Trauma
A friend of mine adopted a street cat a few months ago. In a matter of weeks, the feline population in their house rose to four — the original adopted cat had kittens. Last week their household had its first cat-related trauma: one of the kittens disappeared. Three days later she came home dragging a swollen paw. She was clearly ill, and was mewling piteously (I’m not discounting the possibility of emotional blackmail). They took her to the vet, who said she had some sort of infection. The vet said she might have eaten a mouse that had ingested rat poison. The sick cat was put on antibiotics and confined in the animal clinic for three days. The situation was iffy for 24 hours, but this morning the cat was pronounced fully recovered. When last I heard from her tearful humans, the cat was busy reclaiming her position in the household power structure. (Basically, cats on top, humans serve.)
If you have a cat who regularly leaves the house to walk the earth,you know what anxiety is. Sometimes the cat takes off for a few days, and just as you’re about to scour the neighborhood with a detective and a psychic, the confounded animal saunters into your living room with a look of “What seems to be the problem?” No explanations are forthcoming, since you do not speak feline.
That’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenarios have already played in your head.
Three years ago, my white tabby Mat disappeared for a week. He hadn’t moved in with us at the time, but he always showed up at mealtimes.
The rest of the time he sunbathed in front of the building, or hung out with his harem. He’s a very posh-looking cat — we figure he ran away from his previous humans and chose our street because he wanted to be a neighborhood toughie. He’s certainly the biggest cat we’ve ever seen.
One day he turned up on my doorstep, meowing politely. I invited him in. He gave himself a leisurely tour of the premises; meanwhile my cats Koosi and Saffy jumped on top of the bookshelf, shrieking “Intruder!” in cat. The tour ended with Mat pooping in the litter box.
From then on he was a regular visitor.
The morning my trauma began, I opened the door, fully expecting Mat to bound up the stairs and get his breakfast. He did not appear. I called him, and I thought I could hear him meowing, but he did not turn up.
The same thing happened at lunch and dinner. I thought I’d imagined the meowing.
In the first 24 hours of Mat’s absence I told myself that he’d gone on a walking tour of
By day four I had horrible visions of car accidents or cochinillo — Mat is the size of a piglet, and very meaty. On the fifth day I felt abandoned, and on the sixth I was in mourning.
On the seventh day, I opened the door from force of habit, and without thinking, I called Mat.
He replied.
I thought I was hearing things, so I called out again. He meowed back, faintly, but did not run up the stairs. I was convinced that he was nearby, so I walked down the steps. That’s when it occurred to me that he could be inside the apartment below mine. An empty apartment — the tenant had moved out some days earlier, right about the time Mat disappeared.
I asked the guard to open the door, and before I could even walk in
Back at home, Mat wolfed his bowl of food and demanded a refill. Then another refill. He was so impatient that as I was opening a can he started slapping my hand. When he finally finished eating, he climbed onto the couch and went to sleep for 24 hours.
The experience was so harrowing, I decided that Mat would be a house cat from then on. I had him neutered — it decreases the roaming, and he doesn’t need as much territory anymore — and got him used to the idea of staying in full-time. Mat has taken to living indoors so completely that when we do go out, he acts like he’s being kidnapped. And that’s how Mat became an indoor cat.
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