Just a Crazy Cat Lady….
I have a cat. At times, I’ve had two. I don’t dress them in clothes. I don’t take them for walks on leashes or in strollers. I don’t make sweaters or purses out of their fur. (Yes, that is actually a thing — check it out on Pinterest.) But somehow, I’m still a crazy cat lady. Whenever people find an abandoned kitten or know of someone who needs to rehome their kitty, I almost always get an email. And it always makes me smile. I’m glad that people know that I am the kind of person that would take them all in if I could. But I can’t. And that’s what makes me decidedly not, a crazy cat lady.
I’ve had some amazing kitty companions in my life. When I was in high school, a scrawny orange and white tom cat wandered into our back yard. I, of course, fed him and he never left, much to my parents’ chagrin. I named him Levy. He was my great love for almost all of high school and college. I nursed him back to health when someone shot him in his rear leg, shattering the bones. The vet suggested amputating it, but I just couldn’t, and he eventually was almost as good as new. I also nursed his FIV picked up from all of his wild tom catting, fighting days. The vet suggested putting him down when he was diagnosed with that, too, but instead I got a new vet. That was in the 1990s, and FIV was looked at much differently than it is now. He lived another 5 years with FIV and was probably about 10 or 11 when he finally crossed the Rainbow Bridge. And how I cried.
After college, I added a new kitty named Alexander the Great. I adopted him from a PetSmart in Wilmington, NC in 2000. The day he came home with me, he was a skinny, skittish, gassy thing being called B.C. for Black Cat. I decided to name him Alexander the Great and he became a healthy, fluffy majestic beast worthy of the name. He had been abused by his previous owner, or perhaps, just people in general. It took a couple of weeks for him to warm up and the first time he finally climbed on my lap and went to sleep felt like a huge success. After that, he was my shadow and lap cat for sixteen years. He was one of the most intuitive cats I’ve ever had. If I didn’t feel well or was upset, he would gently paw my face or nuzzle my cheek with his nose. He was with me through a divorce, moving from my hometown to “the city,” and most importantly, he was with me when my mother passed away. The week after she died, I barely got out of bed. He would lay beside me with his paw on my arm. It was almost like he was comforting me and telling me it was going to be okay. Alex started developing renal failure when he was 12. For the next four years, he was nursed by an amazing vet named Dr. Wexler and doted on by me every second. He was with me when I moved from “the city” to a bigger city in 2016. Shortly after the move in November of that year, it was his time to cross the Rainbow Bridge, too. And I cried for days.
I decided that I would spend a little time before I got another cat, but by December, I missed the presence of a warm, furry, purring machine who was happy to see me every day. Enter Bruce Wayne. His original name was Bravo and he was living in the cat room at a local vet hospital. I saw him online and went to meet him. They allowed me to bring him home on a trial basis, but pretty quickly, I knew he was my boy. We sat in the closet for three days before he was brave enough to venture out and explore his new home. On the fourth night, he slept on the foot of the bed, and inched up a little more each night after. Pretty soon, he was becoming a cuddly lap kitty, too. He’s not as intuitive as Alex, and I don’t think he’s quite as bright, but I love him to pieces anyway. Oddly, sometimes even now, five years later, I accidentally call Bruce Wayne Alex by mistake. I’ve dragged Bruce Wayne across the state and back, and he has adjusted each time like a champ. He is almost 7 years old now. I hope that he’ll decide to stick around for 16 or 20 years, too.
I’m not the stereotypical crazy cat lady. Perhaps I will become that eventually. Who knows. But I do adore cats. I actually won’t attempt relationships with men who don’t like or are allergic to them. Maybe that does make me a crazy cat lady!! Some day, I’ll add a dog to the mix. I’m sure Bruce Wayne would appreciate a K9 companion. And maybe then, I’ll be a crazy dog lady, instead!
