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(I just wanted to share this story with you guys, seeing as it's one we've passed around in my family for the last ten years or so. It was something you just can't forget!)
When I was a little girl, we had a pretty little barn cat named Rabbi. She gave us a litter of six beautiful kittens, and I remember begging my mother to let me keep one. It was a sweet, silent tabby kitten that I (for whatever reason) named Triple. He was the runt of the litter and we truly did not think he was going to make it. It was cold out, so we tried to drag Rabbi and her litter into the house to stay warm until the kittens got stronger. She ended up panicking, climbing the furniture with tiny Triple in her mouth, leaping from a shelf, smashing into a window, and dropping the already weakened kitten and THEN dropping a picture frame on his little head.
He survived, and needless to say after everything he went through my mother let me keep him. He grew into a handsome cat...and a BIG one. At 25 lbs, he could have rivaled any Maine Coon. He wasn't fat, he was all muscle from traversing the forested areas around our home. People would come to visit and yelp when they saw him, thinking that he was a wild animal. I even had one educated young man demand that I turn him loose, because there was NO WAY he was a pet.
Despite everything, he was the best cat I've ever owned. Extremely well mannered, affectionate, and obedient. I could call his name and he'd come bounding from the forest like a striped cheetah to meet me. It might take him 15 minutes to get there because he was so far away, but he WOULD come, meowing the entire way as if to say 'don't leave without me, I'm coming!'
He was an indoor/outdoor cat, and I guess that's how I lost him. He never showed any signs of sickness, but one day about 10 years in, I stumbled across his body in an unfinished house we were building. I was devastated. I had grown up with this cat! I absolutely adored him. I cried myself sick.
When I'd finally started to heal from the heartbreak of losing my beloved Triple, I came home one day to find a tiny little tabby furball on my bed, a surprise from my mother. A Triple lookalike. It was love at first sight. I named him Neko.
We quickly learned however that Neko was not Triple, and never would be. In fact it seemed as if he was making a statement on the hour that he wanted to be the exact opposite of Triple. He was a scratcher and biter. A real 'attack cat'. The kind that would hide under furniture and leap out at you as you passed, latch onto your leg, and start shredding.
On one memorable occasion when he was about a year old, I was watching TV with my dad (who is very bald) when a sudden commotion beside me sounded. My dad jumped up screaming and I saw the poor cat hit the floor running. I looked over to find my dad red faced, absolutely livid, his head bleeding from several deep scratches. Neko had randomly leaped onto his head in an assassination attempt.
I should note that by this point we were not calling him Neko. His name was Get The Cat Out, because that's what anyone said when they saw him racing in with claws drawn. No one wanted to be bitten! Or pooped on. If you didn't clean his litter box twice a day, he would come and get you. You had to stop whatever you were doing, no matter how important it was, and go clean his box. If you weren't there in 5 minutes tops working on it he would poop on the slacker's bed.
He also had a strange penchant for pooping in cardboard boxes. Even if they contained your freshly purchased veggies. He didn't play with toys, but he knew the sound of jingly bells and crinkly things. He'd skip the toy and go straight for your hand, eyes wide with a delight that I will never understand. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the taste of blood.
He would terrorize the dogs to the point that they were all afraid of him. He had a 'panther' mode where he'd attack them from above as they passed by. Even our big black Husky/Rottweiler didn't want to be anywhere near him. He could so much as look their way and they'd scatter.
You couldn't eat with him around. Despite trying to keep him from human food, he still developed a taste for it. I once came away from the last bite of my sandwich with his claws embedded firmly into my cheek. I can only imagine he was trying to tear my mouth open to fight me for it.
He was completely banned from sleeping in anyone's bedroom, unless you wanted to wake up with a bloody lip from his midnight back flips. This led to more inappropriate pooping because you didn't always wake up in time to clean his box within the allotted time span.
And yet, as fed up as we were with him for the scars we were receiving, we did care for the little twerp. So when he went missing one day, we were pretty worried. We searched for him, called him, asked around, rattled his food dish, broke open the cheese...nothing. After several weeks, we figured that something had happened to him. Get The Cat Out was gone.
Or so we thought.
My mom and I met one of our neighbors who lived a few blocks down in the grocery store one day. Somehow the subject of our lost cat came up and she happily piped up that SHE had a new tabby cat! And then she put on this very puzzled face and said something that made our jaws drop.
"I didn't exactly find him...he found me. I mean kind of. He can't leave. Every time he tries to leave my yard, a big black dog comes and chases him back in!"
Our dog Hakota had gotten so fed up with Get The Cat Out's antics that he had evicted him. Every time he tried to come home, Hakota would quickly 'return' him to the new home that he'd chosen for him.
The neighbor ended up asking to keep him. She said that he was the sweetest cat she'd ever known, and she really wanted to give him a good home. We were perfectly fine with this, just happy that he had found a place to belong. (And hadn't scarred her yet)
But his story will stick with us forever.
When I was a little girl, we had a pretty little barn cat named Rabbi. She gave us a litter of six beautiful kittens, and I remember begging my mother to let me keep one. It was a sweet, silent tabby kitten that I (for whatever reason) named Triple. He was the runt of the litter and we truly did not think he was going to make it. It was cold out, so we tried to drag Rabbi and her litter into the house to stay warm until the kittens got stronger. She ended up panicking, climbing the furniture with tiny Triple in her mouth, leaping from a shelf, smashing into a window, and dropping the already weakened kitten and THEN dropping a picture frame on his little head.
He survived, and needless to say after everything he went through my mother let me keep him. He grew into a handsome cat...and a BIG one. At 25 lbs, he could have rivaled any Maine Coon. He wasn't fat, he was all muscle from traversing the forested areas around our home. People would come to visit and yelp when they saw him, thinking that he was a wild animal. I even had one educated young man demand that I turn him loose, because there was NO WAY he was a pet.
Despite everything, he was the best cat I've ever owned. Extremely well mannered, affectionate, and obedient. I could call his name and he'd come bounding from the forest like a striped cheetah to meet me. It might take him 15 minutes to get there because he was so far away, but he WOULD come, meowing the entire way as if to say 'don't leave without me, I'm coming!'
He was an indoor/outdoor cat, and I guess that's how I lost him. He never showed any signs of sickness, but one day about 10 years in, I stumbled across his body in an unfinished house we were building. I was devastated. I had grown up with this cat! I absolutely adored him. I cried myself sick.
When I'd finally started to heal from the heartbreak of losing my beloved Triple, I came home one day to find a tiny little tabby furball on my bed, a surprise from my mother. A Triple lookalike. It was love at first sight. I named him Neko.
We quickly learned however that Neko was not Triple, and never would be. In fact it seemed as if he was making a statement on the hour that he wanted to be the exact opposite of Triple. He was a scratcher and biter. A real 'attack cat'. The kind that would hide under furniture and leap out at you as you passed, latch onto your leg, and start shredding.
On one memorable occasion when he was about a year old, I was watching TV with my dad (who is very bald) when a sudden commotion beside me sounded. My dad jumped up screaming and I saw the poor cat hit the floor running. I looked over to find my dad red faced, absolutely livid, his head bleeding from several deep scratches. Neko had randomly leaped onto his head in an assassination attempt.
I should note that by this point we were not calling him Neko. His name was Get The Cat Out, because that's what anyone said when they saw him racing in with claws drawn. No one wanted to be bitten! Or pooped on. If you didn't clean his litter box twice a day, he would come and get you. You had to stop whatever you were doing, no matter how important it was, and go clean his box. If you weren't there in 5 minutes tops working on it he would poop on the slacker's bed.
He also had a strange penchant for pooping in cardboard boxes. Even if they contained your freshly purchased veggies. He didn't play with toys, but he knew the sound of jingly bells and crinkly things. He'd skip the toy and go straight for your hand, eyes wide with a delight that I will never understand. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the taste of blood.
He would terrorize the dogs to the point that they were all afraid of him. He had a 'panther' mode where he'd attack them from above as they passed by. Even our big black Husky/Rottweiler didn't want to be anywhere near him. He could so much as look their way and they'd scatter.
You couldn't eat with him around. Despite trying to keep him from human food, he still developed a taste for it. I once came away from the last bite of my sandwich with his claws embedded firmly into my cheek. I can only imagine he was trying to tear my mouth open to fight me for it.
He was completely banned from sleeping in anyone's bedroom, unless you wanted to wake up with a bloody lip from his midnight back flips. This led to more inappropriate pooping because you didn't always wake up in time to clean his box within the allotted time span.
And yet, as fed up as we were with him for the scars we were receiving, we did care for the little twerp. So when he went missing one day, we were pretty worried. We searched for him, called him, asked around, rattled his food dish, broke open the cheese...nothing. After several weeks, we figured that something had happened to him. Get The Cat Out was gone.
Or so we thought.
My mom and I met one of our neighbors who lived a few blocks down in the grocery store one day. Somehow the subject of our lost cat came up and she happily piped up that SHE had a new tabby cat! And then she put on this very puzzled face and said something that made our jaws drop.
"I didn't exactly find him...he found me. I mean kind of. He can't leave. Every time he tries to leave my yard, a big black dog comes and chases him back in!"
Our dog Hakota had gotten so fed up with Get The Cat Out's antics that he had evicted him. Every time he tried to come home, Hakota would quickly 'return' him to the new home that he'd chosen for him.
The neighbor ended up asking to keep him. She said that he was the sweetest cat she'd ever known, and she really wanted to give him a good home. We were perfectly fine with this, just happy that he had found a place to belong. (And hadn't scarred her yet)
But his story will stick with us forever.
