Published: August 04, 2008 09:47 pm            

Cathie Shaffer: Way too much of a good thing

As regular readers of this column already know, I recently adopted a gray tabby kitten. She’s doing well, getting rangy and ornery, and still turning my house upside down.

A few weeks ago, another gray tabby showed up in my backyard. She looked so much like Tabby, in fact, that we scooped her up and headed for the house, only to discover that my Tabby was already there.

On closer examination, the newcomer was smaller than Tabby and much thinner — fragile, really. We did some at-home nursing over that weekend and took the kitten, named Zoe, to the vet on Monday.

She rallied, and even began to play with the grandgirls, jumping and running. Unfortunately, her fragile health took a downturn and, despite two days at the vet’s, little Zoe didn’t make it.

I cried, the rest of my family cried, and we buried Zoe with other beloved pets that have crossed that “rainbow bridge.”

No more cats, we declared. My daughter has two that live in her house, I have my little Tabby and my son and his wife, who just lost a very aged cat, have declared a moratorium on any more pets.

The goal was good, until the mewing began late last week.

Yes, another kitten showed up.

Another gray tabby kitten showed up.

This one, which is maybe six weeks old, seems very healthy and eats like a horse. Yielding to the inevitable, we’ve named him Scout and decided he can live as a mutually-shared outside cat.

Scout meows all the time. When he’s hungry, when he can’t find us because we moved 10 feet across the yard, when he sees a butterfly or a leaf blows across his line of vision ... you get the picture.

I do wish I spoke cat, because he is such a talker. There is a question we’ve been pondering since he showed up, and I think Scout might be able to give us an answer if we could work out the language problem.

Could it be, as we’re beginning to suspect, that there is some sort of organization for gray tabby cats — and that once mine found a home with us, she spread the word about this family of suckers that will take in the wandering and lost?

CATHIE SHAFFER can be reached at 473-9851.

        

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