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Old January 14th 17, 08:30 AM posted to rec.pets.cats.anecdotes
John Kasupski
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Posts: 112
Default Kitten Converts Reluctant Owner

On Sat, 14 Jan 2017 00:39:16 -0500, dgk wrote:

I can see it. You can't compare them since they're all so different,
it really isn't fair to compare them.


True...but that's not it. You see...sigh

Well, since I started the thread, I suppose it's okay for me to hijack it and
talk about Goldie (RB).

I didn't pick him...he picked me. I was over at a friend's house helping him fix
his wife's car. We were standing there in his garage, and up walked this cat who
started rubbing up on me and purring up a storm and practically jumped right
into my arms when I bent down to scratch behind his ears. An hour later, he's
still at it. We finish fixing the car, I get in my truck to leave, he hops right
in with me and sets up shop on the passenger's seat. I ask my buddy whose cat
this is...he tells me it's a stray that's always around the neighborhood, and
that his daughter's been leaving food out on their porch for the cat, so it
keeps coming around...and "If you want it, take it with you." He wasn't a cat
lover, and he said he was getting tired of having to go buy cat food for his
daughter to feed to this cat, who she'd named Goldie.

I got out of my truck, went in the house, and found his daughter. I felt I had
to ask her first. She was only 14, and I was Godfather to her older brother.

She was okay with it. I took another look at the cat as I started the engine. He
made no attempt to bail out through the open window...instead he moved over,
laid down across my lap, and looked up at me as if to ask, "Well? Are we going
for a ride or not?"

We went for a ride. When I got home, my wife and kids were out in the yard. The
cat jumped out of the truck and went right over to them, giving each of them in
turn the same treatment he'd given me in my buddy's garage. The kids weren't
having any part of NOT letting him in the house after that, and my wife already
had fallen in love with him too.

Two o'clock in the morning, he hops onto the bed with a mouse. That was the
first. He caught one every day for the first five days. Then once he'd caught
all the mice, he went outside on day six and climbed up into a tree and came
down with a bird in his mouth. The house sat on a 16-acre lot and he'd follow us
all over the property like a dog would. There was a pond out back fed by an
underground stream. One real hot summer day we took the kids back to the pond
and let them go swimming. Goldie jumped in right in with them and acted like he
was having the time of his life.

We did have a dog. My wife inherited him when her grandfather passed away. He
was too big and mean to allow it to run loose with the kids around, so we built
a doghouse in the front yard and left him chained to a stake in the dirt next to
it when the kids were outside. Goldie knew down to the last inch exactly how far
the dog could reach on that chain because the grass was mostly gone in the dog's
area...and he'd sit just outside the dog's reach calmly grooming himself. He
never batted the dog in the snoot or did anything else to further antagonize the
dog. He just sat there showing absolutely no fear with the dog's mouth about two
inches away snarling and snapping his teeth the whole time. It was enough. That
dog couldn't have been any more enraged and humiliated if Goldie had sat there
waving an upraised middle finger in his face.

The cat also loved to go for a ride in the truck. Open any of the doors, and he
was in the truck in an instant. You didn't even see him anywhere nearby, but
he'd get himself in there so fast it seemed like he was already in there before
you got the door open.

Aside from mice and birds, he'd also eat whatever you ate. Beef, pork, chicken,
duck, venison, cold cuts, veggies...anything you offered him, he'd eat it...yet
you could pile food on your dinner plate, put it on the table, and walk out of
the room for five minutes, and come back to find it hadn't been touched. Not by
Goldie, anyway...the dog was another matter entirely.

The despicable person who deliberately swerved off the road and onto the
shoulder to hit and kill Goldie and thereby took him away from us...well, as far
as I'm concerned, there's no place in Hades hot enough for that person, and
that's all there is to it. He was the coolest, most affectionate, best-behaved
cat I've ever had the pleasure of being around, I will miss him forever, and I'd
never embarrass any other cat by comparing him or her to Goldie.

I've had two cats, Nico and Espy, who were simply amazing. Very smart,
very personable, and very big pains since smart cats tend to get into
strange situations.


Usually the smartest ones seem to figure out how to get themselves out of
trouble too if they get into it, but - as with all things - there sometimes are
exceptions. I had a cat who was smart enough to turn the kitchen faucet on by
himself so he could get a drink, but he often slid into the stainless steel sink
and couldn't get back out because his claws couldn't gain any traction. Luckily,
he was also smart enough not to go near the sink to begin with when he heard the
garbage disposal running.

None of my current cats are that smart or personable. Baby is pretty
feral so it's an accomplishment when she comes to me for petting.
Nipsy is a whiner, and can be very annoying, but he's very cute when
he's sleeping. And Scooter is a joy, not as smart as Espy or Nico, but
he does so many funny things that he's fun to have around. They're all
special in their own way.


Even if your cat is dumber than a stump, he or she is still your cat, which is
in itself enough to make them special. :-)

And Marlo, who's living at my mother's house, has greatly improved
mom's life. Mom adores her, calling me almost every day to tell me the
newest cute thing that Marlo has done. Since mom omly lives a half
mile away, I get to see Marlo almost every day and she is a somewhat
different cat than she was. I don't think she misses the other three
at all - maybe she was meant to be a single cat.


Before the world brought me Minnie, my landlady was trying to get me to take one
of her cats because he doesn't get along with her other pets and she thought he
might do better here as a single cat. Nwo that Minnie is her, she's a single
cat, and if hers came here too, he wouldn't be. I could still end up with him at
least temporarily just to see if he would get along with Minnie, in which case
she'd then have a feline companion for those times when her human companion
won't get off the doggone computer and pay attention to her. But neither kitty
has been altered yet so if we proceed with investigating the possibility, we'll
have to fix that first or we could end up with a houseful of newborn kittens.
Taking them all back to her house wouldn't be an option. There's already two
other cats, a dog, three horses, two mules, and more chickens than I could count
last time I was over there since they insisted on being mean and refused to stay
in one place long enough for me to take an accurate census.

Mom never wanted a cat, but now that she has one, she adores Marlo.
Strange how that happens.


Kind of like myself and Minnie. I didn't want another cat, but when I moved in
here the rest of the world suddenly entered into a sinister conspiracy to make
me have a cat. The rest of the world finally won after a five-month battle, and
it took mere minutes alone in the house with me for the kitty to change my mind.
I've come to believe that we humans are either wired to be cat lovers or we're
not, and that any cat who really wants to will earn the love and affection of us
cat-lovers whether we like it or not.

John D. Kasupski
Niagara Falls, NY