The Cats In My Life
For about five or six years, my boyhood was very much centered on close relationships with two dogs. Both were shepherd collies , both named Bucky, and both were killed by cars. Loss of both dogs was the most traumatic experience of my boyhood. Neither event should have happened if my parents had kept the dogs confined within our backyard.
The death of Bucky II was a significant turning point for my intellectual growth. At the time I was being brainwashed in preparation for my less than ‘holy’ confirmation into a Lutheran denomination church just up the street from our house. Yes, I was being “groomed” as they call it now if sex is involved. And I was still trying to “fit in”, despite my emerging awareness of a deeper inner self that ran contrary to the brainwashing agenda I was being subjected to. Yes the story sounds a bit hokey by adult standards. But I was just a boy who had lost his best friend and sleeping partner. It was also my first personal experience with death. Still doing the work up for “confirmation” – something of a contract between “god”, the church, and myself, I decided to ask the minister about “heaven”. Would I be reunited with my dogs after my own death? He offered a strict and immediate “no”. No Bucky in heaven? Why would I want to go there? That was my first step toward the radical atheism that is the lens through which I see the self-destructive absurdities of human society. Thanks to my beloved dogs.
Cats did not enter my life until I began living in the Medina of Fes, Morocco. Apparently Mohammed, founder of Islam, had a special feeling for cats and for that reason cats are usually the pet of choice in Morocco. The unfortunate thing is the uncontrolled breeding of Medina cats, most of which live in the narrow (2 meters wide) streets and on the interconnected roof decks.
A few weeks ago I was in Fes and the derbs and souks were full of recently born kittens, all just past the stage when their mother’s no longer lactate. At that point, if they haven’t found a home with a caring human being, all are doomed to death from starvation, dehydration and disease. The tragedy repeats itself every four or five months when the females are receptive to mating. People often do intervene with water and food but it’s a hopeless situation for the majority of kittens that have not been adopted. There is another gallery of photos of Medina cats that illustrate what I have written.
There are obvious similarities to human populations where poor families follow the mandate of religion and continue to have many more children than they can care for – let alone help them construct a better future. Now to the story of Kitty & Kat.
One morning in about the year 2011 I heard a kitten crying outside the front door of Dar Balmira. I opened the door to see a lone tabby kitten sitting there. I was well aware of the cycle described above but really had never thought about myself becoming a “cat person”. I guess it was the tenderness of her desperate wining that made me open the door in the first place. So I gave her a dish of milk and closed the door. When I returned to retrieve the bowl I heard her plaintive “meows” louder and more persistent. It seemed to me that she completely understood her desperate reality. So I said “yes” to Kitty and brought her into my life and accepted the responsibility for her existence until her life span or mine has run its course.
The first thing(s) one should do when accepting a cat into your home are: make sure it has had distemper shots, de-worm & de-flea it and seriously consider having it spayed unless you want half a dozen or more cats as soon as it reaches sexual maturity.
In 2018 two men came to Dar Balmira with an eagle. One wing was injured, my guess is that these same men hit the eagle with a machete. Instead of killing it they somehow got word that the foreigner living in Dar Balmira might give them money for it. And they were right, because otherwise the eagle definitely would have died or been killed. Since my Arabic skills are very limited I really couldn’t grill them about the eagle. They likely wouldn’t tell the truth anyway. So I offered them as little as possible to not reinforce their behaviour and accepted caring for the bird. I took it to the animal hospital in Fes, the Fondouq American, to see if the veterinarian might be able to repair the wounded wing . That story belongs in the section “The Birds In My Life”.
When the vet did all she could for the eagle, as a gesture of appreciation, I accepted a black male kitten someone had abandoned at the hospital. She introduced him by pointing out his exceptional personality. Totally the opposite of the more introverted Miss Kitty. The vet at the Fondouq supposedly did perform an operation on Kat to make him impotent. However I cannot figure out what in fact, is going on with Kat’s sexuality. While he shows no sexual interest in Kitty (she has no ovulation cycle) he does seem to have some sort of sexual relation with me – or at least my scent. Quite regularly he will grasp either the blanket or shirt or underwear with his teeth and proceed to rub himself on the surface of whatever he is holding. After a few minutes he stops, lays down, and opens his hind leg, exposing his tiny whitish penis. He licks it. I can detect no semen but then perhaps there is none or the volume is quite small. For sure he does experience sexual orgasm since the back half of his body shutters just before he lies down complete the routine.
