Domestic Felines and Their Human Companions

This is about how my little black cat came to live with me.  

And it may remind others of their experiences with domestic felines. If so, perhaps they will be kind enough to tell me about some of those by adding comments, below.

Imagine yourself crouching in your bathtub under a ton of blankets and pillows while a roar like a freight train and a pounding on the roof like a hundred jackhammers fills your ears.

Imagine emerging out your front door fifteen minutes later to view a yard white with large hailstones, tree branches everywhere, a hole in the roof of the house across the street, and shattered windows in adjoining houses.

This was mid-April, 1998. Fast-forward to  mid- May, 1998, and imagine that you have hired a contractor to repair your own roof. Imagine that contractor arriving for work with a small scrap of black fur in a milk crate.

The scrap of black fur was Midnight Mary, according to the contractor. He found her abandoned in a paper sack in a shed, in a resort area 80 miles  away, where he was also doing storm-related repairs.

His ploy was to name her after me, as ammunition to persuade me to adopt her. He said his four-year-old was going to kill her, wagging her around by the neck. And besides, she wouldn't eat anything for him and his wife.

I picked up the little sleeping mite. She barely filled my palm, curled around in it. Stretched out, with her nose on my middle finger and her tail ending where the palm joins the wrist, she hardly registered any weight to my senses at all.

"Drive me to the vet's?" I asked the contractor.

There she weighed in at 7 ounces and measured 7 inches long.

The vet estimated her age at 2 weeks, from her teeth, and the fact that her blue eyes were open.

He said Midnight Mary was too long a name and her name would be M&M.

M&M has a little white patch on the dark fur of her chest that can easily stand in for the M&M candy logo. So she's been M&M ever since.

I raised her on kitten formula from a doll bottle the vet supplied (along with the formula). I set the alarm clock for every 2 hours, round the clock. A week later she had doubled her weight.

That summer I was playing in a community band. M&M slept on my lap at rehearsals, so I could feed her on schedule. She slept through the noise of crashing cymbals behind me and through the sounds of the horn section in which I was playing fourth horn.

She would wake up to eat--about the time we took a break--and would accept being held and petted by my fellow players after rehearsals.

The band director's wife looked after her at the first couple of outdoor twilight concerts.

After that, she was old enough to be left alone for a couple of hours. But I brought her to rehearsals all summer long.

She sleeps on the bed beside me. She drinks from the kitchen tap. She's outgrown wanting to interfere with my fingers on the computer keyboard, but whatever room I am in, there she is also.

She has several dozen cat-speak sounds and an equal number of cat gestures that she has taught me the meaning of.

My favorite is a short hum in her throat, like the beginning of a purr, but higher pitched.

That signifies her pleasure when she has understood that I know what she was telling me she wanted and am moving to grant her wish. Like opening the refrigerator door to take out the Pounce treat.

Or taking up the soda straw to toss it for her to chase.

Or bending down to clean the just-dirtied litter box.

Oh, yes, I am indeed informed every time and immediately, when that litter box becomes dirty.

She likes music. And she likes for me to read to her. Or talk on the telephone. As near as I can make out, she believes I am talking to her.

More adventures of M&M will be forthcoming, if I am encouraged to write them.

Or probably even if I am not so encouraged, except by my own self.

Stay tuned.