Pumpkin watching the gerbil, waiting for his chance to pounce
Pumpkin was a rescue cat, as I often reminded him. When he was small, my daughter and her friends made sure his feet never touched the ground. In spite of all that love and attention, he matured into a companionable but fairly aloof cat; only when reached about 5 or 6 in age did he once again occasionally consent to purr or sit on a lap. In spite of his aloofness, he tolerated being teased, chased, and carried around by children and adults with great patience, finally growling to let us know the game was long overdue to end.
Pumpkin had a number of habits that made him a challenging cat.
A sensitive digestion required special expensive food, and any time he coerced or stole human food, the odor from the litter box let us know he was not feeling well. Worse yet, he refused to engage in typical cat litter digging behavior, so a fresh deposit required immediate human intervention lest the EPA arrive and fine us.
For some reason he had a burning need to chew on things, mainly wires. I will never know how he managed to avoid electrocuting himself. He chewed and ruined power strips, TV cables, monitor cables, every heavy duty extension cord in the house, and the plug to the electric saw. I will never forget the sight of his mouth glowing bright green as he attempted to chew the lights on the Christmas tree. I tried duct tape, foil, and finally the corrugated computer cable covers to prevent further damage; of course he chewed those too.
His biggest joy was escaping to the outside for hunting trips. He developed several methods of escape. Front and back screen doors did not fasten tightly, so I had to add child-proof hooks to prevent him from leaning on the doors until they swung open. The carport door, which we used the most, was more of a challenge. He found that he could hide on the basement steps, waiting for someone to leave, then run up the steps, allowing the extra momentum to carry him around our feet. To prevent being knocked over (an 11 lb. cat has a certain force, when hurled), we developed the Pumpkin exit – exiting backwards, down the steps, with some item (bookbag, purse, newspaper) held in front of our departing feet to block the exodus.
When that didn’t work, it was usually futile to try to catch him (occasionally he would play it as a game – walking forward, looking behind to see if he was being followed, then waiting for the human to catch up, then running some more…). Once outside, he was happy. He would sit under the picnic table, waiting for the inattentive bird or chipmunk to pass by. Often he would return with his prize, still alive, and drop it in the house. The best way to deal with that is to let him catch the (mouse, bird chipmunk, shrew) again, then remove them both. We tried various methods to save the animals – prying them out of his mouth, covering his nose, dumping cold water on him. Sometimes we saved them, only to see him catch them again a few days later.
This endless destruction was what did him in, finally. He found a nest of baby rabbits, and couldn’t resist actually eating one (the remains appeared on my shoes, so I know he ate it). He developed pancreatitus; antibiotics almost took care of it, but then a congenital heart murmer got worse, due to the infection, and he quickly went into congestive heart failure. It was really hard to say goodbye to him. I knew there was no hope, but he was still young (only 7) and in his prime. He had become more affectionate and all his habits and quirks made him a constant source of amusement (as well as expense).
I chose not to make him wait and suffer for the final shot while I returned to the animal urgent care. I missed my chance to say goodbye. He came back to me the next day, wrapped in a huge swatch of plastic, taped up, in a large box, and cold from a night in the cooler. I buried him out back, with the remains of one of his chipmunk victims, exhumed from a nearby grave, next to him, eternally taunting him to resume the hunt.
(This is a repost, transferred from my old blog. Original date March 21, 2009)
