Baby Stuart

This is my Stuart, baby Stuart as he liked me to croon for him. 

He was more than just a cat.  He wasn’t a house cat, or a lap cat or even an alley cat, he was a miracle, a story writing itself right under my nose. 

Stuart was brave and loyal.  He was an example to me of the purest forms of love. 

I have wanted to tell his story for so long, and I have, in little ways.  But not how it deserves to be told.

So now, to honor him at his passing, I will tell his story.

I know many of you might not be cat lovers.  Hopefully you can still feel the truth in the many lessons I learned in the years of sharing life with this little cat.

In the summer of 1998 we moved across town to a bigger apartment which we hoped to fill quickly with bouncing babies.

The area was older, but beautiful, and surrounded by lovely neighborhoods and the Family Tree Nursery – all of which provided the perfect scenery for evening walks.

One evening, we noticed a group of cats and kittens behind a garbage dumpster.  Curious we approached slowly, catching their attention and putting them on full alert.  We also caught the attention of an older resident named Jorji.

Jorji was in her late sixties, very thin, with long scraggly hair, and a hint of a stutter.  Jorji rushed us.  Who are we, and what are we doing, and we had better leave those cats alone. 

Wierd, I thought.

However, the cats drew my attention and I quickly came back to see what else I could learn about this unusual lot of cats.

Within time I got to know Jorji better, and she, realizing I was as much a sucker for anything with feathers or fur as she was, began to tell me the story of these kitties.

Jorji had lived in the apartments for 10 years with her boyfriend Joe.  When Jorji moved in, the cats had been a problem for many years already.  Jorji and Joe recognized the weak, diseased and quickly multiplying cat population – and even on their very meager income, began to feed and water and shelter these cats.  They did this for 10 years before I came along.

My first instinct was to look for help.  I had never heard the word FERAL before then.  Jorji had not either.  But that is what we were working with, a feral cat colony.

I had NO IDEA that a city would impose a leash law on a cat.  In our city we had a NO LEASH LAW, which meant that animal control had no jurisdiction over cats.  They could not pick them up and you could not drop them off.  As a result populations of feral cats multiplied at alarming rates in areas where they had adequate food and shelter.

As fall set in and the weather became cooler I became more and more concerned about the cats.

I had begun a routine of visiting the cats every evening after work.  I would sit close to them on the roots of a tree growing out of the hill behind the dumpster.  I would talk to them and sing to them.  Eventually I began to bring Buddig lunch meat and toys to play with them.   I taught them to have a need for the meat so they looked forward to seeing me.  Then I used a toy with a stick and a string with a mouse on the end so I could play at a short distance.  Eventually I would slowly touch them with the stick, letting them get used to being touched.

It is getting harder to remember all the cats that were there in the first group.  The head cat – Alpha Female – whatever you want to call her was Meanie Mamma.  She wasn’t actually mean, she was just a fierce protector of her babies and she never ate until she saw that they had had their fill.

There was a sleek black cat with gold eyes whom we called Rico – because he acted like he thought he was a stud.  He seemed to be a “teenager” of sorts, probably from an early spring litter. 

There were also 3 young kittens.  They were maybe 5 weeks old when we first came across them.  One was black, one was a gray tabby, the other was a dull gray.  After some time with them we named the black cat Sebastian.  The Gray Tabby Jasmine, and the dull gray Stuart.

There were a few others, possibly an orange tabby, sadly the memory of the others is not very clear anymore.

Rico and Stuart seemed inseparable.  Like a big brother watching out for the little one.   Rico was suave and beautiful.  Stuart was awkward and clumsy.  Thus the name Stuart, he reminded us all to well of Stuart Little.

As the kittens grew older they began to venture farther and farther away from the comfort and safety of the garbage dumpster and the shadows of the nearby fence.    It wasn’t long before we could look out over our 2nd story balcony into the courtyard to see 1 or 2 cats at play.

One night we discovered the most unusual sight when we found 5 cats walking in a line like ducks down the sidewalk through the courtyard. 

When Stuart was maybe 6 months old and Ricco was maybe 9 months old – the spring rain began to fall.  We had become accustomed to seeing the cats at specific places throughout the complex where we would bring them treats or water. 

Stuart and Ricco had a tree in the courtyard.  They would wait at that tree until I spotted them from my balcony.  Then they would wait at a safe distance while I made the deposit. 

We went on like this for quite a long while.  Stuart began to talk to me some.  He always seemed very interested in me, but would never let me approach.

One night, they never came.  Then the rain started.  It poured and poured for hours while I watched and worried for hours late into the night.  I slept on the sofa with the patio door open.  I listened and I prayed and I hoped. 

The next morning Stuart was there waiting for me as usual but, we never saw Ricco again.

As the days passed Stuart was obviously agitated and uncomfortable being alone.  His meows became more melodramatic and he rubbed and rubbed his body against the trees with reckless abandon.

One day when I approached, he didn’t run.  Instead he flopped down and rolled onto his back. 

Stunned, I cautiously extended my hand to his belly and pet him gently.  His purr was instantaneous.

He didn’t let me touch him for long, but he did continue to let me pet him a little each time I came to see him.

Before long he made a new friend, Kitty Mamma.  We are not sure what brought her to our side of the complex.  She had been long cared for on the other side by Jorji and Joe.  Somehow she had befriended Stuart and took the place of Ricco as Stuarts trusted companion.

A little more bold than Stuart, Mamma grew tired of waiting by the tree.  She took to standing below our patio and calling to me.  Happy to ease my burden of visiting cats and feeding stations across the complex, I obliged their every whim and began to toss the meat they craved straight to them from the balcony. 

During this time I continued to work with Jasmine and Sebastian at the other side of the complex as well and when they were 4 ish months old I succeeded in capturing each of them, 1 at a time in my cat carrier and bringing them indoors – which is a whole other story or chapter in itself.

Spring came around again with its torrents of rain and again I found myself at the patio with no one to feed.

Finally, in the wee hours of the morning I heard his cry.  He had this sort of rusty, I’m kind of annoyed at you, sort of voice that was unmistakeable.  I wished that I could hurdle myself over the balcony to him.  Instead I sensibly ran like a wild woman barefoot out the door, down the stairs, around the building into the courtyard, with absolutely no plan.

When I arrived at the patio below us, there he sat, drenched to the skin, looking like half the cat he was, crying for me.  I walked up to him, picked him and wrapped him in my shirt and carried him home. 

Once inside I dried him, fed him, and tried my best to console him.  This was his first time inside a building, his first time smelling all those people smells and furniture smells and then there were our other 2 cats.  He was terrified.  He clung to my shirt like a frightened child.  Not knowing what else to do, I spent that night with him on the sofa with him clinging to me, but laying, at my side.

He would burst into crying pleas through out the night, and then he ‘d fall back asleep.  He would panic if I moved.  I was his safety blanket.

By 1st light I fed him and let him back outside.

We were never the same after that night.  He trusted me.  He wanted my love more than ever.  And more than I ever, I wanted to give it to him……

MORE TO COME – I AM GOING TO GO TO BED NOW!