Cats playing musical chairs
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
When we first came to Ramona for a few weeks in the summer, cats were part of our country experience. The minute we arrived, someone started the game of "Musical Chairs" and the cats on the corner of 5th and D moved to our front porch. I haven't the faintest notion whether or not they chose to play on our front porch after we'd gone back to California. I do know they had their suitcases packed and came to stay the minute we arrived. We called our porch the nine-cat porch, doling out food and attention.
Once we decided to stay in Ramona, the cat population stayed, too. We peaked for a brief season at 15 felines. That year, we sent some of them on vacation to a nearby farm, but country living proved hazardous to our city kitties so we adopted other means of population control.
This past spring, our four male cats just disappeared, our favorite cali-cat was run over on the road — by someone NOT driving 20 miles per hour — and we were left with only Bippy the Whining Kitty. Nature's natural selection was definitely not ours!
We now had a one-cat porch and Bippy was very lonesome. She didn't like being the only child. Bip spent so much time in front of Jess's window begging for company and eventually climbing on the screens that some cat "behavior modification" was required.
This summer, Bip had kittens (and company before that) and we comfortably settled down to a four-cat porch when a straggly black cat with a runny nose appeared on the steps. We looked her over and said, "Midnight, is that you?"
Now Midnight was one of the cats who came calling the first year we arrived in Ramona. "Oh, no, you don't," I'd said to this scrawny black cat when she journeyed across the street with five little striped kittens in tow, their tails straight in the air. "You just go right back over to that abandoned trailer." But she didn't.
As the year progressed, the cat population shifted, grew up, and Midnight found herself low-cat on the totem pole. So she moved across the street to our bed and breakfast. We fed her at Cousin's Corner but the people population and the petting was too spasmodic for Midnight and she went in search of more activity, moving over to Bobby's porch a few blocks away. She was always happy to see us when we came by but stayed put — until the day she arrived back at the house looking worse for the wear.
"Poor thing," I crooned, "did you get chased away again by some new cat?" She meowed and purred and followed me around the garden telling me her woes. We set about trying to get her well and fatten her up. The original four on our five-cat porch were none to happy with this newcomer. We tried to explain that she'd been here before, was an honored relative, but they pouted and had behavior relapses — Bippy was whining again.
One day, Jess came home and said, "Something is weird. Midnight is still at Bobby's house looking happy and healthy. This black cat we've been feeding is not our cat."
"So who is this cat?" We'd welcomed her in like an old family member. It was a strange feeling to discover that we'd been housing a cat that we thought we knew but didn't. It was like having a person show upon your doorstep that you thought was a relative but wasn't.
"We're going to have to do something," my sister said. "This is not our cat and she isn't nice to the other cats — she's moved in and is attempting to move them OUT." While I vacillated about the fate of extra cats and Jessica lectured them on communal living, another cat moved in last week.
The game of "Musical Chairs" was starting again. We came home to find an extra black and white cat sitting on our front porch acting like he/she belonged there — very much at home, purring, mannerly, contented. "Now where did THAT cat come from," we asked each other.
It's another day in the country and evidently, country cats will just be country cats, moving hither and yon at nature's beck and call, playing "Musical Chairs." Meanwhile, my job is not to reason why but just keep food in great supply!
