My Cat
Kiska
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Kiska
(No, I don’t use her name as my password for anything. And if you need an excellent pet-sitting service in the Denver area, I recommend Unique Pet Care: http://www.uniquepetcare.com)
Kiska is a little (9.5 lb), gray, long–haired female cat whom I used to see hanging around my neighborhood for some years before I began to occasionally spend time with her during the spring of 2002. Although she had no tags, I believed that she belonged to someone in the neighborhood.
Even then, before she was living with me, she was always extraordinarily friendly and affectionate. I remember one Sunday afternoon when I was working on my car in the driveway and she came over and sat down near me. When I petted her, I noticed that she must have gotten into some sort of dried–out weeds loaded with prickly detachable burrs. She had quite a bunch of them in her fur, especially around her neck. She gave me a sad, short little meow, as if to say that she had a problem. I sat down on my porch and she crawled into my lap and looked up at me with her big eyes. She had always been nice, but had never before been this friendly. I realized that she wanted me to help get the burrs out of her fur. She was obviously a clever little creature. But I also wondered whether she had anyone else, given that she was asking me, a mere acquaintance, for help.
I began to pick out the burrs. It took about 20 minutes to get them resolved. I noted that her fur was rather dry and matted and tangled. I also noticed that she seemed a bit thin. She sat totally silent in my lap as I worked the burrs out of her coat. Every so often, as I worked, I had to pull rather of hard on her fur. I could tell that it hurt her a bit at those moments, but she just looked up at me with her big eyes as I worked, and never made a sound until I finished. Then she began to alternately meow and purr as she brushed her head back and forth on my chest.
Not having any cat food in the house, I got some canned tuna off a shelf in the kitchen and fed her some of it in a bowl. She gulped it down hungrily. I stroked her for a while before she took off on her rounds.
After that afternoon, she began to hang around with me almost every day for the next couple of weeks. Each evening, when I got home from work, she would be sitting somewhere within sight of my front door. As soon as I reached the door, she would come bounding toward me from wherever she had been waiting. I was concerned that during one of her mad dashes from across the street, she was eventually going to be hit by a car.
She would usually sit quietly with me for an hour or so, before apparently wanting to go back outside for the night. In addition to my earlier concern that she was going to get hit by a car some evening as she dashed across the street to meet me, I also became concerned that she was not really living with anyone. Indications of this were that she lacked any tags; was somewhat unkempt (despite her best efforts to groom herself); and that she seemed a bit underfed, although certainly not starving.
In late March 2002 I made inquiries about her around the neighborhood. No one admitted owning her, but some people said that they fed her from time to time. She was evidently homeless.
And then, the second evening that I had made some inquiries with the neighbors, she became reluctant to leave the house after her visit with me. It was very cold and very dark outside, and I realized that she had nowhere to go. She was all alone.
As stood there holding the door open, she sat down on her back legs and looked up at me with her big green eyes and made a little meow. I closed the door with her still sitting on the floor. Then I went upstairs. She bounded up the steps after me and followed me to the bedroom. She hopped up on the bed as if she had lived there all her life. That night, as I slept, she curled up into a little ball and snuggled next to me, on top of the covers, with one of her paws resting on one of my arms. She has been with me ever since then (late March 2002). She still stays very close to me wherever I am in the house, and sleeps against me, on top of the covers, every single night. (BTW, thanks to my long-time friend Jennifer for taking care of Kiska during the first critical weeks when Kiska was living with me but I had to go to Europe on an assignment.)
I have subsequently determined that she had been with a neighbor but that, due to unfortunate circumstances related to a tragic illness in her human family, she had ended up generally living on the street beginning in about 2000. She was born in 1996. Since she has been living with me, she has received all her shots, is eating well, and now has luxuriant fur that she can easily groom. She is now an indoor cat, as there is at least one fox in the neighborhood and if she were to continue to go out every day it would only be a matter of time before she became a meal for one of those predators. Not to mention the everyday risks of being hit by automobiles or chewed up by unfriendly dogs. I have since learned that indoor cats live an average of twice as long as outdoor cats, and while roaming around may be fun for felines on a day-to-day basis, I cannot consider myself to be responsible if I let her run around loose. She does get outings on a leash, and believe it or not, she doesn’t seem to mind being on a lead.
Kiska is extremely smart and affectionate. She loves to play in cardboard boxes and string tied to sticks (of course). She can be a little shy with strangers at first, but she quickly warms up to new people and loves to be with them. I think the thing that she missed most when she was living by herself was companionship. She becomes anxious if she doesn’t have enough companionship. When she first came to live with me, she used to sort of cry in her sleep at night; I believe she was having nightmares. Nowadays that never happens. She has realized that she is now living in a safe, stable place.
Kiska is the first pet I’ve ever had. (I used to be allergic to cats but with extended exposure to Kiska’s fur and dander I seem to have spontaneously gotten over that problem.) We’ve bonded closely, and honestly she’s done at least as much for me, psychologically and emotionally, as I’ve done for her. I can’t explain the effect, but there it is. She and I both know what it is like to lose those you love and have had the stressful experience of being alone in the world. (Being alone is not the same as being lonely. I believe that loneliness is a reflection of depression, whereas being alone is a condition of needing to be totally self-sufficient and rising to meet every challenge in life by yourself because there is no-one there to catch you if you fall. You can be alone in life while still having plenty of good friends. You can be alone without being lonely, but you need to be resourceful and to have a resilient mental and physical condition to be alone successfully. Above all else, if you are alone make sure that you always get plenty of rest and make sure that you eat well.)
She is my Little Buddy and I am her Big Buddy. We spend time together every day (except when I’m traveling, and then a cat-sitter visits once a day). I think we saved each other.
Kiska on red pillow 5
Kiska on red pillow 4
Kiska portrait
Kiska abstract: shaking her head at the camera
Kiska amid fall leaves 2002
Kiska with her Big Buddy
Kiska sitting regally on her new mat
Kiska at one of Frank’s Weird Science parties
Kiska guarding a critical mass of U-235
Kiska playing in bright light
Kiska classic
Kiska on a wool blanket
Kiska December 2005
Kiska in a duvet
