How many of us can tell woeful stories from childhood of parents—in my case my mother—who would not allow pets? We tried all the tricks we could think of. At one time, I left notes under my mother’s pillow begging to adopt a basset hound. Not surprisingly, Mama won.
How many of us can tell the childhood martyr’s tale of
sending recently adopted proxy-pet goldfish to swim in the sewer with the
gators? (We turned our goldfish into
fertilizer for the rose bushes. To this
day, I do not like rose bushes.)
How many of us adopted a pet as soon as we set up
housekeeping on our own? At that rite of
passage, we made the pet policy, so there, Mama. As much as I longed to live with a basset
hound, my first pet, for reasons of practicality, was an orange domestic short
hair tabby. Thus began my decades long familiarity with cat vomit. My then husband gave the cat the ironic name
of Rochester, after Jack Benny’s manservant.
(As it turns out, Mama was allergic to cats. After she forgave me for other indiscretions,
she would take an allergy pill and come to visit.) I had died and gone to pet heaven! After a move, Rochester did not abide the new
abode and found himself a new one.
Over the following decades, I lived with cats and their
vomit, as well as the basset hounds I finally was able to adopt. Frequently, I lived with multiple cats,
meaning even more vomit. I became
familiar with the hairball vomit that looked like a hairy turd. I learned not to appreciate the stringy,
mucous vomit in slug-like trails, sometimes involving half-digested vegetation. And, of course, the regular vomit, a nice
ball of kitty kibble held together with the Karo syrup of digestive juices.
In
graduate school, I adopted a Calico kitten from a fellow student who looking to
place Cassie the cat because Cassie kept batting at her pen when she tried to
write. Clearly, the woman did not know
cats. It made me want to vomit, but I
loved Cassie and she gave me a good home.
Another
notable cat was Clawdio, an adult cat from a shelter, named after a
Shakespearean character, Claudio. I
tried my best to teach him Shakespearean speeches, but I learned, much to my
dismay, that I could not teach an old cat mew tricks. Ultimately, Clawdio adopted a different
family. I don’t know why he left us, but
his new family loved him.
My
life with cats took a hiatus in 2009 when Katie the meatloaf cat, nicknamed
after a Kliban cartoon cat, went to the Rainbow Bridge. At that point in my life, I needed to take a
pet break, partially because my living circumstances had changed and I needed
to focus on me for a while. Then I met
Rich. Early in our relationship, we
agreed to adopt a cat, and even agreed on our cat philosophy. Our cat would be an indoor/outdoor cat and we
would not dress the cat in costumes.
However, Rich’s son is terribly allergic to cats, so the cat adoption
plan quickly met the kibosh.
Recently,
I convinced Rich that we truly needed to adopt a cat and we could work around
his son’s allergies. Enter Frida, a gray
tiger stripe domestic short hair.
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Our
snowbird lifestyle presented a challenge.
How well would Frida travel between Folly Beach, SC, and Upstate New
York, and between Glens Falls and Schroon Lake?
Friends who frequently travel distances with cats said they let the cats
roam free in the car, so we went with that plan.
Frida
fared well on the drive from Folly Beach to Glens Falls. Our route involved mostly major, straight
flat roads. However, the route from
Glens Falls to Schroon Lake involves several miles of narrow, curvy, hilly
roads. As it turns out, Frida gets car
sick on backroads. On our first trip to
Schroon Lake, Frida lolled on the seat behind me. As I clutched and downshifted when taking a
curve, I heard that tell-tale heaving and yowling that precedes epic cat
vomiting. Without thinking, I gripped
the steering wheel with my left hand. I
cupped my right hand and reached behind me, catching most of Frida’s regular
ball of kitty kibble vomit.
Instinctively, I let go of the steering wheel briefly enough to hit the button
to lower my window, and with a movement that would make Greg Maddox (star
Cubbies pitcher of yesteryear) proud, I heaved the ball of vomit out the
window.
Unfortunately,
I passed a group of pedestrians as I executed this maneuver. One of them lifted hands in a reflexive
deflective movement, breaking the ball of vomit into bits which showered down
on other pedestrians. As in the story of
Chicken Little, someone yelled, “The sky is falling!” except sodden kitty
kibble fell instead of an acorn.
Confusion reigned as cat vomit rained.
Umbrellas unfurled, further deflecting the cat vomit. By this time, we were well down the road.
Now
that my Walter Mitty moment has passed, here is what really happened. I did reach behind my seat with cupped hand,
caught most of the vomit, lowered the window, and tossed the ball of vomit out
the window where it fell harmlessly beside the road. I am quite proud of my instincts and quick
reflexes in pitching that vomit out of the window, leaving little mess to clean
in the car.
Now, we keep Frida in her kitty crate when we are on the back roads and give her run of the car on the interstate.
