced her to her new life as part of our family. Being a little black and white treat, we decided she should be named “Oreo”.

The weeks that followed were filled with us becoming used to our new little addition, who showed us her personality in no time: playful, curious, loving, happy and energetic.

To get from one place to another meant zooming. There was no walk, trot, prance or scamper, it had to be the full-on jet-propelled zoom. She zoomed into the bedroom in the morning. She zoomed downstairs to get breakfast. She zoomed to the top of her gigantic kitty condo where she’d perch and loom over all of us lesser beings, glaring like a vulture.  

She learned quickly not to get on tables or mess with the house plants. A few little spritzes from the squirt bottles I keep handy saw to that.

And she also started exhibiting behavior we can only chalk up to “embedded cat memory”. She would travel in Ariel’s footsteps, knowing where to stand when it was time to receive breakfast or dinner, knowing that the shower was an interesting place to investigate, knowing that the now-plugged-up kitty door leading to the garage is something to be curious about, and knowing that the front window is the best place to survey her domain. All the things her predecessor did.

In no time at all, though, this little bitty ball of fluff became a cat. She grew like a weed, and despite being 20 weeks old, she’s practically full-sized. Where she once occupied only a portion of her perch at the top of her carpet-covered condo, she now lops over the side.

The fact of her size increase was only made more apparent with the arrival of the next kitty, Taffy. 

Taffy came from the litter of a momma cat that showed up on Sister L’s doorstep several months back. Just last week she asked if we consider another kitten as companion to Oreo. We agreed, and brought home the extremely fluffy but nonetheless wispy grey tuxedo kitten at just 7 weeks old.

We kept her separated from Oreo for the first night, corralled in Sister L’s bedroom. The next day would be the first vet visit and a check for possible contagions such as feline leukemia. After the all clear, we cautiously allow the cats to become acquainted, separated by a baby gate and large sheet of Plexiglas. 

Later that day we let them visit.

Oreo was not sure she liked the new kitty, and there was a considerable amount of hissing and batting with each interaction. This was understandable, we found out days later, when we got the scoop from the vet that introducing a second cat to the home should be a very lengthy and involved process, since cats are territorial and need time to adjust to each other’s scents and presence.

It is recommended that you keep the new cat separate from current cat for several months, allowing only a very small opening by which sniffs can be exchanged, but not claws.

It is recommended that you swap their bedding from time to time, to get them used to each other’s scent.

It is recommended to move their food bowls closer and closer together over the course of this time, to get them used to communal feeding.

It is doubtful that any home in America has any hope of accommodating these recommendations, unless they are specifically architected with the intent of introducing cats to each other (actually this sounds like it could be a business opportunity: cat introduction services in a specially constructed, gradual meeting space).  

But we had neither known nor intuited any of these cat facts, and basically just tossed them together hoping things would work themselves out.

And they did.

In a matter of three days, the two kittens have become friends. They tussel, but without biting, hissing or yeowling. They sniff each other, play with each other, drink from the same dish on occasion, and both run when they see the squirt bottle brought to bear.

Oreo has asserted herself as top cat, and Taffy is the zen master of allowing the greater force to go as it will; she bends like a reed in the wind.

Of course, being kittens, they still haven’t figured out how to behave at nighttime. And for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to leave our bedroom door open last night so the kitties could come and go.

Which is why I probably got a good solid 45 minutes of sleep. Between their Big Time Kitty Wrestling all over the bed and the unusually warm nighttime temperatures here, I didn’t stand a chance.

I scooped them up and whisked them out of the bedroom at 4:00 AM and shut the door behind us. I figured at least my wife could get some decent sleep out of the deal.

I’m still not sure what we were thinking. I doubt I ever will really know. 

Ruddering

Last night I spent a portion of the evening taking apart a bed, getting it ready to load into the van, where it will then be transported to its new home. It took me a while, and not because the mechanics were difficult.

Sister S is moving into a new place. She's held down a job for quite a while now and is heading in what looks like the right direction.

It made me wistful, as I'm sure it does every parent, to pack things up from a childhood bedroom. It's easy to say the old days are gone, but folding blankets and disassembling bed frames makes it so tangible; makes it inescapable. It took me some time, because with each item I packed away a memory came to mind.

With the Little Mermaid bedspread came to mind the time when her mom and I painted her room pink. It was so very pink. It was the richest, deepest pink that a room could be, and still legally be called pink. I think even Barbie would blanch at the pinkness of that pink. But Sister S loved it.

The pins attached to the lampshade brought back memories of trips to Disneyland, and her chasing after Peter Pan or hoping to find Johnny Depp by some miracle. Even at her most glum and uncommunicative, a family trip to her favorite park would always bring a solid, lasting smile.

Seeing tiny equestrian accessories on the nightstand reminded me of when she and her step sisters would play with their horses. We had more horses than all the stables in Texas for at least a couple of years; maybe they weren't real, but the girls were happy enough.

And I couldn't remember how many times I'd sat on the edge of this bed and just listened to whatever was bringing her tears of grief and anguish during those tumultuous teen years, and tried to offer what advice and encouragement I could.

Last evening I probably spent more time reflecting than I did packing. And I spent a good portion of that questioning my own credentials as a stepdad, and what things I could have done better.

But it wasn't all sadness, because beneath it all was gratefulness that she's getting back on track.

And the analogy of parenting with steering a ship came to mind.

Ships have to travel on the water, and as such they are subject to the wind and the waves. It takes a strong, steady hand at the wheel to keep the rudder guiding the ship along. Without the rudder, it's unlikely a ship is going to stay on course, but instead will get driven wherever the wind takes it. And even having a good strong rudder is no guarantee of safety against a bad storm.

The point is, kids need guidance. They need a strong hand holding the rudder, guiding them along, until they have the strength to hold it and the wisdom to see the obstacles and avoid them on their own. To let a kid grow up without guidance is to guarantee his eventual shipwreck.

It's up to the parent to understand what that means, to be strong and steady and to guide with a firm hand, but doing so without being completely controlling. A parent needs to know how much force to apply and when to ease up, and knowing when it is the right time to let go completely.

Letting go is probably the hardest part of all.

Tweenage

Michael was accepted into a middle school program that essentially diverts him off the standard public school pathway and instead places him in an exploratory environment. We think this is going to be a really good fit for him for a number of reasons.

First of all, his natural learning style is doing. We've always said Michael is a verb, and he must DO in order to BE. His is not a mind that can simply listen to a lecture and absorb content adequately. For him, it needs to be tactile. It needs to be experiential. It needs to be entirely involving of all of his senses (except taste, perhaps - nobody needs to taste school).

Also, we are hoping that with a fresh start in a new environment, he'll be able to shed some of the stigma he's had heaped upon him during his years in elementary school. His small stature (no kid in his fifth grade class ever believed he was actually 12 years old) and his unique personality have unfortunately made him an easy target for bullies, most of whom we know would have followed him into the middle school he was slated to attend.

And, because this program is an option school requiring an entry application, we are hoping that most other kids there will be less inclined to bully and more desirous of exploratory learning. And most if not all the kids will never have met Michael before.

So without the oppression of bullies and with the cloak of some anonymity, we are hoping he is able to develop his social skills to the point where he can easily integrate with his class.

Unfortunately summer has been fraught with some difficulty. An incident on the summer school bus a few weeks back led to Michael being grounded from his electronic devices.

He has earned them back, but other challenges have arisen making parenting even more of a chore. There have been times in just the last few days where I have been extremely tempted to lose my temper and just go dukes.

Michael is a typical kid in many respects, and girls and boys alike must slog through their teen years in their own way. And even though they would never want to admit it, they know they need someone to help guide them through. They need the direction, they need the encouragement, and they need the strength of a parent saying "no - and that's final" some times.

Just looking at the barometer and watching the sails unfurl, I can already tell we're in for some choppy seas.

His mom and I have handled a rudder or two before, though in our cases it was separately and alone.

So even though it means a lot of work, at least this go-around we know it will be teamwork, and we will get through it.

Newness

I think it was in summer of 2014 when I wrote in a personal journal that I had a strong feeling that 2016 would be a year of changes. Specifically I'd said it would be the year that would herald the beginning of our golden years. In my mind, I had heard "the end of the old, the beginning of the new".

And it has proven true in so many ways.

I think this has been almost universally true, actually, as others in my own circle as well as others in the news have said as much about their own circumstances this year.

For us, it has come in several forms.

Most recently, we had to say goodbye to our beloved kitty, Ariel. She was a black cat, a standard domestic short hair, but so much a part of our family it was almost inconceivable that she would ever not be. But since last fall she had been on the decline. Her liver began acting up, so we tried to treat that - which caused her to go into kidney failure. So we discontinued that treatment, but then her thyroid became hyperactive. There was no treatment for that; nothing she could have handled. She did not tolerate the medicine, she wouldn't survive radiation or surgery. So we had to watch as she became thinner and thinner, ultimately bottoming out at just under 5 pounds. A mere whisper of her former self. We had an in-home pet service come and administer her final dose of sleepy medicine, and send her off to cross the rainbow bridge. Jackie held her as she left us. We all cried - it was the worst kind of grief. It did not help that we had said goodbye to her so many times in the days before. It did not help that we knew she'd be better off, that she'd jump into Jesus' arms right away, that she'd finally be free of pain and suffering. We lost our child, essentially.

At the same time, I've been reeling from huge losses at work. The company announced a huge, sweeping, deep cut of its workforce. At the time of the announcement, many employees were walked out of the building immediately. Another large set were offered separation packages. Most of the people that I had worked along side for 17 years were suddenly not there any more. And the announcements continued: new procedures, new employees moving in from sites that had been closed, new organizational structure. The company that I started at years ago is no more. The vision is gone, the devotion to progress and innovation is tossed aside in favor of commodity thinking and bean counting.

Smaller things: my in-laws found themselves unable to afford their custom home, and had to make the decision to move to a smaller house in a nearby neighborhood. Gone is the beautiful view, the wide spaces, the unhindered proximity to the beautiful Wallowa mountains. We got a new kitty: a little spitfire tuxedo cat who's a sweetie and who seems to be picking up the collective cat consciousness and is handily taking up where her predecessor left off: tearing paper, attacking ankles and eating like a hog.  Michael is going to middle school this year, and we're hopeful he can make a fresh start with a new student body; he's going to an exploratory option school where it's a good chance that most of the kids he knew from Rock Creek - particularly the bullies - will not be around to pick on him. We're hoping he can learn and grow in a fresh environment, and thrive.

Life goes on. And since this year, it will never be the same as it was. The old is gone, the new is here.