I was reminded of a pair of cats that I “rescued” while reading Sharon Kay Penman’s blog post: Shadow and Bambi. Shadow is a white Alsatian shepherd that Penman rescued a few weeks ago, and from all reports he is absolutely blossoming under her loving care.
Anyhoo, back in the early 1980s, I had bought a three family house in Hartford, Connecticut and shortly after getting settled into my second floor apartment and having filled the other two apartments with tenants, I discovered some mouse droppings in the cellar. I already had two dogs (a golden retriever mix and a Welsh terrier) and two small indoor cats. I reckoned that my two kitties wouldn’t be able to handle the mice, and my dogs were too goofy to do it, so I went to the pound to get a mouser. I got there a little early and while I was waiting to enter, a woman came in with two rather large, beautiful cats. Her children had developed allergies to cats, and she couldn’t keep her beloved felines. They never saw the inside of the pound.
The first floor tenants were students at Trinity College and they immediately took to the cats. It was a great arrangement—the cats dispensed with the mice and patrolled the perimeter making sure no more entered. The students were thrilled to have cats around, and the cats integrated themselves into the house so quickly that it was like they had always been there. They took to my dogs instantly. They’d walk with me when I walked the dogs; dashing in front of the pups and then throwing themselves on their backs to get attention. When the dogs sidestepped their bodies, the cats would leap up, dash in front and repeat the process.
The students ended up taking care of the cats most of the time. I’d get their food and took care of the annual vet visits.
The students eventually graduated and I saw how attached one in particular had become to them, so I offered them to her, as they were really her cats at that point. She wanted them, but she was moving to Switzerland, so there were some complications. But we worked everything out and they spent their remaining years living somewhere outside of Geneva.
I wish all animal stories could end as happily as this one did.
A nice story, indeed! We found one of our late cats huddled by the grating that covered our apartment building's doorway. He was a scared little kitten who grew up into a very smug cat.
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