...whose "murrowl" seems to express mixed meanings, which some people seem to think cats don't feel. It seems to mean something like "Greetings, humans, I come in peace, what did you bring me, if anyone but Priscilla touches me any way but the right way for this particular moment I'll bite."
Samantha might have been a roughy-tough little cat athlete like her bigger, stronger daughter Serena if she hadn't grown up among middle school boys, constantly receiving mixed messages about how to play and what's considered polite, rude, or violent behavior. As a result, although I'm fond of her, I can't say she's fit for other people to be around.
If you want to pet a cat while visiting the Cat Sanctuary, pet Traveller, who has a gentle soul, and has almost completely white skin beneath his almost completely black fur, and generally likes being petted by everybody. If he especially likes you he may drool on you, which seems to mean something like "Yes, please wipe the surplus saliva on those hard-to-reach spots behind my ears."
According to the British author Anna Dale, Traveller's color pattern is Amber-Eyed Silver Tip, the creme de la creme of benevolent British witches' cats...although he's American so he may not count.
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| Frankly a silly book, but worth keeping if you have a cat who looks like our Traveller. |
PK: Schatzi, are you a feral cat, a tame cat, a social cat, or a solitary cat?
Schatzi: Yes. All of the above. Do not try to pick me up.
PK: I won't. I promise. For first-time readers, can you explain how you came to qualify as "all of the above"?
Schatzi: I was born into a family of social cats who were residents at a Cat Sanctuary based in a trailer park. You wondered how we all coexisted so well in the trailer house where our human lived? That's because we had access to another trailer house that was empty, and sometimes the one where our emergency backup human lives, so there was plenty of space for everyone.
I always thought of humans as friendly, helpful creatures. Only one of the humans in the trailer park spent a lot of time cuddling cats. That was the old, sick one who died. She cuddled old Suzie, who was Queen before me, and Suzie's mate. I didn't want to crowd into Suzie's space so I stayed off the human's bed and never cuddled up to anybody. I never was afraid of humans, though. If you had wanted to move into the trailer park with us, I would have wanted you to be my human. I would have liked to have a lap of my own to curl up on.
None of us ever really had to fend for ourselves in an unfriendly world, because all the people in the trailer park knew us and would make sure we didn't starve. Even the dogs and the homeless bum wouldn't hurt us. As long as we didn't cross the road we were quite safe. But we were never anyone's pet, particularly. We were like the feral cats in cities who know where their friends are, but basically live their own lives.
I knew there would be unpleasant changes when our human became ill and people started taking other cats and dogs away, but it's not as if she'd been my pet, is it? There was another one who put out food for me every day. When you tried to tell me I wouldn't be able to live in my own home any more because our human was dead, I told you you were being a poor-spirited silly fool to listen to that sort of human talk. We cats look out for each other. We know our place very well.
I was glad, though, that you took those two kittens I was trying to wean, just when I wanted to keep a distance from them. I wouldn't even have minded being taken to visit them if they hadn't bounded toward me, squeaking for milk! I know kittens normally want to nurse a little after they're old enough to eat kibble, but I didn't want to be tied down forever! And then that big mean-looking Queen Cat came out and glared at me, and I said, "F.T.S. (Forget this stuff!) Now that Suzie's gone, I'm the Queen of my own Cat Sanctuary, and I am going back there!"
And you ran after me whining for me to come back. And that big Tortie cat ran after me saying "Yes, go on back, that's the way you came." I think humans ought to know that, when a cat tells us one thing and a human tells us another thing, we trust the cat. Every time.
So I went home and had my next kittens, and very pretty little Siamese kittens they were too. But then our emergency backup human became ill too! We weren't expecting that! She was taken to the hospital. For a week or two no one remembered to feed us. Everyone but me went to forage in the garbage cans down around the convenience store. And...I don't know what the storekeeper did, where everyone disappeared too, but I do not like the smell of that storekeeper.
PK: Neither do I. She had your relatives trapped and sent to a Humane Pet Genocide Society shelter, is what she did. What can the rest of us do? It's hard to not-shop at a store more than most of us have already been not-shopping at that store.
Schatzi: If everyone came around and hissed and spat and maybe slapped her to get her started, maybe she'd run away! I miss my family.
PK: Who wouldn't?
Schatzi: Our emergency backup human is still alive. Sometimes I go back to see her, and sometimes I stay in another place nearby that nobody knows about. And if you think I'd ever show you where that is, you are a lot more stupid than you look.
PK: I'm not quite that stupid, thank you just the same.
Schatzi: The reason why I came out and meowed at you was to let you know that I'm still alive, and see if you knew anything about my sister Moonglow, my brother, my mate, or my kittens.
PK: Sorry, all I know is that Boots and Bruno were just starting to look better nourished when they died during the glyphosate spraying episode.
Schatzi: My poor babies...I'm sure you did the best you could. Most cats are solitary hunters because they never figure out that they can catch mice and rats more efficiently in teams. You say you've seen Queen Cats hunt together as a team. I've not. I always had my teammates, and Suzie had hers. But it's frustrating always having to hunt alone. Humans wouldn't understand.
PK: Humans are much more social animals than cats are, Schatzi. If we don't understand, it'd be because we'd go too far. Many humans have killed themselves just because they lost their families.
Schatzi: Well, I never heard of a cat being that stupid.
PK: Would you ever consider moving in with me, Schatzi? Heather's gone; she probably did spend some of the time after she left me visiting friends, but her body was found last winter. Samantha and Serena are rough but not mean. Traveller is a sweetheart. You can smell a bit of what they're like on me, can't you?
Schatzi: Yes, all cats can smell the scents--which humans call pheromones, and can isolate from the air but not properly smell--that tell us whether other people are male or female, friendly or not, sick or well, in or out of heat, and so on. But why would I want to move in with a younger Queen Cat? Why wouldn't you consider moving in with me? You might be able to help my emergency backup human when she's sick, and you could bring that year-old male cat...
PK: Well...years ago, a male cat who used to visit my cats decided to move in with us when his human died. If it ever comes to that point, I'm sure you remember the way.
Schatzi: Yes. But I've no plans to follow it! Go and tell those humans who are kidnapping social cats that we have our own family lives and plans, which humans ought to respect and not break up. "Adopting" us, indeed! We have our own mothers, our own mates, and our own kittens! If we adopt new humans for ourselves, that's our choice.
PK: Anyone who was in Takoma Park when I was there would have known that. Unfortunately a lot of the humans who've been swarming into Washington lately would never have fitted into Takoma Park. Some of them sound the kind who would've dug up their azaleas.
Schatzi: We social cats encourage that kind, if they're born into our species, to play in traffic.
PK: It's not just your black coat and yellow eyes I've always liked about you, Schatzi-cat. It's your purrsonality: the way you let me know that you'd just chosen a word I seldom say as your name, the way you found your way back home even though it was more than a mile away, the way you've avoided the horrid storekeeper, the way you've always remembered me but never trusted me to touch you again. You may never have been anyone's pet, but if you ever decided to be a pet, you'd be a once-in-a-lifetime pet.
Schatzi: I've learned some things about humans since my first one died. I've learned that some of them are not friendly after all. Do humans like you really think humans like that storekeeper have any reason to live?
PK: I have no idea. Sometimes they say, like this idjit in Washington, that cats kill birds. Well, nature intended cats to be able to kill very few birds--and to regret it if they ever eat one, because any adult bird a cat can catch, in our part of the world, is already half dead. What actually kills birds in Washington is habitat loss--too many people, and not enough tall trees. If some of those people would move out of the city, as I've done, birds and trees could live there and the summer heat would be less oppressive. What cats actually kill, in Washington, are mice, rats, and roaches. Like all cities Washington has plenty of those already and, if they were to succeed in exterminating their feral cat population, they'd have a lot more. That would mean a lot more tuberculosis, more "colds" and streppy-bugs, for all we know even a resurgence of septicemia--which would definitely thin out the human population in Washington at least. But what a horrible way to do it, when people could just move back to their home towns and use the Internet to do whatever most of them do in Washington.
Schatzi: I don't know or care about Washington. I know the storekeeper thought cats were making their garbage cans dirtier than they were. Hah! Let'em eat rats! Even if I were hungry, even if I wanted to do the people who use that store a favor, those rats are getting far too big for one cat to kill. Some of them could eat a kitten all at once.
PK: Rats that size have been known to rove in packs and attack humans, usually sick ones or little children, while they sleep. People who aren't blessed with teams of social cats had to shoot them or get terriers to kill them. Some humans believe that rats can be controlled by poison. Actually, any time one rat eats poison, the rest of the rat family know what to avoid, so they go on running through the building while the one poisoned rat decomposes slowly in the walls. It's not pleasant to be in a building where people have set out poison for rats. And of course some poisoned rats die outdoors rather than indoors, so they're likely to take a cat, a raccoon, or a kestrel with them when they go. Humans really ought to give thanks to every feral cat they meet, but most especially to the minority of really social cats.
Schatzi: Yes! Exactly! If you're not going to move in and be a real friend, you can go home now.
PK: No fear, Schatzi. Actually I suspect that poor idjit in Washington may have said "social cats" when he meant "friendly cats"...Well, that's a cat blog post, anyway. Can my resident cat friends add anything to it?
Serena: Yes. Tell whoever sent us that fluffy, shaggy, black-and-white mousy sort of thing to send more of them any time! It was the softest, plumpest, tenderest mouse I've ever crunched up!
PK: That's (ugh) your opinion, Serena, and I was not happy to find half of it on the porch. I thought, from the size and coat, something had killed one of your kittens.
Serena: How silly. They're bigger than that by now.
PK: Instead you'd eaten some poor child's neglected pet. I'm not happy with that thought either. Anyway, let me end this cat post with a P.S. to readers: Please do not just set gerbils, hamsters, bunnies, or whatever that poor little fluffball was out at a Cat Sanctuary. Please do not just abandon any animal out at any kind of animal shelter or sanctuary or rescue effort! People offer homes to animals because they like to be kind to animals. That means having a safe place for a new animal to retreat from the rest of us while it decides whether it fits in or not, and the right kind of food for it to eat. Even a Cat or Dog Sanctuary does not necessarily have a place for one more cat or dog in that physical location. We may have a place in mind where it can go, but that place is not necessarily our place. Always ask...both humans and animals.
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| Some of Schweitzer's ideas have held up better than others. One of the best was "Reverence for Life." |
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