By Charlotte Byus
You are either a Dog or Cat person, sometimes you can be both. As a child, my daddy allowed me to have cats, and my sister, who is 14 years older than me, was allowed to have dogs. To my recollection, my first cat was Kiddle. I could not say kitty kitty. Kiddle was an orange tabby male, except he did not know he was male. He would come home all beat up and had a baby kitty to show for it. The next day he would bring another baby and so on. I know most toms do not like kittens, but Kiddle loved them and wanted them to stay and play.

After RR and I were married, he came home one night after work with a box and Bandito was in there. He was named after the mechanic who found Bandito in the back seat of a new car unloaded from Detroit. RR took the cat, found a box and went to Jack-in-Box across the street for a hamburger and milk, that was Bandito’s first meal.

Blossom was part Siamese and crazy as a loon! She was very territorial of her yard and home, I think she thought she was a dog. We lived on a corner and woo be the poor dog that decided to cross across the yard. Off she would go on the attack. Once there was a stupid dog that decided to venture into our fenced back yard. Blossom was on the top of the fence and when the dog came under her down she went on the back of that dog. And the rodeo was on, Blossom ridding like a bronc-ridder, off they went. Blossom came home but that dog never came back.

As the girls got older, there were many other kitties that joined us. One time, we ventured out for a dog. Shannon was her name, Dalmatian pup and of course we had Critter. Both were black and white and they loved each other. Somehow they communicated about stuff. Example, Shannon loved to eat June bugs and Critter loved to catch them. In the summertime, when the outside lights were on, Critter would jump up and swat the bugs and Shannon would quietly sit for said dazed bug, crunch-crunch. They played this game for many years.

Pavarotti came to us after Critter passed. We ventured to the SPCA on a Saturday and there he was just waiting for us. The card said “too much trouble,” he was never too much trouble in the twenty years he lived. In those years he tolerated so many other cats that would come to us. Such as Little Girl, she was part Siamese and very much unlike Blossom. Little Girl was so totally girl and blond and Pav knew it and would take great advantage of the situation. Romp and stomp day and night down the hall way, Pav knew to start making the turn into the bed room but Lil Girl never did learn, thump into the wall every time.

Mollie came to us because our next door neighbors left her when they moved, every night she would sit and wait at the garage door for someone to come home. So she became ours, we feed her and then she started to grow and grow. She had six beautiful babies just weeks before we moved to the beach.

Smokey and Squeekie came to us at the beach. Both were just kittens, Smokey was the most beautiful Russian Blue with eyes of blue and Squeekie was mostly white with a few orange strips. Squeakie was named so, as he did not meow, he squeaked. Of course, with half an acre on Boyt Road, we became the Cat people of Bolivar. That was okay with us. The mean people that drove up and down Boyt took some of our babies. As time went by and our yard was a graveyard of loved fur-babies.

I could go on but you are bored by now. The whole point of this story is feral cats need love and kindness too.

Love you Midnight, Jet, Slug a Bug, Big Kitty, and most of all Potsquallie.

[6-17-2019]