When my sister and I were about three years old, Mom asked us which we wanted more: a cat, or a bird (we already had a whippet, so a dog was out of the question). We both answered “Cat”, and about a week later Mom came home with a carrier that held a nine-month old calico kitten. We named her Penelope, which may sound rather precocious for a couple of three year olds, but we didn’t have any mythological connotations in mind; she was named after the Canadian children’s show Today’s Special, which featured a cat named Penelope.
Mom had obtained Nellie (as we came to call her) from a doctor up north, who owned a farmhouse swarming with cats and was always happy to give them away. The first meeting between Liz (our wonderful old whippet) and Nellie was priceless: Nellie became a huge ball of fur, hissing and swiping while Liz took in this newest addition. Fortunately Liz was a very gentle dog, and they quickly became very good friends.
Nellie was very beautiful...a pure calico, with no tabby stripes of any kind. One side of her face was orange and the other black, with her nose on down white. She also had a big black patch on her mostly-pure white chest, and large splotches of black and orange alternating, ending with a black tip to her tail. Unfortunately, we never took any pictures of Penelope, so I’m going on memory here.
Nellie had been born outside and was never litterbox trained...whenever she needed to go, we just let her outside. While outdoors, she would follow Mom around as she did her gardening, just like a dog, and came when you called. She was probably the only cat we’ve ever had that actually obeyed commands. Mom likes to tell about the time when she was walking across the street to visit our neighbor and she noticed Nellie following her. There were a lot of cars crossing, and of course Mom was concerned that Nellie would get hit, so she pointed a finger and said, “Go back, Nellie.” And, much to the overlooking neighbor’s astonishment, she promptly went back into our yard and sat watching from across the street.
She also had a rather disturbing habit of climbing into guest’s cars, especially in the summer. We would always warn people to keep their windows rolled up lest she make herself at home. Once a guest went halfway down the block before they realized they had another passenger.
All of this social activity provided ample opportunity for her to get to know the neighbors, including a rather irritable tom who lived next door. This beat-up cat, whom we called Ralph (I’m not sure if that was his actual name), was just about as evil-tempered an animal you could imagine. For years I thought he was a Scottish Fold, because his ears were always either folded back or torn off from various fights--I still don’t know which. I don’t know what Nellie saw in him, but when we were six years old she became great with kittens.
We didn’t see the actual birth process, since it happened very late at night, but we woke up one day to find Nellie plus four kittens in the second shelf of the linen closet. She had three females (Katie, Cissy, and Thomasina, so named because we originally thought she was a male) and a male (Cisser). Once, when our aunt Dolly was over for whatever reason, Liz started taking the kittens out of the linen closet and dumping them on the living room floor. Mom scolded her at first, but then it became clear that she wasn’t hurting the kittens; if anything, she was so proud of them that she wanted to show them off! Liz always considered the kittens to be partly hers, and would lick them as though she was their mother.
The kittens grew very fast, and would run around everywhere, occasionally damaging things. We finally resorted to putting them in the back room (which contained the washer and dryer, along with a spare bed), but we still kept finding them in the living room. Then we discovered a tiny hole that connected to the back hallway, which they’d squeeze through. We ended up blocking the hole with a shoe.
Then we had to give away the kittens, on the condition that we could keep one. That one ended up being Katie, who was calico like her mom, but also had tabby stripes in the calico, like her dad (who was a brown tabby). We made people go through a bunch of questionaires before we’d even consider letting them have a kitten. One family, for example, just wanted a cat to keep outdoors all the time, even in winter, right from kittenhood. We refused to let them have one of our cats (yes, Nellie was allowed outside, but she was also allowed indoors. These people didn’t want to let their cat inside, which is just cruel). If I remember, most of the kittens went to friends of the family, and one in particular (Thomasina) went to a friend of Gramma’s. We later found out that she had litter after litter of kittens, and I wondered why she was never spayed. Yes, we had Nellie and Katie spayed shortly after the kittens were given away, which led to one of the more traumatic experiences of my childhood.
They were taken to a rather incompetant vet, who picked them both up by the scruffs of their necks, not bothering to support them in any other way. As my sister and I looked on and gave vocal protest to this treatment of our obviously suffering pets, the vet said, “Don’t worry, look, it doesn’t hurt them,” and proceeded to swing them by their necks! Mom was furious, and had a few choice words for that vet.
Despite this incident, Katie grew up to be a very loving, affectionate cat, if a bit of a prima donna (which is only to be expected of a Leo--she was born July 31st). She and Nellie were very close, and played all the time. Nellie also retained a habit from when Katie was a kitten: As a kitten, Katie hated it when Nellie washed her, so Nellie took to holding her tightly in her front paws while licking her, and when Kate protested, Nellie would kick her at the same time. This pattern never changed as Katie grew up: Nellie continued to lick her and kick her for the rest of her life.
Nellie was also very protective of her daughter. Once when Ralph (yes, the same Ralph who knocked her up--I told you he was a bastard cat) had terrorized Katie in our yard and finally treed her, Nellie went FLYING across the yard--I mean, literally all four feet stretched out, like Superman or something--ready to defend her child. She then proceeded to beat the shit out of Ralph, in one of the finest catfights I have personally ever witnessed. No one messed with HER daughter and got away with it!
Nellie was a great mouser, and taught her daughter the tricks of the trade. They would routinely catch mice, moles, and chipmunks, and always presented their kills to Mom, who acted like she was thrilled and praised them profusely, then either threw the corpses away or gave them to me and my sister. We frequently held little funerals for their victims, or incorporated them into our dead collection. Ironically, for all her lethal capabilities, Katie later allowed us to put hamsters on her head, with only the barest hint of interest displayed.
On one occasion, Nellie caught a baby rabbit. They didn’t kill it, and we managed to get it away from them before it was hurt very much. We kept it at our grandparent’s in a makeshift cage for a few days, until it got better, and released it into the wild.
As I said earlier, Nellie was very much an outdoor cat. She loved to explore the neighborhood, and sometimes would be gone for a few days at a time, always returning home safe and sound. One time when we were nine years old, she was gone for almost a week, the longest ever, but we weren’t worried, since she had always come back fine before.
During this time, I became sick with the flu and had to be taken home from school. Mom pulled up into the driveway and we went up to the door. Just as she was putting the key in the lock, we heard a mew from underneath the car, and watched Nellie crawl out.
And I do mean crawl. We didn’t know what had happened to put her in such a state. Nearly every single bone in her little body was broken, and her back legs were useless, forcing her to move an inch at a time. Her fur was full of maggots, and one eye was missing...it appeared to be ripped out of her skull, or possibly have simply exploded from the pressure of a hit to the back of her head. We immediately put her in the car and went to the vet’s. I remember very vividly watching Nellie twitch in her little makeshift cardboard crate, her remaining eye looking at me, and she gave one single, quiet mew, as if to say, “Please stop this pain.”
When we got to the vet, he told us there was nothing that could be done, and we immediately had her put down. At the time Mom told us she had been hit by a car, but a few years later she admitted that Nellie had probably been tortured by someone around the neighborhood.
Soon after Nellie died, we sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner (an event unto itself, since we rarely sat down for formal dinners) when we heard a noise outside, like a scream. Mom opened the back door, and Katie came flying in, running rather crookedly. We examined her later, and figured that someone (probably the same someone) had injured her. Katie was never the same after that, and had permanent back pain to the extent that you couldn’t pick her up without her screaming in pain. She was only three years old.
After that, Katie was never allowed outside unsupervised, and we soon after had her declawed so that she would remain a permanent indoors cat. We also gave her to our grandparents a few miles away, just in case the sick bastard who did that to Nellie would try it again.
Katie recovered reasonably well, although she did go through a severe mourning period where all she did was sleep and eat. No one can ever tell me that cats don’t experience emotion, because I personally witnessed the grieving process in Katie. She was despondent over the loss of her mother, and gained a lot of weight in a very short time (although this could also be partially due to the lessened activity brought on by her injury). My grandfather is very fond of cats, and Katie became very demanding about food, so Grampa also partly contributed to Katie’s expanding girth. She quickly earned the permanent nickname of Buddha Kitty, and visitors would ask, “So when is she due?” She was a tiny, small-boned cat to begin with, so it was mostly The Great White Belly, with a teeny little head, four little paws, and a skinny tail protruding from a huge round mass. She was very affectionate though, if a bit aloof, and was very attached to all of us.
After Nellie died and Katie went to Gramma and Grampa’s, my sister claimed she would hear a cat meowing directly in her bedroom. She also saw flashes of white out of the corner of her eyes, like a cat darting across the room. We figured it was the ghost of Nellie, seeing as she had been so gruesomely killed. This didn’t bother us, however, because it was our cat, and we knew she could never hurt us. Nellie was a friendly, comforting ghost, and became a regular feature in our lives.
A few years ago, Katie was put to sleep at age ten after contracting a terminal, particularly painful bout of FLV (feline leukemia). The night she died, my sister heard not one, but two cats in her room, and shortly afterwards silence. We never heard Nellie again. Her daughter was finally with her, and she was at peace.