Roger’s Reality: Karma Kitty

The Faces of Jack

By Roger Owens

Mike and Bonnie have our cat, Jackie. Mike and Bonnie live over on the next street, and Jack has essentially moved to their house. It’s OK though, because he won’t stay home anymore anyway, and at one time we had their cat. Jackie Jack never really lived at any one place; he’s always been a vagabond.
    Maybe I should go back and start at the beginning.

In late 2004, after hurricanes Francis and Jean and tropical storm Ivan all visited us here on Florida’s Treasure Coast, I rented a new office space for my company, because the old office was just about a total loss. At 7 one morning an employee called to say he had found a cat in the new office. The office was newly renovated because it too had been damaged in the hurricanes. It had been locked, and was tight as a drum. We couldn’t figure out how the cat had gotten in, but it became clear before too long. One of his first nicknames was Houdini, because of his knack for skating in and out of opened doors without anyone the wiser.

    Jack looks like a white cat that got mixed up with a grey-striped tabby in the teleportation machine from the old horror flick The Fly. He has a grey-striped Batman cap and eye mask. A saddle and some of his tail follow suit, but the rest, well, he’s a white cat. He also has pointed black mascara lines around his eyes, like Nefertiti. He got his name from my wife, who did not want another cat when I sheepishly brought Jackie home that day. She said he’d have to go. But Jack is not a cat to be ignored, and soon hopped on the couch with Cindy and began “kneading” on a blanket. It’s believed this juvenile behavior, actually a suckling behavior normally observed only in infant cats, lingers in older animals if they are taken from their mothers too soon. I can’t vouch for that, but I can tell you it is endearing, devastatingly cute, and absolutely impossible for anyone with a heart for animals to resist. Cindy said, “Look at those jack-rabbit feet…” then looked up at me. “Crap, I just named the damn cat, didn’t I?” I nodded gleefully; we had to keep him now. No way he would be farmed out after that. So he’s Jack. Or Jackie. Or Jackie Jack. Or “Dackie Dack” to the kid across the street. No reason; just goofing on names. Or “Yackity Yack Jack” because he talks all the time.

    Let me tell you, Jackie Jack is one all-around cool cat. He likes to press his face into the backs of chairs, the couch, anything, like he’s hiding his eyes. That’s what we call “the faces of Jack.” He goes about the neighborhood, cadging treats and pettings from who knows how many local people. He knows who’s up early, who has food out for their own cats, and who will bring him in for a session of heavy petting on the couch. Example: our friend Sue lives behind us and one over, right across that street from Mike and Bonnie’s house. One day Sue called us to say another lady way down the block had gone out for the morning paper about 5:30, retreated to enjoy it with her morning toilette, only to find Jack in the bathroom with her. Oh yeah, he’s also a bathroom kitty; Cindy could never have any peace with her ablutions. Sue wanted to know if Jack was missing. It was about 8:30, and Jack was right there at our house munching his morning kitty meal. There’s no doubt it was him; he’d been on his morning meander and was back at what I always thought of as just his main hangout – our house.

    Jack is also an adventurous eater. He likes fish, raw or cooked, beef, chicken, cheese, and shrimp. But his all-time favorite is raw oysters. Whenever we would get a bushel of oysters he would be there, nabbing any niblets that we just “happened” to drop. Sometimes he couldn’t wait and would be stretched up to the counter, claws extended for scraps. And when he stretches out, he is a long cat. He was never heavy, more lanky and lean. We took to placing little bits of oyster right on the edge, so he could get them. If you didn’t keep an eye on him he’d be up on the table helping himself.

OK, so now we get to Mike and Bonnie. We didn’t really know them, just people we’d see around the neighborhood. A couple of years ago we were looking for another cat, and Cindy likes tortoise-shells. Out of the blue our neighbor Sue calls us and says she has a starving “tortie” who just showed up at her house. No idea where she came from. Now, Sue is dirt-poor, but she loves animals, particularly pit bulls. She doesn’t have two dimes to rub together, but she can’t turn down a stray. We said we’d take her. She was emaciated, skeletal, but a total sweetheart. We thought maybe some elderly person nearby had died, and the cat had been left without food, but we really didn’t know.

    We named her “Louie” and took her to the vet. Four hundred bucks later, they can’t find anything wrong, and said to “feed her up.” This was more easily spoken than accomplished; she didn’t seem to want to eat anything. We finally struck on raw chicken livers. She would drink the blood, and if we mashed it up she would get a little of it down. She lived with us for five or six weeks, and actually gained one pound. This was significant; she came to us weighing just four and one-half pounds. We got her a little stuffed bed and got a collapsible cage to keep her from wandering. We fed her Ensure through a syringe. We entertained the possibility of thoughtless owners turning this poor baby out to starve, and whoever they were, we didn’t like them. Predictably, all our ministrations availed nothing. Louie spent her last day with us and Sue out by the barbeque, being passed from lap to lap in her little bed. Sometime between five and seven-thirty the next morning, right beside our bed, she died. We cried a little, buried the cat in her bed, and forgot about it.

Several weeks later, Sue put something up on Facebook about the little starving cat and, like, what kind of asshole would leave the poor thing out to starve? She was unaware that the settings on her page allowed anyone to see her posts, and Bonnie saw it. And Bonnie freaked. It was their cat. She went ballistic on Facebook, and she and Mike began harassing Sue. I told Sue to tell them we had taken the cat and it had died and was buried. They began threatening to snatch her cat and take it to the pound. They threatened to come take our dogs, who have electric collars and stay outside during the day, because they barked at people walking by. They told Sue they wanted Louie, whom they had named “Sweetie Pie,” and said they wanted us to dig up the cat. Six weeks after she died. She would have been nothing but a liquified mess of bones and hair. We were pretty sure we were dealing with a couple of psychos.

Now, Mike and Bonnie are big people. Mike is about six-two, maybe 225, with really long grey hair (by that I mean a lot longer than mine, which even at 65 is not grey, thank you very much) and a beard that is braided down to his waist. He looks like an aging Viking in jeans and a T-shirt. Bonnie is maybe five-nine and probably 160. Sue stands five-foot nothing in her stockinged feet and weighs in at about 120. She was terrified. Mike and Bonnie intimidated her so badly she built a cage for her cat, Max, that lets him out in the yard through a window, but Max can’t wander any more the way he once did. It got so bad Cindy and I went to Mike and Bonnie’s house, recording on both our phones, and confronted them about it. They were outright hostile, even when I tried to tell them we took the best care we could of Sweetie Pie. I got pissed and accused them of turning the cat out to die. They then told us the cat had had cancer – something that went beyond what the vet we consulted had checked for – so we didn’t know, and that she had slipped out unnoticed. We parted on a truly terrible note, and I had a sick suspicion that we were missing some very big parts of a greater puzzle. Nothing happened for some time, and we again put it out of our minds.

Well. Turns out there were in fact some other players in this little stage production. One was Gene, a cantankerous neighbor two houses down from Sue and catty-corner to Mike and Bonnie. Another was “Inky,” or Ignacio, the retired sheriff who lives behind us, next to Sue. And finally, there was George, the Guinea fowl who had taken up residence in our neighborhood several years back. Seems that Gene has had a running feud with Mike and Bonnie – over their respective animals no less – for the last few years. They felt threatened by Gene and his friends on the street and thought we were some of them, so they already had their minds set against us. Mike and Bonnie alleged that Gene had thrown poisoned meat into their yard and messed with their dogs from out on the street. Mike and Gene got in a tussle and Gene spent a few weeks in jail.
    George (the Guinea fowl) had been living at Sue’s house for years and was like her pet, but, for whatever reason, he moved over to Mike and Bonnie’s. Sue wasn’t one bit happy about that, either. George had been spending nights in the oak trees in Inky’s front yard, but lately the raccoons had been attacking him. Inky loved that bird, and one night he went out with his pistol and blew two of the raccoons away, right out of the tree. Mike and Bonnie, who also loved George and called him “Guinea,” thought that was really cool. I wasn’t too happy with Inky for shooting the ’coons. I could have trapped and relocated them; it’s part of what my company does. Unfortunately, it seems the raccoons finally got George, and all that was found was a pile of feathers.
    But it was the raccoons that set the rest of the drama in motion. Apparently, a pack of damned big ’coons had moved into the neighborhood and were wreaking havoc. We didn’t see them much because our dogs chased them off during the day and at night until we went to bed. Then, we went on a short vacation for Cindy’s sister’s wedding, five days in Upstate New York. Our neighbor feeds our dogs and cats when we’re gone, out in the screen room, and there’s a doggie door to outside. Problem is, sometimes the raccoons figure out they can get in that door, and they go after the dog and cat food we have out there in a cabinet. While we were gone, they moved in and took over. Big raccoons. And Jack, always a fighter, got the living shit beat out of him. Probably several times; he isn’t the type to back down, and for his whole life would come home regularly with patches of hair torn out. By the time we got back, Jack was nowhere to be found. When we did find him, over on the other street, he wouldn’t stay home. I had trapped the remaining raccoons, one of which had to have weighed an award-winning thirty-five pounds, and relocated them miles away. I couldn’t imagine my cat, who weighs about fifteen pounds, battling with that bruiser. Jack didn’t know and didn’t care. He was flat-out not going to live here or even hang out here, ever again.
    At first, when we got home, Sue would spot Jack in Inky’s driveway under his boat, or over at Mike and Bonnie’s. He looked like hell. We would bring him home, and he would be gone the next day. We pretty much gave up. If we were going to keep him, we would have had to coup him up in the house, and he would have hated that. So much so, he would spray all over the house and fight with the other cats. He’s el gato vagabondo, remember? The Wandering Jew of cats. Stealing hearts and cat treats wherever he goes. It would be like putting him in kitty prison. So we just shrugged, kept food out, and hoped he’d come home. This is where it gets weird.

Sue told us Jackie was living with Mike and Bonnie. In their house. At first, we were incensed. Those people? They have other cats and dogs too. Why didn’t he fight with them? Why didn’t he spray all over their house? We pouted for a while, but over time, we came to accept it. It had a karmic feel to it. We took their cat, so they wound up with ours. Eventually, we told Sue to tell them it was OK, if Jackie wanted to live there, then they had our blessing. We still weren’t speaking. Things went along like that for a while. Sue would update us. Mike had taken an instant affection for our Jackie, who reciprocated, which we couldn’t understand, because he was always a mommy’s kitty. The kneading? He did that to Cindy all the time, me almost never. Now it was Mike getting all that attention. I pouted some more. I was jealous. Then one day Mike showed up at our door. Jack had been hit by a car, and they wanted our permission to take him to the vet. I said we’d pay, he’s our cat after all, but Mike wouldn’t hear of it. I gave my permission without reservation and asked if he would please keep us posted. He said not only would he do that, but we could come visit Jack any time we wanted. I thanked him. I shook his hand. I told him again that it really was all right that Jackie Jack wanted to live with them. I think it took them a while to get that through their heads and into their hearts. But I was beginning to get it that Mike and Bonnie weren’t so bad after all.
    This was a classic situation. We had started off on the worst foot possible; we had made assumptions about each other that were untrue; we had harbored ill will toward each other. Now, someone we both loved was threatened. The vet didn’t know if Jack would live or not. Now we were united in our concern for this unique, lovable Karma Kitty. We said we were truly sorry about Louie/Sweetie Pie, and this time they heard us when we told how she was loved and cared for in her last days. They apologized for assuming we were in cahoots with Gene, and apparently Gene and his friends have been a real problem for these people. “We moved here for some peace and quiet. We don’t need this shit.” I could hardly blame them. There’s nothing worse than war between neighbors. They both made a point of saying they could be assholes at times, and they knew it; I allowed as how I suffered from the same malady. Not Cindy, not ever, but then, I’m a big enough asshole for both of us. She’s not my better half, more like my better 90%.
    In time, Jack came home to Mike and Bonnie’s, still sore but nothing broken, and slowly got better. We told them he loved raw oysters. Mike buys him a container of shucked oysters every week, all for Jackie Jack. He spends most of the day and all night in the house, and outside he just lays in the sunshine on the warm concrete. He probably didn’t spend fifty nights in our house in sixteen years. And, Jackie Jack the Karma Kat looks great. He looks healthy. I went over and invited Mike and Bonnie to our recent pig roast, and although they didn’t come, the ice there has definitely been broken. And now, at what we figure must be close to seventeen years old, it seems Jackie Jack’s wandering days are over. Our beloved el gato vagabondo has found a new home.

Copyright © 2020 by Roger Owens