Wow. The little black ball of fur I adopted way back in 1991 turned/turns 17 today. My cat, Hunteresse Doolittle, more commonly known as Doolittle, was the runt of her litter of 7 or 8 kittens that were found abandoned in an alley on the Westside of Los Angeles in the late fall of 1991.
She was eventually brought along with her litter mates and Mom, Sheba, to the awesome folks at Friends of Animals, also in WLA. Her mom, from all indications of the volunteers and from reports of the people who found her and her litter was a master hunter. In fact, they used the term "hunter/killer" to describe her bird hunting and squirrel destroying prowess. I thought, man, I hate fucking pigeons with a passion, and having a descendant of a known h/k on my balcony certainly couldn't be a bad thing, right?
But before all of that could even take place, a little history is in order. My interactions with cats was essentially OP, other people's cats and up until I was 20 years old and in college, that was fine by me. At the time, I was living with my girlfriend who had had a couple of cats when she was a child, but she hadn't had significant contact with any in years either. That was not to be for long and our neighbor, Crazy Betty the Cat Lady, would be seeing to that.
My girlfriend and I were sharing a two-bedroom place that was fairly large by all standards. At the top of our landing, we were on the 2nd floor of a 2-story 9-unit complex, was our apartment and CBCL's. On most occasions when we saw her, she was surrounded by this purring, figure-eighting posse of fur and claws. She was seriously the closest thing I've ever seen to being a pied-piper of the feline set. At any rate, we got to know her over the first couple of months we lived there, and by association, all of her wonderful cats. It was really funny to see her walk down the stairs and go around the corner and down the side of the complex to the back where the laundry was, the whole time this little trail of 5 or 6 cats following behind her. With some practice, I began to remember names and meows of the various group that she kept and over the months I began to notice a different calico here and a new white one there, but never said anything to her about it.
Her young and quite cute cousin, Julie, who would visit periodically, was an altogether different story. You could hardly get her to shut up once got started and she was "like-omigod!-letz goto the mall now!" kind of LA-crazy, rich and spoiled by negligent parents to be sure. One day as we were passing the time on my balcony I just couldn't resist and I asked her, point blank and in a not so subtle way, "What the fuck is up with your cousin Betty?" I inquired. "Oh, her? She's crazy, that's all. She inherited a ton of money back in the 80s and lives alone in a huge house in Palm Springs, with fountains and pools, you know she even has a Japanese landscaper?"
"No shit? Wow. So she's got it like that, eh? Why does she spend most of her time in that little ass studio apartment in this shitty little has-been neighborhood in West LA?"
"You heard me say she was crazy, right?" Julie replied.
"Oh, right. I see," I said in response, although I didn't really see the point of any of it. And I still don't, but I certainly guess it is more than possible, hell even probable, that some nice fairly well-to-do woman snapped and went bonkers when her wealthy attorney/banker/white slaver husband died in police custody in Fiji, or something like that.
What does this have to do with my beloved cat of 17 years? Everything, actually, because Crazy Betty is the one who convinced me and my girlfriend to go down to the shelter and adopt a kitten. The rest is history, which is currently sitting on the floor chowing down on a fresh can of tuna and salmon chunks.
When we arrived at FoA, I knew next to nothing about cats, much less what I was ultimately getting into. When the volunteer asked us in the lobby, "What kind of cat are you looking to adopt?" my response based on hours of casual contact with the local cat population was simply, "A grey one." Without skipping a beat the lady turns to my girlfriend and says "You must be the brains of this operation." Well, all kidding aside, the volunteer walked us back into this large room full of cats in cages, cats on the window sill, cats on tables, it was just cats cats cats.
In the back, built up onto a little stand was a cage that was 8X16 feet and split down the middle with thick wire. On one side was a very tired looking momcat (Sheba) and on the other was this enormous pile of kittens, all moving around and climbing over each other. On further inspection, I could see that their tiny eyes had opened and they were playing around with each other. Sure enough, kind of off to one side, was a little grey one. I even toyed with the idea of naming him/her "Lego," short for little grey one, but it wouldn't matter. With a little encouragement from the volunteer I gingerly opened up the cage and began to reach over to the side where the grey kitten was, but before I could reach it, this almost microscopic dot of fur jumped up and latched onto my BumEquipment sweatshirt and instantly started to cling. "Well," said the great volunteer, "that pretty much settles it. She chose you."
It's awfully hard to argue with logic like that, and I didn't. After I detached this adorable black fur ball from my sweatshirt and put her back in the cage I knew that I had experienced something wonderful if not altogether magnificent in the truest sense of the word. Now, looking back on those 17 years of torn paper, stray turds in the hallway, hairballs the size of your hand and on and on, I'm certain of the specialness now more than ever.
Last week when I had Doolittle into hospital for a routine check-up I noticed that the Vet had a sign on the wall with comparative ages from humans to dogs to cats. It isn't really 7 years to 1 year human to dog years ratio like is commonly thought but what really struck me as powerful was the top age on the chart for cats: 16 years, which was shown to be 96 in human years. So, by my best guesstimate, Doolittle is around 103 or 104 today. Yeah, kitty!
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