I am not a cat person. It's not that I don't like cats. Cats are fine. They're especially fine when they're outside. They're also fine if they don't rub themselves on my legs. They can even be fine when they're sleeping. Just not on my bed.
Not that we haven't had cats. We have. But for the most part, they've lived outside except on those occasions when our daughters sneaked them into the house or when it decided that the basement was a better option to sleeping outside in a blizzard. My "cats have been sleeping outside for thousands of years" was ignored.
Much of this can be blamed on an unfortunate episode in my teens during a visit to brother who had indoor cats. I woke up in the middle of the night, coughing and unable to breathe. Rather than waking up my parents, I sneaked out to our camper in the parking lot.
In the morning I woke up with hives so we visited a doctor who deemed the cause was an allergy and prescribed meds and cream. The hives disappeared eventually, after which I avoided house cats.
My poor cat-loving daughters grew up unable to bring cats into the house, but settled for outdoor cats. The most remarkable of two cats included Sam, a gigantic cat that roamed the neighborhood and who was often gone for weeks at a time. Eventually, we learned that he lived in one of any number of other homes during those disappearances, and at each he had a different name.
Then there was the aforementioned Peaches, a beloved orange tabby who lived to about 17 years. Peaches much preferred living outdoors. In her last summer, as I recuperated at home following a two-week hospital stay, her constant yowling from the front porch caused some concern to us and (likely) much annoyance to the neighbors. My husband dragged her off to the vet, who diagnosed her with what he determined to be dementia, depression, or both. Her yowls were silenced only by kitty Prozac.
In the end, Peaches ended her life on her own terms. When my running partner said Peaches hadn't met her on our porch recently, I admitted I'd noticed her absences. The answer came when returning from the run, I saw a small orange lump in the yard. We'd had a very cold week so it wasn't a pretty sight. But she'd died in her sleep in one of her favorite spots. That one hit me harder than I'd expected, maybe because during that particularly difficult health scare, she'd become my guardian.
Fast forward to 2021. Our neighborhood was rife with stray cats, two of which made regular stops on our patio, clearly hoping for handouts. Our daughters suggested not so subtly that we should adopt them. We used the excuse that our 16-year-old Schnauzer was still king of the palace and might not be too happy with that idea.
The cats continued to stop by for food, then roamed for days before returning for more. And so it went for months. We tested names for each cat, eventually settling on Hastings (as in Hercule Poirot's friend) for the skinny gray one, and Balls for the giant white tomcat (the cat gave whole new meaning to "furball.")
Sadly, we said goodbye to our beloved Ike in August, when his third serious round of bladder stones clearly made him miserable and his organs began to shut down. Subjecting him to a third surgical procedure would be difficult on him. Letting him go seemed only fair, but it hurt.
Oddly, Balls the cat, seemed to sense something off and began showing up more regularly, accepting ear scratches and food. He continued to roam, sometimes for a week at a time, returning each time with a scratched face or notch in an ear. We managed to shove him into a neighbor's cat carrier and took him to the vet for a once-over and the initial round of shots. They suggested we neuter him but that would mean he was ours. We weren't ready for that. Or maybe I wasn't ready for him. After all, I was NOT a cat person.
This went on for another six months and a Thanksgiving visit with our daughters and the dudes, during which they insisted he join the annual family photo shoot. Feeling somewhat guilty about giving the cat such a gender-specific moniker, we tested new names. Hercule (the French "er-kyul" not Hercules) was our first choice but the pronunciation would likely end up bungled by non-Christie readers.
And...if and when we (or he) decided this was his home, he'd be off to the vet to be neutered and his name would no longer fit. One night, while staring at our trio of framed prints by Cincinnati artist Charley Harper, I suggested we name him Charley. We tried it on him. He didn't blink. He also didn't run away. It stuck.
A few weeks later, we coaxed him back into the cat carrier and off he went to the vet. Later in the day, we were summoned to fetch him. With subtle tact, the staff told us he had not been very nice and they were clearly ready to see him leave. He was relegated to the basement where he slunk off to a blanket to nurse his wounds. We survived about 4.90 of the 10 days he was supposed to stay indoors before he insisted on no more coddling. We gave in and let him go, knowing he might never return.
But he returned the next day and agreed to sleep inside for most of the day before sitting in front of the door, howling his intentions of going out. This went on for about a month, during which a friend reported seeing him at her parents' rural home a mile across the fields from us. Then an alert driver found his collar, tags intact, and dropped it at the vet -- they called to tell us they had it. In the meantime, he'd returned collarless.
It's now been a few months and in a complete turnaround, he sleeps away most of the day inside the house, with regular outside stretches but stays fairly close to home. With the warmer weather, he spends much of his time on the patio or looking for the cats next door. He still loves to sleep under the porch at night but sometimes sleeps inside.
He loves the man of the house, often insisting on sitting on his lap periodically throughout the day. He tolerates me. At least his biting attacks have stopped and his claws are rarely a part of our discussions. He lets me collect loose fur with a sticky roller -- I hate fur on everything.
All of this aside, I am still not a cat person. But he's not really a cat because he has no interest in the usual cat toys, with the exception of the stick with fleecy ribbon. He dislikes scratching posts, preferring the upholstery -- a constant bone of contention. Until yesterday, he had no interest in boxes. Then a new mower arrived and we found him loafing in the box.
He knows I don't like him rubbing against my legs and watches me out of the corner of his eye when he attempts it. He knows I'm the one with the treats so he's learned to look woebegone around me. He knows I'm not a cat person, but has learned skirt my issues. We've reached a truce.
Charley may suspect that I still wander through Petfinder looking for a dog that captures me heart. If I find one, I guess it'll have to get along with cats because somehow we have acquired one.