The above passage is from a Facebook status update that I read this afternoon.  I’ve seen it before on others’ status updates from time to time, and I always feel decidedly unsettled inside when I see it.

I was born in 1955 and grew up in an era where nothing at all was thought of giving a kid a “whipping” with a hand, a belt, a fly-swatter, or a switch off a bush.  Some kids received their punishment with a ping-pong paddle, a hairbrush or pancake turner.  The whippings were usually administered to the back of the legs or the buttocks.  I received my share of spankings with both an open hand and a leather belt.

I honestly don’t remember in any detail the early whippings when I was younger than about five.  I remember one that I received when I was about five and walked out the door when my dad told me to stick around.  I was shocked at him suddenly spanking me when I thought we were just messing around.  He hit me hard and I spent the rest of the day sleeping, not feeling well.

I remember the occasion of one whipping when I was in sixth grade.  My mother was working the early shift, 7:00 to 3:30 everyday, and I was alone to get myself up, ready for school and out the door where I would walk the six blocks to school.  One morning I didn’t feel well and stayed in bed.  I didn’t call her at work to tell her.  She had a factory job and was not accessible by phone easily.  For some reason, I got scared to tell her that I stayed home, and I got dressed in my school uniform before she got home.  A classmate of mine called later that evening, my mom answered the phone, and my classmate asked why I wasn’t in school that day.  My mother hung up the phone, grabbed a belt, and wailed me.  She struck me again and again with that belt, sinking her fingers into my arm, screaming at me, her eyes blazing with anger.  She was out of control and I was genuinely frightened.  Why would you not ask a child first what was wrong and why she hadn’t told you she was home that day before grabbing a belt and striking it repeatedly against the child’s bare buttocks?  I will never forget how frightened and how assaulted I felt.  I prayed to be taken home to Heaven that night.

When I became a mouthy adolescent — and I had plenty to “mouth off” about given what I was seeing in my home at the time — my mother more and more often took to smacking me on whatever body part she could reach.   My own anger mounted at this treatment.  I was being treated as a nothing, as someone who didn’t matter, as someone who was just suppose to put up and shut up with whatever inappropriate and hurtful behaviors I was seeing from the adults in my home (excessive drinking, lying, marital discord and infidelity, etc.)  When I was a young teen, my mother raised her hand to smack me yet again and I raised my arm to block her.  I grabbed her arm in mid-smack and we had a stare-down.  I had had enough of her acting out her frustrations on me in that manner.  I saw the trepidation and doubt in her own eyes at that point, and I didn’t feel bad about it.  She did not hit me again.

When I was a few days from my 15th birthday, my parents and I had a run-in regarding a guy they didn’t want me having any contact with.  I understand their viewpoint completely — now.  I didn’t then and said some things that were blatantly disrespectful.  As a parent, I don’t know how I would have responded in that situation where a teenager is clearly out-of-line.  I can tell you how my father responded.  He got up and hit me several times in the face.  He was very angry and out of control, and I was afraid that he wasn’t going to stop hitting me.  I have never been so scared in my life.  My father was a 180-pound truck driver with upper arms built like hams.  He could have easily broken my nose or my cheekbone.  Did he earn my respect for terrifying me like that?  No, he most certainly did not.  I’m sure that one of the hardest things he ever did was apologize to me several weeks later.  I think that apology helped to salvage our relationship.

Is there a place for a parent smacking or spanking a youngster?  Perhaps.  I can make allowances for this when a child is very young and is in the process of doing something very dangerous to their well-being.  For example, a parent may grab the arm of a 3-year-old who is about to run out in the street in front of a car and reinforce the total inappropriateness of this behavior by a smack on the butt.  It’s a smack designed to startle the child more than inflict pain and make the child aware that his behavior was a huge no-no!  He’s inclined to remember that lesson!  (And the parent needs to be keeping a sharper eye on that 3-year-old!)  Another instance is when a small child reaches out for the hot toaster and her mother administered a brisk smack to the back of the hand accompanied by a sharp “No!  Hot!”  Again, the jolt is designed to reinforce the danger of the situation.  All other early childhood situations — toys not picked up, sibling arguments, temper tantrums, defiance of authority — can be dealt with in better ways than hitting.

If a third grader comes home from school with a bad grade on an assignment, is a whipping in order?  No.  If a 9-year-old utters a swear word, it is appropriate to hit him?  No.  If a 12-year-old comes home late from a friend’s house, is taking him to the bathroom and lashing him with the belt appropriate?  I should hope not.   If a 13-year-old “sasses back,” do you hit her in the face to discipline her?  That really doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Granted, most of us have survived our childhood spankings with our mental health intact and are still on speaking terms with our parents.  Fortunately, the majority of parents knew when enough spanking was enough, both in terms of quantity and force and what age to leave off with it.  The kids of those parents have done okay, generally speaking, or at least can’t attribute their problems to the spankings alone.

However, in a society where spanking, whipping and hitting children is deemed acceptable behavior by a parent, it encourages other less emotionally balanced parents to engage in it as well.  Why not?  Everyone smacks their kids from time to time!  It’s okay!  It’s an expected part of disciplining the rug rats!  These parents with poor control of their impulses and emotions are the ones who shake their crying babies until their brains hemorrhage, who break their toddlers’ arms by yanking them around, who blacken the eyes of their pubescent daughters for “back-talk” and lying.  These are the parents with anger management issues who don’t know what else to do when upset and frustrated other than to strike out and hurt those more vulnerable.  They raise children who are scarred, angry, depressed, and have learned in their homes that violence is an acceptable outlet for their emotions.

None of us want to live in a society where it’s acceptable to assault other people because they’ve frustrated you, dissed you, disappointed you, annoyed you.  I think that most parents have spanked their children in situations where they’ve felt impotent and out of control of their kids’ behavior.  Whipping and spanking was a way to get the upper hand again, to resume the position of authority and dominance in the quickest, most intimidating way possible.  Was it the best way?  Undoubtedly, no.  There are better ways to discourage unacceptable behaviors without resorting to physical trauma and reinforcing all the lessons that such behavior condones and passes on.

I urge all parents to consider their emotional state when they want to spank their children.  What is it saying about your sense of control?  Is there a better way to demonstrate and reinforce right from wrong?   Please consider the society you shape and the lessons you pass on when hitting is how you control the youngest members of your family.

Bubba was a 9-month-old kitten on his first Christmas in 1994. That year, we pulled him out of the tree, had broken and chewed ornaments as his contribution to the holiday spirit, and took to wrapping the tree in a king-size bedsheet to keep both him and his sister, Katie, from toppling the tree in our absence. This Christmas, he’s 3 months shy of his 18th birthday and there were times this year when we didn’t think he’d make it to the end of this year. His hyperthyroid condition took its toll, and Kate’s death in February added, I’m sure, to his malaise and depression. Definitive thyroid treatment in July, an injection of a radioactive isotope of iodine that deactivated his hyperactive thyroid tissue, has improved his health and well-being and we’re joyful that he’s here with us to enjoy yet another Christmas tree — from a safe distance!

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Years ago, my husband and I started the tradition of putting together an annual newsletter. It has  evolved into an annual newsletter rather than a Christmas or Holiday newsletter since it now goes out sometime after the first of the year to remove it from the Christmas holiday for those who may celebrate a different holiday or none at all. My spouse and I are both decent writers and photographers, and this newsletter is a creative outlet for both of us. We discuss it.  We plan it out. We talk about what stories might be of interest to other people and try to focus on human interest stories and humor. What is “braggy” about the adjustment tale of an elderly cat and kitten trying to establish the pecking order in the household? What is boring and impersonal about the journey of love and loss, accomplishments and disappointments?

We spend days on this endeavor. We decide who will write what. We carefully select what photos to include. There is stationery selection and graphics. And there is editing and editing and editing. And tons of color ink. It’s a labor of love, and when I look at what we’ve created and offered to our friends and family, I’m generally pleased with it and hope that they are, too.

But every year going into this season, I read about the number of people who are just bored and disgusted with others’ attempts to stay in touch, no matter what it is. If it’s anything but a handpicked card and a personally written letter, it is trash material to some.  Every year, I think we should just stop, save the cost of the stationery, the envelopes, the ink, the postage, and the time and energy. No, it’s not a handwritten note to each and every one, but that is simply not going to happen.  Both my husband and I have arthritis in our hands and handwriting is one of the worst aggravations to the condition.  The keyboard has saved written communication from going by the wayside completely for us.  Our closest family and friends do hear from us in that personal and individualized way throughout the year, by phone, by email, by birthday and anniversary cards. For those whom we don’t communicate with in a more one-on-one, personal manner throughout the year, the truth of the matter is that we don’t hear anything from them, either. Nada.  Zip.  But yet I still like them to know that we think of them, that they’re still on our “list.” 

So, we’ll do it one more year. There will be those who appreciate hearing from us, reading a few of the stories we’ve selected from our lives this past year, and seeing some decent photos. There will be those who grumble and throw the thing in a drawer or in a pile to be tossed when they get around to it. Whatever. 

One more year of the Birchwood Gazette. And then maybe we’ll stop.

Atop a hill in Akron

proudly wave the green and white.

St. V’s banner shouts her glory,

you can see it from a height.

Ideals of highest meddle,

spirit grand and sound and true,

as we praise our Alma Mater,

sure she’s finest of all schools.

The Archdiocese of Cleveland fell upon hard financial times in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and in order to keep Catholic high school education alive in the environment of inner city Akron, a merger was proposed and implemented between two of the inner city Catholic high schools: St. Vincent and St. Mary.  This merger officially took place at the start of the 1972 school year when I was a senior.  In May of 1973, the newly merged St. Vincent-St. Mary High School graduated its first class of approximately 220 students.  About 25 of these were from the former St. Mary High School, an all-girl high school at the time who was closely affiliated with Archbishop Hoban High, the all-male high school who opened its doors in Akron in 1953.

Catholic families sent their teenaged girls to St. Mary’s and their boys to Hoban.  St. Mary’s girls were Hoban’s sports teams’ cheerleaders.  St. Mary’s girls dated Hoban boys.  There was a fairly strong loyalty there.  The St. Mary’s girls felt anger and betrayal that they were made to support the St. Vincent sports teams after the merger, a school that had been a former heavy rival in the athletic arena.  In fact, the former St. Mary’s cheerleaders were told at the start of our senior year that they could no longer cheer for Hoban, although I believe that this created so much turmoil that the administration finally dropped the issue  and let the existing St. Mary’s cheerleaders support their Hoban teams.  After all, the controversy was going to go by the wayside after those former St. Mary’s students graduated and moved on.

A close friend of mine went on to the merged St. Vincent-St. Mary High School with me in 1972  and demonstrated her distate for the merger situation by penning the following parody of St. Vincent’s alma mater:

Atop a hill in Akron,

there’s a sight no one should see.

It’s a mental institution and they

call the dump St. V.

Incompetence and boredom,

football jocks and Norman, too,

make St. V a house of bedlam

and a glorified downtown zoo.

I had to search and search to find the original words to the St. Vincent alma mater (found them in a scrapbook in the closet that dates back to those days) but I immediately memorized the parody and have never forgotten it.  Thank you, Mary Ann Herkimer, our 1973 class validictorian, for the satire, dry humor, and companionship through that challenging time!

May 1970

I’ve been seeing this go around on Facebook, as it does from time to time. As a Baby Boomer child, I stood in a classroom every morning, placed my hand over my heart, and recited these words to the U.S. flag in the corner of the classroom. We all did it. To not do it would have caused disciplinary action, I’m sure, if any of us had been gutsy enough to refuse to do it.

But what if a person doesn’t go along with some part of this creed, whether it be the part about God (some of us don’t believe in monotheism), or the parts about this country offering liberty and justice for all, which some folks know it doesn’t? If a student were to say, “I’m not going to recite that,” and opt out of participation, there would be ridicule and bullying by other classmates and life would be hell for that student. That certainly makes a hypocrisy out of the words “liberty…for all,” doesn’t it?

The solution was to stop pressuring students to do this. It seems like the only sensible option when “liberty for all” is at stake, when it comes to upholding what those words really mean. To do anything else suggests that a student is accepted only when he or she conforms to the ideals set force by the majority, and that is the antithesis of “liberty and justice for all.”

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

To set the stage, a bit of background is in order, although these are facts I’ve mentioned before in other posts.  My wonderful pair, Katie and Bubba, were feral kittens, born under a neighbor’s porch in South Minneapolis in 1994.  There was a little feral cat population going on in that inner city neighborhood at the time.  Their mother, simply known as Mama Cat, was a feral cat.  We had a feral male cat whom we called Splotch because of his patches of white and black who I believe at one time was part of a mess of cats populating freely in the house across the street.  They were just left to roam, jumping in and out of open windows of that house and receiving no veterinary care such as spaying or neutering.  Eventually, Splotch was just wandering the streets, earning his title of Alpha Tomcat.  It’s possible that he fathered at least one of my kittens in 1994 and no doubt contributed to Mama Cat’s litter that was born around Labor Day that year.

We put our house up for sale in September of that year, a couple of weeks after Mama Cat’s second litter of that year was born.  I had just officially taken Katie and Bubba into the house.  The house sold quickly and we moved Thanksgiving weekend to the house that we currently live in 13 miles away.  As the time to move drew near, I worried more and more about Mama Cat and Splotch.  Mama Cat still had one of her kittens with her from that September litter and I had never been able to get near to this kitten, as much as I wanted to.  I was not going to trap her and take her away from this kitten.   Trapping Splotch wasn’t even on my radar.  I was inexperienced in the care and management of feral cats, knowing far less then than I do now.

What I did know was that I had been a steady and dependable source of food for them since that winter of 1993-94.  I always put out a large bowl of dry food everyday.  During the time when Katie and Bubba were kittens, I put out a large 10 ounce can of cat food every evening that whoever got it was welcomed to have.  I knew that I was pulling this reliable source of food out from under them when we moved in November.  I did all that I felt I could do at the time — told neighbors of the plight of these cats and asked if they could spare a bowl of food now and then.  I felt horrible about leaving.  I even went back a couple of times after the move and put food out in spaces other than the porch of the old house because I knew that the new owners didn’t like cats.  I remember sitting in my car in the alley behind the old house with tears running down my cheeks, pounding the steering wheel in frustration because there was nothing else I could do.

The “basement cats” dream started.  Stray cats were living and breeding in an old, dark, musty basement in this dream.  They were just left to fend for themselves.  They were like hobos, camping out wherever they could to get in out of the cold and the rain or snow.  I have no idea what they were eating.  Whose basement was this?  It had some characteristics of the old basements in the house I grew up in and later the house we lived in for 17 years in South Minneapolis.  I might have been living in that house with the feral cats in the basement, but I seemed largely unaware of their presence.  Their presence would startle me at odd times.

The startling thing was when I would discover my deceased cat, Mandy, living in the cellar with these cats.  She died in September 1994 at the age of 18 years and 7 months, just two months before we moved out of our South Minneapolis home.  In these dreams, I had neglected her, forgotten about her, but there she was, living a life of neglect in the damp, ugly basement with these other forgotten cats.  These were horrible dreams.  I had them intermittently for years after she died.

My first recalled dream now about Katie five months after her death was a similar dream.  It took place in an old house with a back stairway that spanned several floors, leading down to a dank basement.  Cats were everywhere, hiding in nooks and crannies, milling about in the neglected spaces of the basement area.  I was searching for Katie and Bubba.  These cats were obviously interbred with many similar markings.  There were many calicos, most of them bizarrely colored.  I was looking for that special calico, the one with the very pretty markings and the little black nose, the one that was so beautiful she would surely stand out from that motley crowd.  I finally thought to call for her for she surely would come to me if she heard her name.  I wandered among the hoard, calling, “Katie-cat!  Kaaatie-cat!  Katie-cat!”  I thought I saw her a time or two, but I was never sure.    I just felt she was there somewhere.  I never found Bubba, either.  I thought I saw him, a large, fluffy white cat with that beautiful plume of black for a tail, but when I picked him up and turned him to me, his face was a gray-marked face of another cat.

I always feel so empty and distraught after these dreams.  I feel like a neglectful cat-mom, losing her cats, forgetting about her cats.  In real life, that would never happen.

What kind of dream I’d love to have is one in which Katie comes to me, whole and healthy and beautiful, and tells me that she’s forever with me, that she loves me and will always remember me and what we shared.    She’s always warm and safe and loved in my heart, never abandoned in some dark recess of my frail and forgetful mind.

In memory of the happier times when my family was all together on a Sunday morning:

Bubba and Katie with Mom

When he appeared to be stable from that episode, I decided to proceed with the radioactive iodine treatment (I-131) which is offered at a nearby animal clinic.  I have read on many websites that it is the treatment of choice for hyperthyroid cats, offering not a management but a CURE in 95% of the cats receiving the injection.  I’ve heard that the remaining 5% can be cured by receiving a second injection which most clinics offer free of charge.  My rationale for proceeding with this treatment 17 months after Bubba’s diagnosis of hyperthyroidism was that methimazole has side-effects, some potentially very serious ones like suppression of blood cell production.  The more minor ones include loss of appetite, vomiting and lethargy.  Methimazole suppresses the thyroid hormone production but apparently it doesn’t completely control the heart damage caused by hyperthyroidism.  Cats treated with I-131 reportedly do so much better and have a longer life compared to cats treated with methimazole.

I want my boy to feel well.  I don’t want his tummy upset.  I don’t want him feeling draggy and out-of-it.  I don’t want his heart to continue to suffer stress and strain with his endocrine condition.  If I can cure this condition with a simple injection at a cost we can afford, why wouldn’t I do this?

Well, the “devil’s advocate” side of this argument poses: he’s 17 years and four months old.  How much longer to do you think he’s going to live?  $100-$200 worth of methimazole might see him through the rest of his life compared to the $1250 I gave the clinic for the pre-admission evaluation, the administration of the injection, and the four days of hospitalization until his radioactive level returned to a safe level for him to be discharged.  To further advance that argument against the procedure, the fact is that I’ve put that cat through a lot over the past couple of months.  He spent two days over at the University on an out-patient basis in early June, undergoing exams, x-rays, and ultrasounds.  He was poked and prodded by a number of people. He was very stressed and bit his dad on the way home in the truck that second day.  He had been pushed to the limit that week.

When it came time to load him in the carrier for his trip to the animal clinic for his I-131 treatment, we had to chase him all over the house, something we’ve never had to do with him.  And then he panted and wailed the whole way over to the clinic, which fortunately, was only a few miles. Then he had to stay there, confined in a kennel (spacious but a kennel nonetheless) for several days, away from home, stressed by strange people and surroundings.  He panted and cried all the way home when he was discharged, and he had lost even more weight due to stress.

At those times, I have had to ask myself: why am I doing this?

I want Bubba to feel well.  I want Bubba to live a pleasant life for as long as he can.  Selfishly, I’m not ready to lose him.  I’m not ready to say goodbye and watch him fail.  If I can do something to make him better, to improve the quality of his life even if he is 17 years old, then I will.

Would I have done this, though, if Katie were still alive?  I wonder.  I wonder if a large part of what I’m doing for him now is compensating for what I didn’t do for Katie.  Katie hadn’t even been to the vet for 21 months before she died.

This is the story: Katie, who was Bubba’s only known littermate, was diagnosed with chronic renal disease when she was 13 years old.  This was found as part of a routine chemistry profile prior to having anesthesia for a dental cleaning.  She was displaying no outward symptoms at that time, and we treated her by switching her to a diet for cats with kidney disease.  A year later, during her routine checkup, her BUN and creatinine (markers of kidney function) were a little more elevated, but the vet said she obviously wasn’t in kidney failure.  She looked well, her weight was stable, she wasn’t dehydrated and her electrolyte values were good.  I was to continue with what I was doing.  Six months later, I noticed that she had lost some weight and wasn’t eating well.  I took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with a bladder infection.   She was successfully treated.  Her kidney values were even more elevated and she was anemic, a condition that goes along with kidney failure.  However, her vet looked at all her other blood values and her overall condition and said that we still really didn’t need to be doing anymore than what we were doing for her.

If the time came to do more for her — and that “more” would have been subcutaneous fluid infusions at least several times a week and perhaps other medications — I didn’t know what we were going to do.  She was a skittish cat.  I couldn’t hold her.  I could barely get her to the vet.  That in itself was always a stressful ordeal, and more than once, I called up the vet on the day of an appointment and said, “We’re not going to make it.  I can’t catch the cat!”  How was I going to give her sub-Q fluids when I couldn’t hold her still?  How was I going to get her to the vet to let the vet do it when I couldn’t?  She would have caught on to that number after about one time, and the jig was up!  It worried me, and I didn’t know what I was going to do when the time came.

I figured I’d cross that bridge when we came to it.  In the meantime, she looked well and seemed to feel well.  I didn’t take her in to the vet for lab work every three months as recommended, deciding to go on how she appeared and felt rather than  lab numbers.  I didn’t want to face the numbers.  It would just upset me to see them climb and feel powerless to do much about it.

When the end came in February, it came suddenly.  By the time I realized something was definitely wrong and got her into

August 2010

the vet, she was in full-blown kidney failure.  Then we did everything we could to try to save her.  She rallied for the first day, and I thought she’d be with us a little longer, but during the second day, she lost ground.  I really believe that the various drugs she had been given stressed her kidneys to the point of complete failure.  She was getting worse instead of better.  We euthanized her as I held her in my arms on the morning of February 19.  I couldn’t stand to see her suffer a moment longer.

A million times since then I’ve wanted a “do-over.”  I weep inside for another chance to save her, another chance to gaze into her intense eyes yet another few months, another chance to tell her yet one more time, “I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you.  I’ve loved you every day since.  I will always love you…”

But, of course, there are no do-overs.  And now Bubba reaps the intensity of my desire to keep him as happy and healthy as I can for as long as I can. He’s getting Katie’s measure of care, too.   That’s good, as far as that goes, but I must take care not to push that beyond what is reasonable, to allow him the dignity to pass on in comfort when his time is here.  But I pray it’s not today.  Or tomorrow.  Or any time very soon.

I miss my Bubba-cat.  It’s been hard having him away from home and confined to a kennel.  I’ve been able to watch him on webcam at the clinic, and my heart swells everytime I tune in to view him.  He’s such a lovely cat, such a beautiful being!

I have an admission to make, one that has always embarrassed me when I recall this incident.  As I’ve written about in the past, Bubba and his sister, Katie, were feral kittens born under a neighbor’s porch.  I spent months trying to earn these kittens’ trust, enough for them to let me close and eventually get them into the house without resorting to any trapping or force.  The truth of the matter is that I had immediately fallen in love with the little calico, Katie.  I always told her, “I loved you the very first time I saw you….” and nothing could be more true.  But here’s the embarrassing admission: I didn’t know what I was going to do about that little white guy with the black tail and ears.  I wasn’t sold about turning him into a housecat.

I had some odd ideas at that time when he was three or four months old.  (We didn’t even know that he was a “he” yet, but we always called him that.) I had images of him being a hellion in the house.  I had watched him around our yard, killing birds and eating them when he was only a few months old.  I watched him climb trees as a small kitten, seeing how far out on a limb he could go.  He was always first in line for the food dish, nosing his mom and his sister aside in an effort to get his share.  For some reason, I just couldn’t see this feral kitten as my pet.  I could envision bringing him into the house, only to have him shred the drapery, spray urine on my couch, poop on the dining room floor and claw up the oak woodwork.  (I don’t believe in declawing a cat.)  I didn’t think I was up for that!

On the other hand, I didn’t envision petite Katie being any sort of problem and was anxious to give her a home.  She was the one I had really worked on befriending.  I began to make some noticeable progress when they were about 4-and-a-half months old.  One evening, I invited Katie into the house and fed her there.  I then allowed her to spend the night indoors.  This was a warm August night, and the little white guy remained outside.

The following morning, I let Katie back outside.  Her sibling, assumed to be a brother, was waiting for her.  When I opened the front door onto the porch, he was on the brick ledge that ran as high as under the first floor windows, parked right by that door.  He reached out with a paw and batted at the doorknob.  He turned his face up to me and gave me a very soft meow, his eyes containing a look of pain and bewilderment.  (Yes, cats have emotions and the facial expressions often tell the story!)  He had probably sat there on the porch most of the night, wondering why I had taken Katie into the house but made him stay outside without her.

It broke my heart.  That little paw to the doorknob, saying he knew exactly where she had been — and where he hadn’t been allowed.  The hurt amber eyes that told his misery and loneliness.   The soft, pleading meow.  I felt just horrible, and I had every reason to!

That evening, I allowed Katie into the house again, and her sibling, quite a bit bigger than she was, came along inside, too.  They had their supper together.  They played hide-and-seek under the recliner chair in the living room.  They lounged on the furniture.  I decided to let them both back outside that evening, but before they left, they both took turns using my elderly cat, Mandy’s, litterbox.  Without ever having seen one, they both seemed to intuit what that was for.  (Of course, Mandy’s scent was in it.)

It may have even been the next evening that they both spent the night indoors — without incident.  My fears about the little white guy (who did indeed prove to be a boy) were completely unfounded as time went on.  He never clawed a piece of furniture.  He never sprayed on anything (except for occasionally the walls around the litterbox onto which I put absorbent, disposable pads.)  He never caterwauled to be let out.  In a nutshell, he was as good as gold: well-behaved, affectionate, easy to get along with, very easy to love.  In contrast, Kate was high-strung, mistrustful, willful, skittish, and a hard cat ultimately to like all the time.  It took me months to be able to pet her without her flinching and perhaps bolting, and I never could hold her.  I had made some unfounded judgments early on as to what these kittens might be like, and I had it completely ass-backwards!

Bubba has been a cherished and beloved member of our family now for 17 years.  I would go to the mat for that boy!  I hope he knows that.  I hope that he never, ever remembers that lonely summer night on the porch in South Minneapolis and what that ignorant lady did.

Love to you always, Buddy.  You’ll always be the dudeliest of the dudely dudes!