Cats of Indiana -Part 1

It was April 1st, 2001. I had met my wife over the internet. She wasn't my wife yet, of course. She had seduced me into giving up my apartment in Bloomington, Minnesota, (conveniently located near the Mall of America, which I loathe,) and moving to a small farm near Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where we were to be married.

I had driven all night, and was extremely sick. Only through ingesting mass quantities of caffeine via dangerous little stomach-churning over-the-counter pills, and enough giant coffees to make me run to the bathroom just from thinking of them was I able to stay awake.

I was her April Fool. I came to start a new life, leaving behind 38 years of history. 38 years that had little room for cats.

When I had been in a band years earlier, my lead guitarist had once held up an important band meeting because his cat, Meena, was missing. I had screamed at him over the phone, "you're holding up our meeting for a stupid CAT????"

He had tried to explain to me that Meena was a close friend, a part of his family, and the thought of anything happening to her made him heartsick, but I had no time for that. He was a frivolous fool, and we had business to attend to. I had to wonder how it was I had gotten myself mixed up with idiots.

It wasn't the first time this annoying person had annoyed me with cats. A few years earlier, he and his wife had been evicted, and had nowhere to live, and I had told him they could stay with my roommate and I FOR FREE until they could get caught up financially. I informed him he couldn't bring his cat, Nermal.

Shortly after they arrived, I heard meowing from the basement. When our house became infested with fleas, I considered killing him, except that the infestation was worst on him, and his entire body was covered with red, swollen bites. The pleasure of seeing him suffer was easily enough to insure his survival.

It seemed my whole life someone was forcing their stupid cats on me, and I had always been a dog person. Cats just seemed useless. They either sleep, eat, or do that which thoroughly smells up the house. They're too aloof to consider loving pets, and you can't teach them tricks.

This was my view on cats.

I'd had girlfriends who insisted their cat sleep in their beds, and if I spent the night, and got up to use the bathroom, would return to find the smug animal had taken my spot, and now dared me to move it without sustaining scratches or bites.

Stupid cats.

And now, here I was in Indiana, on a small farm, in a creepy old farmhouse with a woman who worked nights, and informed me the upstairs was haunted by a malevolent presence that wanted to possibly do her harm, such as pushing her down the violently steep and narrow staircase just outside my office; a room where I would be spending much of my time.

I don't believe in ghosts, of course, and when I saw a small vase on the shelf over my desk would mysteriously move towards the edge when I wasn't in the room, I assumed either the woman I was about to marry had a strange sense of humor, or the vibrations of my computer pushed it there. I've always been big on scientific explanations for events.

No one could deny the house was creepy, though. There were all kinds of strange sounds of settling, banging, creaking, and the howling off in the distance certainly didn't help one bit. In the years to come I would learn there were coyotes in the area, even seeing them many times, but my first nights alone in the old farmhouse were just a bit spooky.

Not that I'm easily scared. I suppose "scared" isn't the word, then. Perhaps "uneasy."

Whatever the case, it was just me and the wind at night, and sometimes I went out on the front porch, and had a smoke.

Sometimes, when I was out there, I had the feeling I wasn't alone.

I was right, of course.

There were two cats who hung around near my front porch; a black and white cat, and an all-black cat, who I would come to find out were named Mama and Boo.

Mama was the black and white cat, and Boo was her daughter, possibly from a previous marriage. I didn't know for sure, but my wife had been feeding them. She said she wished they weren't so wild, and that she could pet them.

Wishing favor with my soon-to-be bride, I thought perhaps I could do something about this. I always believed that if you can get an animal to eat from your hand, you can befriend it. Especially an animal like a cat, which has, after all, been bred to be a pet. As children, my sister and I were always befriending animals; squirrels, racoons, even mice; surely a wild housecat wouldn't be very difficult.

So I started bringing strips of bacon with me out on the front porch. At first, I would tear off little pieces, and throw them a few feet away, and the hungry cats would suspiciously come and take them, one by one, and drag them a few more feet away, and eat them.

After a time, they would eat them right where I threw them, and I knew I had them. So of course I began thowing the pieces of bacon closer and closer, until the cats would eat them from only a foot away; a range where I could have easily reached out and touched them, but I knew if I did they would bolt.

Then came the real breakthrough. I started dangling the whole strips from my hand.

These two cats desperately wanted to eat them, but they weren't sure. They would sniff them, even try and pull them out of my hand. I would sit patiently crouched; as still as the Indiana night, waiting for them to actually just eat the bacon right out of my hand.

"I petted Mama Kitty tonight," I informed my wife at dinner late one night, after she had come home from work.

"Really?" she seemed pleased, if not a bit jealous, "how did you do that?"

I told her the story of the bacon, and with a smile told her that she might try it herself, and most likely her dream of petting Mama Kitty would come true.

Once, when she had first moved into the place, she had left the front door open, and both cats had wandered into the house. When my wife went inside, Boo saw her, and ran out the front door, but Mama had simply gone berserk, actually running up the walls and sending pictures flying. My wife had cornered her in a hallway, and somehow got her into a pillowcase, and when she took her outside Mama Kitty had been a ball of fur and razors; one of the wildest cats she had ever encountered.

This was the Mama Kitty she knew. A wild, crazed animal who had spent too much of her life scrounging through garbage; a cat who had little chance of becoming anybody's pet.

I didn't like cats, as I mentioned above. I didn't like them one bit. But somehow, it had occured to me that Mama Kitty was really quite sweet. Within only a month, Mama Kitty was my friend, and I would stand on the porch and say to her, "where's my wife?" while I awaited her arrival, and Mama would rub up against my ankles to tell me she'd be home soon, and then we could eat! Mama liked that part, because she and Boo would get our table scraps.

Yum yum.

Boo

Mama Kitty