Cats---40+ years of them

Shortly after we moved into this house, my mother, discomfited by anyone's not owning a pet of some kind, gave us a little black female kitten. She was very sleek with yellow eyes, and we had the open garage for her to go in and out of at will. Our first baby was born that year, 1969, and then her brother was born the next year, so I didn't have much time to devote to the cat. We never even named her, just called her The Black Cat. Though Dave didn't have time either, the cat took a liking to him, and would be out of sight all day and appear when he got home from work. We have a picture of Dave standing on a ladder cleaning the eaves with the cat on his shoulders. The cat lived long enough (probably2-3 years) to have 2 litters of kittens, which I seem to remember taking to Requate's farm. One day I came home and saw the cat dead by our mailbox, victim of having been hit by a car. I felt much worse than I would have thought, and called Dave at work. I wrapped it in a pink baby blanket, and Dave buried it when he got home from work.
Shortly after that, when the mourning period was over, Ma gave David a little tiger kitten which he'd admired at her house. We called it Tiger, and we decided to keep it inside. But one day it sneaked out and was hit and killed by a car. I think it was only 7 months old.
One day when we were at Ma's, she presented a basket with 3 beautiful, long-haired kittens in it. She'd gotten them from a woman who needed to find them homes. She asked us which one we wanted, and we picked the prettiest little girl kitten, with pastel orange, gray and white coloring. (One of the others became Madigan's Heidi and Ma kept the orange one.) David was 3 years old and it was to replace his kitten. He named her Roger, after "roger, over and out" which he'd heard on TV. David told the girls at the bank that his cat was pink and gray. They thought he didn't know colors, but she really was a pinkish color. We kept her inside, though she escaped several times. She used to lay low around the corner in the hall, and when someone opened the door, would run like crazy to get out before she could be stopped. "Watch out for the cat!" was the word whenever anyone came into or out of the house. Though she managed to escape several times, Roger lived for 15 years, and we had her put down when David was a freshman in college. Talk about the empty nest.
On the Veteran's Day that Danny started 7th grade, I visited the Menands Animal Shelter, just to look. My mother was gone by then, so if I was even thinking about another replacement cat, it would have to be up to me. There were lots of cats and quite a few kittens. I saw a tiny little gray kitten with huge eyes, so I picked it out of the cage as you were allowed to do then. I had intended to get a female if I were to get one at all. I was told the little kitten was a male and was about to put it back in the cage, when a worker approached the adjoining cage with a cardboard box, and began putting those kittens in it. Someone said ominously that their time was up. I was horrified that they would continue to pile the kittens into the box so I could not put the little thing I was holding back in there. That is how I adopted Nike. He was so small that I drove home with him in the palm of my hand, and he was content to stay that way for the whole drive. I stopped at the school to pick up Danny, and he held him for the short ride home. They must have formed a bond then which would later be very useful. Nike was a Maine Coon Cat, and different from any cat we'd ever known. He was friendly enough, but would lie on the floor next to us, not a lap cat at all, independent and aloof. He grew very long and large with tufted ears and a kind of mane aroud his neck. On the few occasions he'd found his way outside when a door was inadvetently left open, he'd disappear into the woods behind our house. He would hide and refuse to come when we called him, but after a long while, we'd hear his distinctive voice, more a growly howl than a meow. Even more frightening than his sound was that he would resort to his feral nature in the tall weeds, and transform into a hissing wildcat. He would howl and growl and spit at anyone who approached. Danny was the only one who had nerve enough to go pick him up and bring him inside. Sometimes Nike would hole up under the end table in the living room, and act the same way. We depended on Danny to be the wildlife handler. Dave wouldn't have gone anywhere near him even if he'd had that ten-foot-pole, and I was put off by his fangs and the sharp claws on his giant-sized feet. But most of the time Nike was a docile and interesting animal; he would retrieve anything you threw just like a dog would. He also would knock all pens and pencils off the tables and paw them underneath the couch, piling up his own hoard of writing instruments. When he was 10 years old, he started to lose weight, unusual for him. We brought him to the vet's who first could find nothing wrong with him, then did extensive and expensive tests of all kinds, eventually telling us that he had multiple organ failure of unknown causes. Barbara brought us to the vet and he was euthanized. I wrapped him in a pink towel, and Dave buried him.
After a year went by, I again visited the Menands Shelter, and ended up adopting an even tinier all gray, long-haired female kitten. She was to be my cat, since the nest was totally empty by then. I named her Napster. I remember when I was doing the paperwork at the shelter desk, they told me she would need to be de-fleaed. I was surprised to see that she was absolutely ridden with fleas, so when I got her home, I put the box on the kitchen floor and went to the store to get flea soap. While I was gone, Marilyn let herself into the house, saw the box on the floor, thought there was vermin or something in it, and kicked it across the room. Napster was ok, was soon given a flea bath, and was the sweetest little cat we'd ever owned. She loved to sit on laps, and she was obsessed with water, would go into the bathroom and sit in the tub to wait for the water. She would curl up in the bathroom sink and if you left the faucet drip a little would lie there and enjoy the water. When she knew that someone was in the bathroom, she would scratch at the door and the carpet until the door was opened. (The carpet still bears the claw marks in front of the bathroom door,) Once she even turned the faucet on by herself, and she would frequently open the door of the medicine cabinet. We never knew why, but she liked to take the Q-tips and other objects out of the medicine cabinet and play with them. She never was interested in going outside, so I thought we'd have her a long time. But she too started losing weight and then her appetite. We brought her to the same vet as before, and same story. Her organs all failed simultaneously for no known reason. She died before the scheduled euthanasia date. She was only 3 years old. She died on Valentine's Day. The ground was frozen so Dave entombed her in a styrofoam cooler, completely sealed it with an entire roll of duct tape, and laid it outside until spring burial. Our dog Cosmo died unexpectedly that spring, and Dave and Joe T. buried the 2 pets in a single grave, with Napster's small coffin on top of Cosmo's. I thought maybe our last 2 cats' deaths were because they'd received their inoculations at too early an age at the shelter, so I vowed not to adopt from there again if ever I was to get another cat. Dave even had a radon test peformed in our cellar, but the reading was so low as to be non-existent.
Our present (and last) cat is Maybe. I actually bought her in a very weak moment. My whole family happened to be away that week, and I went just to look at some advertised kittens. The mother was a purebred Persian and her father was a purebred Maine Coon; she had long blondish-orange fur, the snub face of her mother and the great big eyes of her father, so I caved in, wanting to see how she would turn out. She was a little older and bigger than the other kittens when we got them. She was 7 weeks old and strong. She got out of the box twice on the way home, even after I pulled the car over, turned the box upside down and piled books on top of it. From Clifton Park, she rode home clinging to the inside of the roof of the car, and yowling all the way. I let her out of the box when we arrived home at about 11:00 a.m. She was panting, terrified, wild-eyed, and she disappeared almost instantly. I thought she was destined to die of heatstroke so I spent the whole day trying to locate her, to no avail. After 8 or 9 hours, I called Rosemary who came up to support me, then Marilyn got home and she tried to find the cat, but only heard what she thought were mice or rats in the playroom closet, and pretty much freaked out. I said "maybe" I have a cat, or "maybe" she is dead by now. Finally Marilyn called Joe T. who came up around 11:00 p.m. and turned over the couch, moved other furniture, again to no avail. Eventually he found her under the cupboard in the kitchen, her looking quite serene and composed. I'd already looked there, so suspected she must have been moving around from place to place all those hours I'd been looking for her. I said "maybe" I'll keep her. She turned 6 years old on June 9.