A Living Magazine - Grounded in Maine - Prologue 5 - A Road Shoulder to Cry On (Part 1)

Can a cat change the whole world?

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It was on a sunny summer day nearly twenty years ago that my sister Deb asked me if I wanted to help her save some kittens that my dad had discovered under an old car on his property in North Saco, Maine. She was afraid that the mother was no longer around.

I suppose Deb and I were, and still are, extra sensitive toward the struggles of animals. You may remember that I found a dog on the side of the road, way back on the first Crossing (the one the readers of this blog collectively named "Phoenix Wallker") and the incredible effort of the TASTC Shelter in Houston, Missouri to save this beautiful creature? And, regular readers are quite familiar with my respect for all living creatures, a sense that has only become stronger with all of the animals I have both faced and enjoyed being with during these Journeys.

For her part, to this day, Deb has had a supremely rich experience with helping dogs. Currently, she volunteers for National Brittany Rescue and Adoption Network, New England Brittany Rescue, and Almost Home Rescue. In the past she volunteered for Northeast Coonhound Rescue, Boston Terrier Rescue, and A to Z Rescue, now Friends of Homeless Animals, Inc., and Beagles of New England States.

Of course we had cats all our lives, maybe more than a dozen. We also had a great dog who made childhood a real adventure.

On this day, around the year 2000, we hopped in her car determined to find these little critters and see if we could do something for them.

When we arrived at my dad's place, we had to go up the road a short distance and then turn onto a dirt road into the property. It has since been blocked off and is now quite overgrown. We drove through the rutted field until it turned into some more resembling a path and found the car.

I can't remember the name nor make of the vehicle, but I do remember all of it's tires were flat, and it was steadily sinking into the ground. We got out and immediately heard the whining calls of several tiny kitty voices. They almost sounded more like birds than kittens. Stooping down, Deb estimated them to be just under the middle of the car.

I tried to look under it myself but was unable to see anything at all. Whenever we would try to call them out, they stopped crying temporarily and became silent. This got frustrating and the car was so low to the ground that it was impossible to even reach under it. We would stop, just listening and the bitty meows would begin again. We stayed for a long time trying to figure it all out. In fact we stayed for so long that Charlie Prior (the guy who had sold our dad the land in the first place) got curious and drove his tractor down to see what all of this was about.

I'm a bit foggy about what we told him, but it definitely had to do with rescuing these kittens. I can roughly recall that he was pretty unsympathetic. The impression was that there were too many cats around anyway, and we should just let it be, even if they starved. Deb wasn't taking that for an answer but was diplomatic enough to just be mellow about the whole thing. He shrugged and rumbled off back to his property.

Short of having a jack to lift the vehicle, we were at a loss. Eventually we gave up for the day, but resolved to come back and try again. We left.

A day or so later, either she returned or we returned, I can't remember which. But, it was determined that the kittens were no longer there. I believe we chalked this up to the mother coming back and removing her brood to safer territory. Whatever our conclusion, it seemed there was nothing more we could do, and we forgot about the situation.

* *

I had been working for the now-defunct bank, once called People's Heritage. It was eventually bought by TD North and then after I left, some two years later, it became simply TD Bank. During that time I grew quite disaffected with banking and big business in general. I know this doesn't surprise anyone who has kept up with this blog. Ripping off old ladies by charging them $35 overdraft fees for accidentally overdrawing their account by $1 was not going to become a career for me. You might be amused to learn that, as Banking Specialist I was authorized to refund up to $10,000 a day. The bank was tight with this policy though, and each refund was highly scrutinized. After giving my two week noticed, I pulled a Robin Hood, and refunded every transaction that customers requested, up to my full quota, every day for the next two weeks. Ha!

Then I entered into a strange period of my life. I'd quit and became unemployed, variously playing with a few bands, working as a job coach with a couple of mentally disabled guys for The Pine Tree Society, and slowing cashing in bits of my retirement and mutual fund accounts, until they were utterly depleted. In the meantime, as I became less and less able to afford rent, Deb grew interested in purchasing the property that my roommate and I were renting--a house at 89 Walnut Street, an East end street on Munjoy hill in Portland.

This was the beginning of my inner conflict about working at things I hated, just to earn money to pay bills to keep working at things I hated. It's the game so many folks play. This was the time when my inner issues began to manifest themselves in an outer and physical way. First, I developed uveitis in my eyes, then had bouts of sciatica.

Deb ended up actually buying the house and my roommate and I lived there for a while until I couldn't pay her rent either. I was starting down that slope that - in hindsight - would lead to what I do now.

I couldn't justify my instinct to not work for someone else, yet I could not pay to live there. I eventually chose to move out, asking my dad if I could stay at his North Saco property while I "looked for a new job." So, I did just that, moving into my dad's empty office at that property. I had three cats in tow and, basically, it was a really rough time. This also occurred during the dead of winter.

I continued to work part time as a job coach, riding my bike 24 miles a day from North Saco to Scarborough. My boss offered me a full time job as a direct care specialist working indoors with twenty disabled adults and my income shot up into a respectable range. It was enough that I could actually save money. I even bought a car and saved up for a security deposit on an apartment.

While all of this was going on, I took care of my cats and began to deal with stray cats who lived in the barns around the area. One of my cats was relentlessly harassed by a real mean cat I called, "Big Kitty." Big Kitty wanted to mate with my other two females (Fonta and Tabitha), but didn't get the memo that they were fixed for quite some time. Still, he tormented my little black and white male cat (Scrappy), until Scrappy ran off, never to be seen again--so I thought.

I chased Big Kitty away whenever I saw him. It didn't take long to realize that if he couldn't mate, then he was determined to fight and kill any other cats around. Frankly, I've never seen such aggression in a cat. He was not evil, but damn close to it.

Amazingly, after two weeks Scrappy returned. He was bone-thin and in terrible shape. I didn't know if he had been trapped somewhere or had gotten lost in the woods, but to see him again raised my spirits immensely. I tried to feed him, but didn't do it gradually enough and he got sick a few times. It was touch and go. Then one afternoon I returned from work and couldn't find him anywhere. Big Kitty was lurking about again. Unfortunately, I tried for many days to call Scrappy back, but this time I really did never see him again.

The seasons passed and spring had come. It was 2002. Aside from living with no running water in an office, I wasn't doing too badly. My female cats learned to stick near the building. At night I would cook up BBQ on the hibachi and the three of us would eat like royalty.

One night a skunk showed up after we had gotten done eating. He was about midsized and poked around the bushes, occasionally tipping over the trash can by the road to get at the yummy rotten morsels in there. He showed up evening after evening. I had no aversion to skunks and he made no threatening gestures toward the girl cats or myself. Big Kitty was rarely seen during this time. I offered the skunk dry cat food to keep him out of the trash. Naturally, he took readily to this free meal each day, and became essentially like another pet. He would shy away from me if I got too close most of the time.

On a night after a particularly good BBQ, he showed up with a milk cap ring around his neck. It had lodged there from some trash can he'd tried to exploit somewhere down the road. He tried to eat his cat food, but could not swallow, shaking it back out of his mouth. I felt terrible.

I picked up a stick and tried to work it off of him, but had no luck at all. If this ring could not be removed he would definitely starve to death. The second night he showed up and had the same problem eating. I had really gotten to like his presence and it felt like such a peaceable kingdom with two cats and a skunk around each night. Feeling overly frustrated at my failure to remove the cap in any other way, I decide to just get bold. I walked right up to him, held his body in my left arm and cut the damn ring right off his neck with a pair of scissors, freeing him from this misery. He was joyful, turning around and around in circles, then chomped down half a bowl of cat food in about five minutes. From then on he would actually come into the office (I left the back door cracked all summer to keep a good airflow), curl up against the file cabinet and slept there.

* * *

Very early the next spring I heard a strange noise circling slowly around the outside of the office. It was like a meow, but deeper and concentrated. I'd heard it before at different times and knew what it was. It was the tom-catting call of a male cat looking for action, and smelling my females. Figuring it was Big Kitty, I walked outside to chase him off, but instead saw a young adult orange cat, flicking his tail around. I would call him "Orange Kitty."

This cat was not like Big Kitty, temperamentally. Instead, he was very friendly and let me pet him right off the bat. He was ferral in that he could not meow like a domestic cat. But his disposition was pleasant and personable. When he realized the girls weren't putting out, he became more of an occasional visitor, taking a liking to me, and enjoyed stealing the left over cat food from the girl cats and the skunk after they were done eating. I seemed to have attracted another pathetic life form to my ragged kingdom.

Within a few weeks Big Kitty returned to the area. I noticed one of his canines was broken off, leaving a sharp tip. Orange Kitty bravely went after Big Kitty, but the latter was super strong and mean as hell. He kicked Orange Kitty's ass every time. Always I tried to break it up, but each cat was bitterly devoted to destroying the other. These battles ranged from short skirmishes to all out bloody warfare.

One evening that same spring, the temperature dropped significantly below zero. I'd been keeping the back door shut. Only the girl cats were sleeping inside. The skunk had wandered off some time during the winter, only showing up every now and then when trashcan scavenging got very slim. On this evening though, I felt bad for both Orange Kitty and Big Kitty. They were outside far apart from each other, but looking up at the office and wandering from window to window, seeking my attention.

Stupidly, I let them both in. They avoided each other until I went to bed, and then Orange Kitty jumped up onto the couch where I slept and curled up next to me. Big Kitty was furious, and in the pitch black, I heard them hissing at each other, and felt the vibrations of claws ripping at the edge of the couch.

In an act of pure idiocy, I put my hand down to try and shield Orange Kitty from his ever-more aggressive foe. And, suddenly I felt that sharp toothed Big Kitty bite hard into the flesh of my hand, between the thumb and forefinger.

Warm liquid covered my hand, and I scrambled to turn on the light. When the room became illuminated, I saw blood gushing, pumping out of my hand with every heartbeat. In my panic I began to think I migĥ bleed out. Pressure would not stop it and a pool developed in front of the couch. I picked up my cell phone (yes, they were just old fashioned cell phones back then) and automatically called 911.

I told the operator, whom I deemed far too relaxed and seemingly unconcerned about my situation while I wrapped a bath towel around my hand, tying it tightly about my wrist, what had happened. As the towel slowly turned from yellow to crimson, the operator decided it might be an emergency worth responding to. I essentially kicked Big Kitty out the door.

In a scene so amazingly ridiculous as to be laughable, the fire station was right across the street, and I heard the alarm go off there. Within three minutes several pickup trucks with dutiful volunteer firefighters fresh out of their slumber rushed into the station parking lot. Red lights shot across the inside of my room, while the ladder truck (!) and the fire rescue truck came screaming the 50 feet or so across the road and skidded to a stop in my driveway. Trying not to roll my eyes in this "emergency" situation, I walked to the front door, opening it to see three guys all in their compete fire uniforms standing there.

The situation was becoming surreal. There were so many different things that didn't make sense that it truly did feel like a comedy. One of these heroes stepped in and I carefully removed the towel to showing him a hand that was now only trickling blood, not squirting it all over the place. He looked at the small but deep puncture wounds, reminiscent of a vampire bite and then back up at me, saying, "Sir........is this all?" Sheepishly, I tried to explain about all the bleeding before. He turned around and gave some kind of fireman sign language to his equally heroic partners that I took to be, "We've got a crazy drama queen guy here who thinks he's dying from a little cat bite," basically, "false fucking alarm."

I told him I'd expected an ambulance, not a ladder truck. In return, and with a courteous dismissal, I was informed that they could call an ambulance, but it would take another 20 minutes and I would probably receive a bill for $800, OR, I could just grow a pair and drive my own pathetic self to the hospital in Biddeford.

I felt stupid, embarrassed, exhausted, and was experiencing quite a bit of pain. They all headed back to the station across the street and their pickup trucks had vacated the premises leaving only the whistling wind in their wake, even more quickly than they had arrived.

I wrapped my hand in another towel and drove myself to the emergency room of Southern Maine Medical, there, to have the most thorough and blindingly torturous hand cleaning I'd ever had. The nurse used a metal brush, and then what looked like a stiff toothbrush to scrape away my flesh, lest a single bacterium enter the wound and cause the worst possible scenario: a malpractice suit from me for not cleaning it well enough. Then they bandaged up my hamburgered hand, gave me two Vicodin (wouldn't want to give me too much, or I might become a junky), and basically threw me out the door.

I stumbled to my car and simply sat there, stunned and emasculated. Honestly, I think I even wept a bit, feeling very alone and like a piece of processed but rejected meat. I decided there and then that Big Kitty was no longer welcome under any circumstance.

* * * *

In the weeks that followed, Orange Kitty became a more frequent visitor. I half-heartedly tried to keep him away. I didn't need another mouth to feed. Though secretly he was wearing me down with his persistent friendliness. He seemed to get the idea that I needed him to not be around as much and disappeared for awhile.

Then on a rainy morning I looked up from my desk to see him limping along the gunnel of an old boat my dad had parked on the property. He was beat up and cut up very severely. It had been a near-deadly fight with Big Kitty. I went outside to see him and pet him, even brought him some food. But he was become an apt student of the guilt trip, somehow instinctually, and slunk down into the cabin where he rested and recovered over the next few days. I brought him food each day and made sure he was healing up. After a week or so, he was gone again, mostly healed.

Then next time I saw him was on a sunny day as the weather grew warmer. He arrived at the back door and tried his best to meow for me with his "aack." In return, I tried to ignore him, until I saw that there was something wrong with the top of his head. I went to the door and let him in. He rubbed up against my leg and purred. And, I saw what had happened. Something large and sharp had skimmed a half dollar sized piece of scalp almost completely of the top of his head, with just a tiny bit of skin holding it on. This was not from a fight with another cat. I assumed it was a piece of farm equipment or maybe a vicious farmer with machete.

I felt awful about ignoring him and pulled him up onto my lap, reaching for some neosporin. I carefully wiped it on to the wound, and then pulled the scalp flap back down into place. I had to go to work, and left him inside with some food.

When I returned that night he was gone. Perhaps my dad had gone in and the cat rushed out. But he came back a few days later. I pulled him up on my lap and examined his scalp. I was astounded! It was nearly completely healed, with only a thin scar remaining.

* * * * *

The girl cats learned to tolerate Orange Kitty, and the three of them slept in the driveway together. Orange Kitty was slowly adopting me. He had been a barn cat, but seemed to be developing bigger ambitions. As weeks went by, I began to call him, "Buddy." It wasn't really supposed to be a name, but more like an affectionate term I used when talking to him.

The situation grew more and more domesticated. A kind of family developed between the four of us. Buddy, would sometimes leave for a couple days, but always returned to hang out. It was an arrangement that worked for all of us. He took care of himself and was quite streetwise. He adored his freedom and being outside. Nothing would ever keep him in for very long.

Each morning when I drove to work, I saw him sitting atop Charlie's woodpile (the highest point in the yard). It was his sunrise routine. He made sure that he caught the very first rays of the sun. And it turned him brilliant copper, being a combination of the red sun and his orange coat. He was a majestic and proud animal. He owned where he was.

* * * * * *

I had been particularly stressed out one week. I had begun to notice some unfair things that my boss was doing to other employees. And, to my own depriment, I began to intervene. My rebellious anti-game and anti-authority tendencies were surfacing again.

After one exceptionally difficult day, I returned to the property and paced back and forth, angrily talking to myself, wishing I'd said things when I saw them happen at work; regretting my silence. I was trying to think my way out of the stress I was feeling. As we've seen in these Journeys, that doesn't really work for me. So, I decided to go see a movie. I forget which one. I fed the two girls and didn't really even think to look for Buddy. He come by whenever he needed to.

The movie did the trick. It took my mind off the work stress long enough to reset my mood. And I was feeling pretty good when I got back. I turned of the engine and before shutting off the headlights saw that there was a note on the door and the lights were on in the office.

Walking up to read the note I saw my dad's handwriting: "I think your cat is having a little problem." I gulped and opened the door. There standing on the rug was Buddy, limping on three legs; the foot below the ankle of the right one had been cut or literally twisted off. A sharp spine of bone protruded from the missing part of the limb. And, not being able to handle seeing animals in pain, I immediately went into shock...