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I just want a normal life.
If I can’t have that, I’d just like to have a normal cat.
We were out of cats for quite a while. After BD, our throwback to Genghis Khan went to cat heaven (a place no doubt full of crippled mice and flightless songbirds), our cat numbers started to dwindle. And when our orange house cat named, oddly enough, Orange, died, we were without any cats on the farm. At first I didn’t see much of a downside to that – there were no footprints on the car, no gutted-mice gifts on the front step and nothing using the sawdust in my shop for a litter box.
With the advent of grandchildren, my attitude started to change. When kids come to a farm, they want to see animals, and when the only animals you have are a few chickens and a psychotic dog, there can be disappointment. I suggested to my wife that we probably needed a cat, so she sent out the word for some sort of appropriate kitten.
Free kittens aren’t hard to come by in my neck of the woods and we soon had a likely brother and sister duo. The female, mouse grey in color was soon named Mouse.
Names aren’t my strong suit.
Her brother picked up his own name almost by acclamation – pretty much everyone who encountered him suggested a variation on Dum-dum.
A name well earned. He leaps up on windowsills so he can carefully sweep them clean of contents, focusing on anything glass and/or old. He mistook our bathtub for a litter box, which pretty much wiped out bathing until we could get an industrial size drum of bleach delivered. He napped under the UPS truck, contemplated jumping into a raging wood burner and routinely tries to share the dog’s supper.
When you have a cat named Dum-dum, that name given spontaneously by nearly everyone who met him, you need to expect odd things to happen. A month ago we returned from a trip to find the cat limping about. Turns out he had managed to break his femur and the choices given to us by the vet were: euthanization, amputation, or surgery with pins and a month total cage rest. I felt that anyone with the name Dum-dum didn't also need the added handicap of having only three legs. About euthanizing...there was a grandchild issue. So, the surgery option was taken, even though the first quote was for the same amount of money that would be required to pay a Haitian teacher for one year. Luckily, the cat came in considerably under budget, but I still have the guilts. I like being able to make fun of dogs in cashmere coats and jeweled collars; now I can’t do that due to the fact that I have my own four-legged money pit.
And what I didn't know was that the pins used to hold the leg bones in place would protrude from his hip. So now we have a Franken-cat who will sometimes leap onto your lap, climb to your shoulder and lovingly rub his shaved hip and surgical pins against your neck.
This is not...endearing. It’s actually a little creepy, particularly since the cat doesn’t seem to be affected by the chunks of metal sticking out of his haunch – he doesn’t even limp.
Oh, well. Next week the pins come out and life can get back to normal.
Or as close to normal as I’m likely to get.
Copyright 2011 Brent Olson
