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Community Corner

The Cats are All Right

What do cats think about when we are away?

We are back from our two-week Florida getaway. We were cat-free for almost two weeks. No cats on the bed, no litter box, no yowling Siamese pestering to be fed. In other words, free.  

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike the cats. Between cats and dogs, I will take a cat any day. You might argue that dogs are smarter and can be trained, whereas a cat pretty much does whatever it wants, when it wants – except when it comes to using a can opener. 

Growing up, we always had cats in the family. Most cats were free, mixed breed and outdoor in those days. On Robbins Road in 1954,  someone gave us a pair of kittens from the same litter – a female and a male. Mom named them "Marilyn” and “Joe” after the famous celebrity couple of the day – Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. The celebrity marriage lasted less than a year;  the cats didn't last much longer either. Joe got hit by a car, and a year later Marilyn caught some evil disease called cat typhus and had to be put down. 

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At night, you shooed the cat outside to roam around until morning. There were a lot fewer squirrels and chipmunks in those days. Cats are solitary prowlers, and there were many nights when you could hear the cacophony of males yowling in preparation before a brief fight over turf ownership. Or, maybe it was a form of musical courtship.

Our next cat was a fluffy orange tabby we called Skit. He was so smart that he learned to ring the back doorbell when he wanted to come inside. (If you don't believe this, ask anyone in my family, they'll attest that it is true.)

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My wife Judy also came from a cat family, so of course we have always had cats in our house. (Don't worry, I am not going to force you to listen to all of my fascinating cat stories.) My real point is that I think we could take longer vacations if it was not for the cats. In the old days when you went on vacation, you paid one of the neighbor kids to come and fill the cat’s bowl on the back steps. Today, if you let your cat outside, you are likely to find animal rights people picketing on your lawn. 

Now, when we plan our vacation, our first concern is to make sure Joan is free to come and feed the cats. But even when we are sitting on the white sandy beach or enjoying a cocktail on a deck overlooking the inter-coastal, we still worry about the cats.

By “we” I mean, of course, “Judy.” We wonder if they are pining for a warm lap, staring listlessly out the window, wondering when we will return, telling each other cute stories about us, resolving to be better pets in the future. We always make careful arrangements to have them tended to, the heat is kept at a toasty 74 degrees, a 30 day’s supply of food is on the shelf, enough cat litter to handle an elephant is in the basement, and the nice lady who is generously paid to come every day to feed them has been thoroughly screened and CORI checked. We had someone lined-up to shovel a path to the door in case of a snowstorm. Judy thinks maybe we should set-up video cams to ensure that the cats are being properly treated. So far, I have resisted this effort.

When we returned from our two-week haitus, the cats greeted us with bemused interest as if to say, "Who are you? And when are you going to feed us?"

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