{WARNING: wrote this in bits over a period of days. VERY VERY LONG}
Our cat is called 'Suzie'. Spelled with a 'z' rather than an 's'.
We found her. Or rather that is, Michael James, 15 at the time, fond her; limping through our garden one day. She was small and fragile and disheveled with a hugely swollen belly. Her hind left leg dragged behind her, twisted and useless. Stricken with worry, he picked her up - she let him - and brought her inside. He placed her in our cat basket, lined with a blanket, leaving the cage door open in case it frightened her. She let him do that, too.
Then he sat there, with the cat basket beside him, in the kitchen, waiting for one or the other of our parents to come home so that he could show them what he had done and tell them what he hoped they would do afterwards. He made no effort to touch her during that time, after he had carefully lain her onto the blanket; he was afraid if he did that he might hurt her, somehow. She didn't seem to mind. Just lay quietly and calmly and looked out through the open front of the basket. He described her expression as one that was simply relieved, not only to be safe but to be surrounded by comfort and luxury beyond their wildest dreams.
Twenty minutes later our father arrived home. Two minutes after that he phoned our mother and told her the straight truth: MJ had adopted a cat. Well, a kitten, really; she couldn't have been more than six months old. Such a tiny thing, she was, and frail; so very, very frail.
As we already had two cats and a rabbit and were financially stretched to the limit (stretched past it, actually, by several thousand, due to my father's spending habits, but nobody else in the family knew about that and anyway, it's a tale for another day) as it was, mother was understandably not pleased. In fact, she was furious; how DARE they just bring a cat home and say "hey, she's ours now" without so much as a by-or-leave to her? She was the only consistent bread winner, anyway, and stressed out of her brain with worry and exhaustion as she struggled through university...
Of course, when she saw Suzie - as MJ had named her - for herself all that melted away and she fell in love, head over heels and helplessly and there was no question at all but that we would be keeping her, money worries and university insanity notwithstanding. From the moment MJ had laid eyes on her, she had transitioned from an anonymous stranger to a member of our family, definitely and unequivocally. That was just how it was.
The vet was the next stop, obviously. We asked him to give her a general checkup and to hopefully find out what was wrong with her leg. Her swollen belly was a worry, too. MJ checked at the library; apparently it was possible for a female feline to become pregnant from as young as four months - though it wasn't advised - and poor Suzie was obviously very far along. She was so rounded in just that one area that moving or even sitting and lying comfortably was impossible. We had no idea how to deal with it, so it was worrying; particularly as she had been so obviously neglected.
As it turned out, however, we were all wrong. She wasn't pregnant at all. She was starving. It was common for animals close to collapse due to lack of food to drink a dangerous amount of water, the vet told us; it was an instinctive act to try and stave off death, with often tragic results. We had taken her in not a moment too soon. Within a few days, at most, she would have been dead. Oh, and the problem with her leg was that it had been fractured. And due to the position and the type of break, it was incredibly likely that rather than being struck with a car or injuring herself in a fall or a fight, she had been kicked. Very hard.
Within three days from that awful moment of revelation, dad had a violent altercation with her original 'owner' (using the term incredibly loosely).
He had initially intended to ask around the neighbourhood to find out where she had come from, in case anybody knew, but as it turned out that wasn't necessary; because the man in question - a truly dubious character who lived about ten houses away and had a whole menagerie of neglected and abused animals to his name, including around 20 nearly feral cats - came to find us himself. They were moving away, apparently, and one of the few of their 'pets' that they were intending to take with them - the rest of them apparently could hang for all they cared - was little Suzie. According to one of his (many, many) children, she had been seen being picked up and brought into our house a few days before, so he had called round to ask - neigh, DEMAND - that we give her back.
Dad's response, unsurprisingly, was no. In fact, his exact words were; "No. Fuck off"; which of course sounds unpleasant and coarse, but considering the circumstances (along with the particular type of pond-dweller he was talking to) nonetheless understandable, I'm sure you'll agree.
Our pond-dweller, being quite a big fellow and as well as drinking his days away in a lager induced haze, having behaviour unpredictable enough to have him known as insane enough to be avoided by everybody as much as possible, was unused to being addressed in such a way and asked dad - blasting him in the face with a foul lager fused breath as he did so - to repeat what he had said, with a half scandalized, half angry; "WHAT?"
Dad, also being a big fellow himself and while not having a scarily violent streak close to his surface, currently furiously angry and in the mood to draw blood from the scab stood in front of him being as he was personally responsible; for if not little Suzie's broken leg but her overall condition, was unimpressed.
"I said no," he repeated, in a calm, soft voice. Fun fact; the calmer and more soft spoken my dad is, the more scared you should be because the closer he is to snapping. But of course our pond-dweller did not know this; "fuck off. (and, for emphasis) You are not taking the cat."
"Oh yeah?" the pond-dweller sneered; "and who's going to stop me, eh?"
"That," Dad replied, drawing himself up to his full height of six foot one (grossly fat as he is, he sort of slouches most of the time and looks a lot shorter than he actually is); "would be me."
"Oh yeah?" the man sneered again (though less certain this time).
"Yeah," dad sneered back.
The pond-dweller stood still for a minute or two, seizing him up, then did the worst thing he could have done and aimed a drunken swing towards dad's nose; which dad blocked with the ease of a skilled fighter that isn't addled with booze before giving the pond-dweller a firm no nonsense push.
Infuriated (and uncomfortably aware that not only MJ and me but also five or six of his own brood were watching events unfold with open mouths) pond-dweller regained his balance and pushed himself up as close to dad as he could go; pressing their chests together as he put his nose to dad's and shrieked the war-cry of;
"who the hell do you think you ARE, FUCKER!"
Dad's response is one that remains etched on my memory for all time, albeit one that could be said to be setting a terrible example to the young impressionable minds of us gawping kids. Removing his glasses - another bad sign to those In The Know - he yelled back: "I'm the fucker that is keeping your cat, you arsehole!" and then he nutted the bastard full in the face.
Good, eh?
Anyway, that was the end of that conversation. Pond-dweller skulked away, holding his hopefully broken nose with both hands and that was the last we heard from him about that matter, or any other come to that. The day afterward the entire family upped and moved and that was that. Suzie was ours, for good and all.
It took weeks for her leg to heal, but in the meantime other improvements were made. Her fur, which had been missing in great patches, grew back then and added to itself all over, becoming thick and sleek. Her great bloated belly that had caused her to struggle to walk and get comfortable subsided. Her starvation ravaged body padded out, becoming thicker. Her muscles, therewith-or withered and fragile, strengthened and then strengthened some more. And above all she grew, and grew. Very quickly she transformed from a tiny, malnourished, flea-ridden adolescent kitten into a fully grown cat; tall and long and stout with rippling muscles and black and white fur that gleamed with health.
One thing that bothered us, though, was her demeanor. Her eyes were constantly wide, her ears constantly listening, her body constantly ready for flight; a tensed, coiled spring that could shunt joltingly into action in a split second. She adored all of us; MJ, mum and myself (ironically, dad, after his heroism in securing her place in our little nest, buggered off soon after), that was self evident, but the slightest movement, the slightest sound that she wasn't expecting and she was off. During her mealtimes was a particularly sensitive time, leading us to decree that "nobody - not family, not guests, not even the Queen - is allowed to leave the living room and/or come up or downstairs while the cats are eating". Even so, she regularly took fright and left her dinner for Simba (another cat to be talked about another time) having had only a few tiny mouthfuls, if that.
When not attempting to eat or creeping outside to empty her bladder, her favourite place to be was under mother's bed in the little box room - Squealer having previously appropriated the top of it some time ago and being as she was unwilling to share - and there, for the most part, she tended to stay, curled up in blissful contentment among a chaos of boxes and odds and ends. Occasionally she would venture downstairs and join us in the living room, usually commandeering the top of whichever of the sofas Squealer was trying to claim as her own when she did. But it was rare. Rarer, once Bingo entered our lives. It wasn't that she was afraid of him, in fact she was the only one that from the start wasn't as it turned out, but that she simply disliked him intensely. And in any case, Suzie preferred to be under the bed. That was HERS, a place that not even the undisputed head of the household - Squealer - could come into without her permission.
Years dragged on with a backdrop of family heartbreak and drama and laughter and love and argument and tension disruption carrying on alongside the every day scheme of living, and life for the three cats carried on much the same as it always had - with the exception that all three now used a litter tray rather than going outside rather than risk being attacked (long bloody story) - until two things things happened in quick succession. Firstly Squealer, God rest her soul, passed from the earthly plain into the afterlife. Then secondly and within twenty-four hours of that we moved house and poor Suzie found her life in total disarray.
The day it happened she sat quietly and composedly in one of two borrowed cat baskets - three cats (two living), only one cat basket to our name and a distinct lack of funds; it was either borrow two more or risk prosecution for stealing them - while beside her the normally placid and lazily amiable Simba flung himself against the bars with yowling anger and desperation - and watched as the house was systematically dismantled before her eyes. Then once me, Suzie and Simba (and the basket containing Squealer, of course; we couldn't bear to leave her behind, deciding instead to bury her in our new garden) were safely installed in the new building, the two cats were let out to explore.
Ironically, as I mentioned, it was Simba - so laid-back that he was practically comatose - that reacted the worst to the shift. Having been freed from his prison (after two nearly successful escape attempts, one of which had sent the barred door bursting open and teetering on its damaged hinges), he shot around every room and up and down the stairs like a demented pinball, yowling and growling as he went. Suzie, on the other hand, took a different approach. Jumping up onto my lap (a first) she lay down on it (also a first) in a decisive gesture of possessive ownership and began serenading me with her soothing purrs. The only negative emotion she showed was to glare every now and again at the dormant gas fireplace in front of us, as though daring it to make a false move toward her and her pet (that'd be me).
It was later on that she reacted the way we had expected her to. The first thing was to refuse to venture downstairs to eat. After a while of caving in and plopping her dinner bowl next to mother's bed, we toughened up and showed her what was what. After a few days of us tensed up and waiting to see which of us would give in first, thankfully she did; so that was that. Then we began to worry about another thing: she wasn't using the litter tray. We knew she wasn't going outside either. So where was she going? If she had gone inside, we'd have known - well, you would, wouldn't you? Phew! - so it seemed she wasn't going at all. And that was worrying, because, well; if you don't, well, go, for a continual stretch of time, serious health threatening complications can ensue... As it turned out, we feared needlessly, for nature took over and she went. AAALLL over the bathroom floor. Then again aaalll over mother's bedroom floor. Then again...you get the picture. And all within twelve hours. Wow. Poor thing must REALLY have needed it.
After that another distasteful event started taking place. As well as still occasionally pooing in the bathroom (though she started using the tray and it became a rarity), she began regularly urinating on our beds. Or on any clothes and/or coats that should accidentally fall onto the floor, but mostly it was the beds she aimed for. Over and over again. She just didn't stop. If we caught her in the act we would show her we were cross and if possible make a grab at her and march her down to the litter tray to show her (yet again) where it was and that yes, we DID want her to wee in THAT and not in or on our furniture, but to no avail. Nothing worked. It got to the point that I had to shut my bedroom door during the day, whether I was in there or not, to keep her out - nighttime wasn't a problem because Bingo slept with me and she'd rather have died than share a room with him - and mother, who couldn't at the time shut her door, had to buy one of those fitted waterproof sheets to put on top of her mattress and duvet. Quite a palarva it was; every night before she went to sleep she had to fetch her pillows, which wouldn't fit under the sheet, from her cupboard so that she could lie down and every morning she had to put them away and pull the sheet back up before she did anything else - even take a few moments to go to the loo - or risk having to wash and dry yet another duvet and clean and air out the mattress yet again because truly those few minutes were all it took for another "fouling incident" (as the vet called them) to occur to devastating effect.
Of course, we both resented very much at first having to take these precautionary measures - we had never had to act that way before with any pet, even Squealer as she became ill and began to lose control of her bladder - it was an unexpected unpleasantness that marred an otherwise blissful residence in our new and happy home. Mother especially felt that way, as it was her that was most effected.
The funny thing was that other than peeing with glorious abandon when unsupervised - as I said, nighttimes were fine; as mother slept she merely curled up with her quite happily on the bed and slept too - she seemed far happier here than in the old house. The entire first floor became hers, with Simba taking the majority of the ground floor and Bingo having to make do with the tiny living room during the day and while he still chose to do so my third floored bedroom at night (which he could only get to by passing through the areas owned by the cats; including Suzie's landing, which she patrolled fiercely). Mealtimes and litter usage returned to normal (or as normal as they had ever been for Suzie) and she seemed perfectly contented to spend her time in mother's room on the bed. On top of it, no less. And that was during the times when she wasn't preoccupied with sleeping in the bathtub or stretching out in the sunny spot before the bathroom window. Or playing in the bathtub. You wouldn't believe how much fun a cat that had never shown much interest in playing full stop can have in an empty bathtub with nothing but a lid off a shampoo bottle for company; or even with nothing.
It was wonderful. After a year or so had passed in this way, Suzie relented and Simba was at last permitted entry upstairs. The two of them took to curling up at opposite ends of the bed, safe in the knowledge of one another's company. Suzie, I noticed, always had the pillow end, which despite there not being any pillows appeared to be a way of emphasizing her authority.
A year after that, we lost Simba; tragically and unexpectedly and suddenly, taken from us by a massive heart attack. His spirit remained for some time, hanging around*, which explains how calmly Suzie reacted to his supposed absence. In fact, for several months she acted as though nothing had changed, until Squealer and Jasmine came to visit me** and then took him with them when they left. She reacted then, though so subtly at first that we barely noticed it.
She began to properly cry at mealtimes, for one thing. One of her little quirks had been to squeak rather than meow; so much so that for the first twelve years of her life we were utterly convinced that she couldn't properly cry out like other cats. But now she cried, long and loud, when mother or I fetched the can of food from the cupboard and grabbed her dinner bowl, and then she cried again when she finished, as though announcing to us "behold, for I have finished". Bingo was quick to pick up, of course, on the fact that the second set meant now free to go and check if she had left any food behind, which she often did.
Of course once we started noticing, we couldn't stop. Over and over for weeks something new would emerge about our cat. Whether truly new or simply previously passed over, we can't be sure, but here are a few facts that we know - now, if they were around before - about our lovely, quirky little cat:
* She runs up and down in the bedroom, particularly after her meals; her little paws pounding on the bare boards and her hefty bulk (she's a nice stout girl, our Suzie; weird considering how little she eats) landing with a shuddering thud as she jumps on and off the bed.
She does this, seemingly, for no other reason than she can.
* Having unexpectedly begun on for reasons best known to herself, she now greets me in the mornings when I first stagger out of bed and head for the bathroom. The door is propped open most of time - yes, even when we are using it, and why not, after all? It's just us girls - so she can come and go freely, and she certainly does. At 5:AM every morning, after I have plonked myself on the seat, she trots in and I end up sitting there numbly, staring ahead of me; a sightless, half asleep zombie stroking blindly at the eager black and white furry blob rubbing and purring her way round my bare legs.
She follows me downstairs afterwards, too, right to the bottom step; and woe betide if I don't turn and fuss her after every few steps. To transgress from the routine is to sin, grievously.
* She often talks, murmuring and mewling softly whether to herself or to us or to Simba (or Squealer, or Jasmine, or anyone else for that matter) we're not sure, but it's a pleasant thing to listen to, coming from our previously mostly silent family member.
Her purring, too, has gotten louder and more persistent as she has grown older. It now resembles Simba's 'lawn-mower' type growl. And her growl itself is something to behold. Not that it happens often; generally only when being dragged out of the basket on her yearly visit to the vet, but still...
*When indulging in a few minute sit down with her on the bed, she shows her appreciation of your company by pacing happily up and down and headbutting you hard when you fail to stroke her just how and in what position she likes.
And she tells you when she would like you to leave her alone by retreating to her favoured spot under the bed - it's between two storage boxes and in front of an old holdall - where you can't reach her. Can't get fairer or more clear than that, can you?
* She comes down to the bottom step to stare at you while you are preparing food, in case it is something she would like and therefore something you would be morally obliged to give her. Ham, for instance, or cheese. But only GOOD cheese; only cheddar. To give her any other kind will cause her to give you a long hard stare of outraged hatred and she will henceforth refuse to show you any affection for the next twelve hours.
* Following on from above, she also turns up on the bottom step more often than not to watch the dog get ready for his walk; simply, I am sure, so that when he trots up to her in high excitement to show her that he is about to go out she gets the chance to hiss at him menacingly and cause him to back away hurriedly . Her original opportunity ceased, you see, the day he decided to save his aching legs the walk and sleep downstairs. Before that she had two glorious years of utter glee in being able to stop him in his tracks with a single glare, making him look at me with a pleading whine, asking for support. Once when she spat at him he jumped backward straight legged on all four paws down four steps...
* She runs around in circles in the bathtub during late night rainstorms and has a (previously mentioned in an earlier post) ball-bearing that she enjoys pattering around after when she is sure nobody will disturb her.
Both make a nice amount of noise, though considering the timing, the latter is far more enjoyable to us than the former.
* She curls up on the bed underneath the waterproof blanket- yes, she fits, but can't position herself to wee, so it's alright - during cold winter daytimes; a cat shaped lump in the centre of an otherwise smooth sea of white.
It appears that she believes that she is so well camouflaged that we can't see her and neither one of us has had the heart yet to let her know that despite her brilliant attempt at blending in, we do actually know that she is under there...
...And that is it so far.
18 years of Suzie. Fragile yet well muscled; terrified of everything and everyone yet brave enough to tell a huge black dog and various spirits where to go; greedy with snacks yet restrained with her main meals to the point of near abstinence; solemn in company but highly playful in private; jittery but composed... a lover of cheddar and hater of any cheese that isn't; a compulsive urinator of bed-covers and tight circle runner of bathtubs; a contented sprawler in sunny spots through mottled bathroom windows and a cunning 'hidden' white lump underneath a water-proof bedspread...
My darling, funny girl.
Long may she continue to be just the same, and never change.
Alice.
* I am sometimes sensitive to spirit presences; particularly those of animals. The first I noticed fully was Jasmine. It's a story for another time and I'm also acutely aware that many people believe such sensations to be figments of overactive imaginations, so I'll leave it at that for now. Just popped this in by way of explanation.
** Squealer and Jasmine are sisters, reunited by Squealer's passing four and a half years ago - Jasmine died after living for just one year and had waited for her ever since, visiting me periodically to purr by my ear and make a nuisance of herself to the dog by running across the bed at high speed and then leaping off of it using his nose as a launch pad. The poor boy didn't enjoy her routine stop overs nearly as much as I did, I fear.
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