The Cat's Job (8 page)

Distinction aside, Hexapuma arrived in Maine, where the Cat
Farm and Confusion Factory is located, in October of 2008, when he
was just over two years old and by which time he should have been
well into his career of chasing pretty peacock feathers at cat
shows and racking up champion points before going for stud to
spread his striking looks around. That's Hexapuma on the cover. My,
he
does
have striking looks, doesn't he?

Hex, as he is sometimes known, though
he is also known as 'puma, Hex we say, arrived here because his
career showing other cats how to look precisely the thing was cut
short.

This was not, we note, in any way his
fault.

He was not, like some athletes,
overfond of gambling, nor of alcohol. He didn't fight, and he
wasn't abusive to arena crews.

Like other athletes, Hexapuma's job
depended on his physique, his essential regal catliness and form.
Working out of Ithaca, where he was of the Blueblaze Cattery, Hex
went on the road to compete. He already had 101 Championship points
in the 2007-2008 season**, when nature failed him. One of his ears
developed an irritation, which developed into polyp. The good folks
at Blueblaze committed to a complex surgery for Hexapuma, which he
went through quite handily.

Alas for the competition cat, the
surgery affected nerves in his ears and face. On eye lost a bit of
roundness and his head assumed a constant rakish tilt, with a
slight curl to his lip, as if he always had a private, and ironic,
opinion about whatever proceeding he was viewing. While entirely
attractive, not to breed standards, alas.

This, meant change.

Now, let's go back to Trollope.
Remember Trollope? This essay started out mentioning
Trollope.

Right. Approximately 29 years before
Hexapuma was born on August 23, 2006 in Ithaca, two people who'd
previously met made a holiday date for a party in Baltimore, where
one of them was temporarily living in the upper floor of an former
theater owned by a friend (an even longer story that, saved for
some other occasion, perhaps).

Right, it was Sharon who was living in
the ex-theater, which had a charming and complicated custom-built
spiral staircase with rope-hung bridge leading from the lower floor
to the upper. Steve arrived at the party with poems-and-stories in
hand, intending to spend as much time a he could with Sharon while
otherwise engaging in partyish behavior, this in a year which had
been very mixed for him, as it had encompassed some excellent
professional progress and some very awkward and painful personal
moments. Party sounded good.

What Steve hadn't expected was Archie,
Sharon's short-haired orange and white feline companion, who had
the run of the place. Archie quite enjoyed navigating the marvelous
stairway, and once introduced to Steve he was all about laying on
the folder of poems-and-stories when he wasn't buzzing about Steve,
mooching peanuts. Archie'd been born on a tugboat, and liked
activity.

As it turned out, Sharon wasn't
adverse to the company of someone Archie approved of – and who
approved of Archie – and a few days later the trio got together
again, this time at the undisclosed location Archie called home, a
location which also had a spiral staircase. Archie made it
difficult for Steve to leave that first visit, and not long after
they reached an agreement that Archie would move in with Steve, as
long as Sharon could come along. The cat Arwen could come along,
too, since she was somehow attached to Steve...which meant an
adventure for many was just starting.

And thus, a household was born that
orbited around the shared needs of cats and people: some housing
was rejected for permitting only two cats when the household had
grown to three – Archie, Arwen, and Brandee. And that started the
trend, for all three of the cats were to some extent "rescues"
which is to say, cats who needed to leave prior situations, usually
for reasons not of their own making.

Archie'd been born on tugboat and his
mother, Captain Nemo, wasn't up to taking care of boat and kitten
at once. Arwen was born of a cat who'd lived in a desk drawer at
the Social Security Administration's headquarters, and was in need
of a sudden home when she'd come to Steve's care through his first
wife, Sue.

Brandee had lived with Steve's brother
Ron when Ron was in transition and needed to find a comfortable
spot for his pal. Later came Buzz-Z, who'd tangled with racoons –
and got a tooth-in-bone souvenir for his trouble – and also the
Reverend Mr. Blackwell, who guarded Book Castle and Dream's Garth's
office in Reisterstown after being rescued from a 12 cat household
where he was unable to thrive... and he moved on to Sue's house
before the great migration from the 900 square foot townhouse on
Lowergate Court to Liberty Road, where Archie, Arwen, and Brandee
got to oversee hundreds of storage units and a few crazy patrons
from the comfort of their own ranch house at the top of the hill.
Those guys went a-traveling to Maine, Brandee sleeping in the cat
crate, Archie sitting in the window of the Beretta Sharon drove to
keep her company, and Arwen riding shotgun in the rental truck that
carried the cat's furniture.

Once in Maine, the cats tried out a
small apartment on Water Street in Skowhegan within earshot of busy
Route 2, but that paled quickly and the crew came to Waterville,
where they had a city house of their own (except for a tiny
apartment carved out of the upstairs) on Park Place. That house was
a comfortable spot; Archie, then Arwen, finally Brandee went from
it to their tenth lives, with young Patia (that's Hypatia to you!)
having entered the household from a local holding pen for kittens
of uncertain futures, and Kodi – formerly the Cat Doctor's own
office cat! – having joined in along with Nickalot der Fluffer, who
had needed a quiet place away from children.

A move to the country was next. The Cat Farm and Confusion
Factory land-and-building had been spotted on one scouting trip and
then nearly forgotten, the location being just too excellent to
expect it to be available. But then it
was
available, and so was financing, and
Nick, Kodi, and Patia took charge.

The city kids took to their new,
roomier digs. Kodi adopted the brown cat role, Patia tried out the
new location of the co-pilots chair in Steve's sudden new office,
and Nick became king of the roost. This state of affairs lasted for
some years, with the sudden and unexpected addition of young Max
Hamish, later known mostly as Max!, who came to the Cat Farm
because he had defended himself from a young girl who insisted he
was a doll and treated him as a lifeless lump. He'd been huddled in
an high level cage at the local shelter, with a note that said
"does not like to be handled" … but when Sharon, using some of her
friend-of-the-cat-shelter-fu opened the door he immediately draped
himself round her neck on her shoulders, an act he later also
displayed to a visiting Tom Easton. So much for cat shelter
Max!

White with black ears and a
magnificent tail when he arrived, Max! aged gracefully into a
cafe-au-lait wonder, despite his odd hearing. Max! and Kodi hit it
off quite well – attraction of the opposites – and that helped
later on when Kodi's "textbook" macular degeneration took her
sight. The house adjusted to Kodi's state by leaving most things
where they were and by creating designated box zones – places Kodi
avoided because things changed and she might run into them
there.

Eventually, Nicky slowed and slowed
more and more, until he'd about recall that he was eating and
sometimes fell asleep at the task. He crossed the bridge, as did
Patia and Kodi.

Along the way, though, had come our
first Maine Coon cat, Mozart. Mozart's old position – he'd been
first cat at a house on the southern coast – had been eliminated
when his mistress brought in something called a "husband." He came
to the Cat Farm via air-taxi to New Hampshire, and then a ride to
Maine in the Blazer. Patia ruled the roost... but for some reason,
as defensive as she'd been about her food with all the other cats,
Mozart could tuck in beside her and eat from her plate while she
was eating. Mozart's first days in the Cat Farm were noticeable
because he disappeared into the basement's drop ceiling, coming out
only at night, and for the absolute fear he showed of Steve's feet
when Steve had boots on.

As time went on and local stores went
in and out of business, The Animal House opened in town, and began
to feature visiting catstaff from the local shelter. Artie at
Animal House tended to an open cage policy, and young Scrabble, a
streetwise veteran at an estimated age of 14 months, came to be a
counter-top regular, comfortably sleeping next to the cash
register... and taking note of Steve each time he came in, daintily
stretching and bowing. Artie swore that it was only Steve she did
this for, and a visit by Sharon seemed to confirm this, so
eventually Scrabble came to the Cat Farm to takeover a vacancy in
Steve's co-piloting chair.

And that is the kind of place Hexapuma
came to, a house where window seats were put in for the cats, where
accommodations were made for Kodi's blindness and for the declining
jumping ability of Patia and Nick, where cat sitters meet and greet
before they take on the responsibility, where it took clear
clinical evidence that, for whatever reason, young Dulsey was not
thriving here before we decided to return her to the disposition of
the home cattery...where she apparently found a place more suitable
to her constitution.

Hexapuma's move to East Winslow came
together at the end of an AlbaCon. Driving a few miles west of the
consite on a Monday, to the Neptune Diner in Oneonta, NY, where the
Blueblazemobile arrived at breakfast time, the Cat Farm contingent
met and admired him for the first time. At that point his right eye
still tended to be over-dry and his ears needed daily drops and
frequent cleaning as a result of his surgery. Once the change of
cat carriers was made, Hex sat alertly behind the pilot and
co-pilot in the Forester, and after awhile allowed the miles of
interstate driving to lull him to sleep. On arrival at the Cat Farm
he was shown the facilities … and settled right in, despite the
early dismay of Scrabble and Mozart, who had become accustomed to a
two cat household.

And so Hexapuma went from a large
cat-centric cattery situation to a quiet country situation. His
"bad" eye became less bad and eventually stopped developing daily
crudspots; his ears seemed improved, his demeanor, always
acceptable, became even better as he made his way from a cat-couch
sitter to a people couch sitter, and began even to take part in the
nightly catpile on the bed.

Yet something was still not quite
right. His ears were... not always good, and sometimes were
odorous. He wasn't gaining weight as fast as expected, and he often
shook his head in a way that showed he wasn't pleased, and he
scratched himself in an effort to get at something bothersome below
his ears. Thus, after months of pouring various antibiotics into
him, our local vet suggested that it might be time to attempt a
surgical solution – one that he wasn't comfortable in performing
himself.

Adventuring to Portland, Hexapuma met
the vet and staff with his usual straightforward interest. The
diagnosis confirmed, the prognosis was indeed continued trouble if
something wasn't done. So the die was cast, and his affected ear
was drilled, scraped, and cleansed of a number of polyps, (which
should not return). He came through his operation with panache,
quickly disdaining the "cone of shame" or "Elizabethan collar" he
was gifted with.

After 10 days, and a trip to the local
vet, Hex is confirmed as doing well. His bare neck and ugly scar
are giving way to fresh fur, and his hesitant sitting under the
kitchen table has given way to a return to his normal social self.
All is well!

All is well, except that the Cat Farm's finances were hard
struck. Thus, the book you have in your hands, a special editon
of
The
Cat's Job
, with Hexapuma's photo on the front cover, of which $5
from each of the first 400 copies goes to pay down the cost of his
surgery and the last few months of antibiotics and local vet
bills.

And that's part of where Anthony
Trollope comes in, because as you see, we in the tale all have our
parts, as ordained by our background and breeding and family
history, with Scrabble taking the brown-cat in charge role, Mozart
taking the handsome elder-cat role, Hexapuma taking the rakish
young cat with a problem survived role, and Sharon and Steve taking
the long-time cat people role. Our stories began before you knew
us, and now that you do know us, you know our stories continue,
with ripples moving through history. Thanks for riding the wave,
thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.

-- Steve Miller and Sharon
Lee

writing from the Cat Farm and
Confusion Factory

April 2010