The summer had been hot and wet
and by the beginning of July 2011, the scrawny tortoise shell cat had a huge
bulge in her middle and she was hungry, oh so hungry. She made her rounds in Kaisertown, the old first
German then Polish neighborhood on the East Side of Buffalo with its neat
little two story post-war houses on the deep narrow lots. The verge is lined with old traditional trees
– mostly maples, a few black walnuts, an occasional crab apple
– their gnarled
roots cracking sidewalks and invading sewer lines. Postage stamp lawns in the
front and the lush gardens in the back of most of the houses provided good
hunting grounds for rodents, reptiles, and bugs. She had also made opportunistic but wary
friendships with some of the human residents in her territory. Lucy, the old Polish lady with thinning
orange hair fed her canned food and water in antique cut crystal and flowered china
bowls on her high back porch. The cat
loved to stretch out in the cool and shade of this concrete bastion, surrounded
as it was by delicate wrought iron fencing and huge pots of greenery.
The nice younger woman, Mary, a
few houses down also put food out for her and several other neighborhood
kitties, including her tuxedo friend Oreo who had the tip missing on one of his
ears, and that self-possessed glossy black tomcat she had encountered for the
first time several months before. He was being fed by the gay couple across the
street. Mary called her Peanut because she was so “such a little thing”. She was confident that Peanut was pregnant
and always made sure there was extra food for her, especially as her time drew
near. It was Mary who noted that Peanut
was huge on July first, disappeared altogether on July second and skinny when
she saw her again on July third.
There was another man, my old
friend Donnie, who used to sit and smoke or have a beer on his porch in the
middle of the night, and the tortie decided he was an okay person to hang out
with. He told me about her the first
time he saw her. I asked what color she
was. He said he had never seen a cat
like her – she looked like a “crazy quilt.”
When the urge to nest came upon her,
it was his house she chose, or rather – underneath his house. She searched and searched and finally found a
bent corrugated metal panel on the exterior of the crawl space and squeezed
inside. The soft dirt floor may have
served to dampen the incessant roar of the interstate which bordered one edge
of the old neighborhood, no more than a hundred feet away on the other side of
a low and ineffective concrete sound barrier fringed with a scraggly row of scrub
trees and bushes. Perhaps the sounds of the
human’s casual movements over her head gave her a measure of comfort.
The Fourth of July, Independence
Day, was officially celebrated on Monday the fourth, but in neighborhoods all
over Buffalo people began shooting off fireworks on the first. It was no different in Kaisertown. It is always a horrid din, scaring house cats
and pet dogs for miles around
– and no doubt even more frightening for Peanut as
a soundscape to accompany Mother Nature’s timeless call – to the birthing of her
kittens in the dusty blackness on the earthen floor of the crawlspace.
Mary and Lucy knew the now-thin
Peanut must be nursing her kittens somewhere in a hidden location and they
stepped up their feeding schedules. They
never guessed she was eating for so many.
It was about a month before the
kittens escaped the nest, and Donnie spotted several of them frolicking on the
grass late one night. He told his
landlord, Gary, who said he “knew a guy” who would “take care of the problem”. Donnie phoned me and I told him I knew rescue
folk who would lend me traps and we would take care of this situation
ourselves. Gary, who lived upstairs, was happy to go along with our plans. Two
traps were delivered and he and Donnie carefully set them up in the back yard
five weeks after the kittens had been born.
Donnie checked the traps during
the evening and overnight and one trap sprang shut on the first kitten in the
wee hours of the night. Was this kitten
the bravest, the dumbest, or the hungriest?* By the time I arrived to fetch him
he was a tiny fierce orange bundle of regret.
I brought this little guy to my shop, set him up in a comfy kennel cage
with plenty of food, and we waited to trap the remaining kittens.
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| Leto |
The traps were reset but as it
turns out, Peanut had moved all of the rest of her brood and no others were
tempted by the gushy food, no matter how enticing it may have smelled. Donnie kept putting out fresh food but there
were no takers after that first night.
On the third day I went back to
try to figure out what to do next. The
neighborhood was alerted to the goings on, and I finally located Peanut sprawled
on Lucy’s back porch. Mary came over and
we discussed how to capture this wild feral cat. To my amazement Mary simply reached down,
scooped her up and placed her into my carrier.
There were no signs of the
kittens, so I loaded the carrier into my car to bring Peanut to the shop. As she sang the song of her people, I reassured
her that from now on her life would be different. When I placed her into the
kennel, the orange kitten was overjoyed to see her and headed straight for
mama’s milkbar. Peanut looked up at me
with huge eyes and said, “But you said my life was going to be different!”
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| "You said my life was going to be different!" |
On the fourth day I returned to
Kaisertown and the neighbors and I went to work to locate the elusive
kittens. By this time, with their mama
gone, they had emerged from their hiding places. They were hungry! We had amassed quite a crew, including
several guys out walking with their very well behaved dogs. Two more orange kittens were easy to capture
amongst the greenery in someone’s back yard.
A brown and black tiger was scooped up next. Someone had spotted two black kittens and so we
were off to get them. The temperature
was in the mid-eighties and every single piece of property was ringed with high
fences so tracking these elusive mini-panthers was a real trial. I had to knock on doors, introduce myself,
explain the rescue project and seek permission to enter private properties. The little black devils kept slipping under
fences into the next yard and eluding our best efforts.
I was behind a garage, moving
pieces of lumber and PVC pipe to block under-fence exits. I grabbed one black kitten and handed it over
the stockade fence to Mary. Then I found
the last black kitten crouched at the end of a log. He was trying very hard to be that log, but I finally got him. He scratched the heck out of Mary’s arm
before she wrestled him into the carrier.
We hoped that we had found all of the kittens. The neighborhood was put on alert to call if
any more were spotted.**
I transported these five kittens
back to the shop where there was a happy reunion of mama Peanut and her babies. Peanut immediately went to work trying to
bathe all of them at once and of course they all latched on to her for a nice
meal.
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| Such a good mama! |
It was then that I decided that
Peanut needed a better name. Since her “Gotcha
Day” would have been Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday, and
orange-haired Lucy had been feeding her, and Lucy was a character in the
Peanuts’ comic strip – I decided to rename her Lucy, which eventually became
Mama Lucy. I also call her MamaLu, Lucy
Goosey, Goose Girl, Missy Mama Lucy Goosey, or Miss Tortitude (which she
possesses – in abundance!).
Some perks of her new name: I can walk in and say, “Lucy, I’m home!” If she ever breaks anything (which she has
yet to do), I can say, “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do!” Every day I can tell her, “I love Lucy!” And
when she does something silly I can call her a crazy red head.
Lucy and her six kittens saw the
vet the next day. Lucy received a rabies
shot and all were treated for fleas, ear mites and worms. I had determined that all six babies were
boys but the vet said that would have been “highly unusual” and she pronounced
one of the black kittens to be a girl.
Rather prophetically, I decided upon the name Lola. I had already chosen the name Leto for the
first orange kitten with the spice-blue eyes.
These were the two I planned to adopt for myself.
One week later when the kittens
were at the pet store vet clinic to get their first shots and combo tests, this
vet looked at Lola and said, “Whoa – this one is not a girl – he’s a boy!” After much pondering, I decided to name him
Mica, which morphed into Prince Mica because he is such a regal little house panther.
My rescue folks, Chris and Alphonse,
showed cats and kittens on weekends at area pet stores. For the next few Saturdays I hauled the remaining
kittens off to various locations and they put on a show of being completely
adorable.
On our second outing one of the
orange kittens and the second black one found a new mommy. She worked at the pet store but it was
another week before they could go home with her, so after three weeks of living
at the shop and at eight weeks of age, they went home with her. She named them Caleb and Shelby.
The dark tiger and the last
orange kitten went off for showing one week later and a young man came in and
fell in completely love with the orange boy.
He took lots of photos of him and sent them to his wife. The elderly kitty who had been with him since
he was a young child had just passed on and they needed a companion for their
younger cat. We tried to convince him to
adopt both kittens but he was adamant – he only wanted one. He told us he would name him Stanley. He came into the shop the following week to
pick up the little guy and I discovered the correct name was Stan Lee.
Even though I had planned all
along to keep only two of the kittens and find homes for all of the rest,
including Lucy, after Caleb, Shelby, and Stan Lee left for their new homes, I
realized I was in love with Lucy and her little dark tiger boy. I named him Fletcher (now Mister Fletcher)
and decided Lucy would remain as my shop cat and her three sons would come home
with me.
Thanks to Maddie’s Fund, the low
cost spay/neuter clinic was very busy that year and Lucy did not have her spay
operation until the middle of October.
She had come into heat twice during this time and yet she still
continued to allow Leto, Mica, and Fletcher to nurse. She was such a good mama! It was another month before I could get the
boys into the clinic for their neuters and then I brought them home.
Lucy had quickly settled in to
the routine of being a frame shop cat.
She did not seem to miss her boys at all, and she appreciated attention
from my customers. The shop is located
on a busy city street in North Buffalo, and there are four businesses
downstairs and two apartments upstairs.
Fire trucks, police cars, sirens, squealing brakes, rowdy bar patrons, barking
dogs, shouting children – none of these seem to bother my little city kitty
shop cat. She jumps up on my work bench
to greet customers, conversing with them in her distinct brassy “Mrrraah!” I have never heard any other cat with a meow
like hers. Cat people think it’s really
cool and non-cat people ask, “What’s wrong with her?”
Lucy weighed 5.25 pounds at her
first vet visit in 2011. No longer the
scrawny feral with the dull coat, she has blossomed into magnificent orange,
black, and cream “crazy quilt” tortitude. She has, ahem, more than doubled her
weight since her early days and she is glossy and plush and happy. She has one special mailman who brings her
treats. Some days more people come in to
see her than to be customers. They bring
her toys, treats and catnip. She adores
catnip.
Only once have I brought her to
my tranquil little house in the Canadian woods.
She sat in the window all weekend, gazing out in complete dismay at the silent
trees, with an expression that seemed to ask, “Are you serious? How can you live in this place? It’s too darned quiet!”
As we crossed the border back to
the USA, the incredulous customs officer asked me, “You bring your cat to
work?” Once back inside the shop I swear
she had to spend almost two hours inspecting every square inch of her Queendom before
she fell into a deep and most relieved slumber.
Mama Lucy has a little bed in the
front window where she can spy on her neighborhood and no one even knows she is
watching. She has hidey-holes all over
the place, under work benches and behind the loveseat. Some days I barely see her; some days she
won’t leave me alone. She also has a
perch on the back door where she can watch birds and squirrels.
The tortie temptress has recently
attracted a gentleman caller, a handsome gray tuxedo from the house behind the
shop who comes to visit. I call him her
swain. He sits and stares up at her with
total adoration while she growls and snarls and huffs and snorts with her tail
as huge as a bottle brush trying her best to rip the door down and get to him
and (presumably) give him what for. She
has completely shredded three carpeted perches in these attempts – he has totally
destroyed the screen climbing up merely to gaze upon his beloved. One afternoon when this battle was going full throttle
I heard another noise – there was a peeved squirrel up in a tree swearing at
both of them. Now that’s my kind of entertainment!
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| The handsome swain |
Some day in the future when I
retire, Mama Lucy will come home with me to her new forever home in the quiet
woodlands. She will be reacquainted with
her boys (which ought to be interesting, to say the least!) and I hope their antics
will make up for the missing city noise.
I am sure we will enjoy the catio where she can observe the local
wildlife – deer, wild turkeys, and of course, squirrels.
For the present Mama Lucy is the
reigning Queen of the Frame Shop, and as I post photos and videos of her on my
Facebook shop page, my little (OK – maybe not so little anymore!) city kitty is
entertaining her numerous followers from all over the world. ***
Will Mama Lucy be able to make a
successful transition from city kitty to country kitty? Only time will tell.
2020 COVID-19 Postscript: Mama Lucy has been home in the country with me since middle March and all she does is eat and sleep and hiss at her boys. No friendships have been pursued. We are both very bored and eager to return to our shop as soon as the border reopens.
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| Mama Lucy, Frame Shop Cat |
* Leto the Sweeto is the biggest scaredy cat, he is quite
clever (he has taught me how to play fetch with him!), and he is always hungry.
** No additional kittens were ever seen in the neighborhood
so I am confident we found all of Mama Lucy’s last litter.
