2000-06-29
Dear Diary:

Eva Gabor, Hungarian love goddess.  I loved her and Arnold the pig.

Whenever I look at my cat, Zoe, I can't help but think of that old TV Show "Green Acres", the one with Eva Gabor playing the sophisticated, diamond clad urban wife forced to move to a hayseed community because her high powered hubby wanted to live in the country.

See, Zoe is the perfect urban kitty, the Eva Gabor of cats. She loves staying in the house and the closest she wants to get to the great out-of-doors is to look at it occasionally through a window. If ever there was a cat bred to wear rhinestones, it is Zoe.

The thing is, I live in a fairly isolated log cabin on the side of a mountain within many hundreds of acres of undeveloped forest. Can you say "boonies" boys and girls?

Zoe, the perfect urban cat stuck in the hell of a rural existence. But, because I own this cat, I actually have to keep kitty litter. Sheesh.

I find this whole situation absurd. On occasion, I do pick her up and bring her outside with me while I work in the garden. She spends the whole time stuck to me like a fuzzy black burr meowing loudly about woman's inhumanity to cat.

We have spent four or five hours in the yard weeding and pruning without Zoe answering a call of nature. I open the door to the house and she rockets in to the kitty litter. You can almost see the thought balloon above her head saying, "Geez, THAT was close. I almost had to pee outside!"

Hanging out with a cranky kitty does get old fast, so I've been known to give in and take her back to the house. Then she sits in the window and watches me in the yard. Yep, as far as one small black cat is concerned, I am also Cat TV, the Marn channel.

I have had cats for 30 years now, and know I will never have a cat who will love me as much as this one does. The moment I come in the house she is right there beside me, my small fuzzy inky shadow, almost dog like in her affection. But that's because she was within inches of dying when she stumbled into our yard over ten years ago, and that marked her forever.

One of the hardest parts of living in a beautiful isolated rural place is that many urban folk rent cottages out here and we have to deal with their thoughtlessness. Some leave garbage bags on the road after they leave, knowing that they missed the garbage pickup, knowing that wild animals will spread their trash from here to kingdom come.

I've lost count of the times Paul has had to get the tractor out and pull some guy out of the ditch because he thought he could tear over country roads at city driving speeds. Lots of other annoying stuff, but you get my drift.

The worst part, though, is the abandoned pets. There are lots of mice, so the weekenders often get a cat. Sometimes they don't use the cottage for weeks at a time, but make no provision for the cat. Sometimes, when the season is done, they abandon the cat.

Hey, cats are hunters, right? I mean, a cat should be able to survive in the woods, right?

Whenever I hear that I always want to say back, "Yep, and we humans were hunter-gatherers, too before we got domesticated. How 'bout we drop your son, the one with the headphones grafted into his ears, off in the woods with the cat, eh, so they can share the -40C wilderness experience together?"

Zoe was one of those cottage cats. Her owners apparently left her outside their cottage a few miles down the valley from us for three weeks one summer without any food. When she stumbled into our yard her fur was dry and matted, she was wandering drunkenly, and she was so thin I cannot bear to think about it.

She was so desperate, she tried to eat some cat crumbles we had thrown in the garbage bin because the container of kerosene we bought at the same time had leaked into them somehow.

Paul didn't want me to feed her, he was worried about rabies. But I couldn't leave her to starve, so I gave her some cat food which she immediately threw up. I called the vet, described her, and he said a cat so badly starved would probably not live. But ... but if I wanted I could try giving her a teaspoon worth of scrambled eggs every 15 minutes or so, see if she could hold that down.

It is amazing how powerful the will to live can be.

After two days of feeding her minute bits of scrambled eggs four times every waking hour, she looked immensely better and we moved her to normal cat food. We already had two cats, and Paul said we really didn't need a third. I pretended I agreed with him, and then I would casually leave the door open so the cat could wander in with the others.

I can be SUCH a weasel, eh.

Zoe almost foiled my cunning plan because she spent every moment she was awake yowling non-stop. It was probably her way of venting the stress of everything that had happened to her, but it was nerve wracking. Then, after the third day in the house, she quieted down. Paul didn't say anything.

The following weekend, a station wagon pulled into our yard, folks from Montreal looking for their cottage cat. The description fit Zoe. Paul told them that yes, we had their cat and reluctantly I handed her over.

I told them how she had looked, how she had almost died through their neglect, and they clearly didn't care. Paul didn't say anything, just absorbed the fact that it had been three weeks since they had used their cottage and that they were surprised the cat was not there.

A week and a half later she was back. Her fur, which had started to regain its gloss, was dull again. More scrambled eggs, more fretting.

The following weekend, that same station wagon pulled into our yard. When they asked if we had seen their cat, my husband, a man who hates to lie, said,

"Nope."

And that's how a zekey woman out in the boonies came to own the Eva Gabor of cats.

I love her to bits, but it wouldn't kill her to pee outside once in a while, you know.

--Marn

Old Drivel - New Drivel


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Want to delve into my sordid past?
She's mellllllllllllllting - Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 - Back off, Buble - Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 - Dispersed - Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 - Nothing comes for free - Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 - None of her business - Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 -


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