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This house is full of life

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, May 12, 2008

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A lot of dogs and cats live here at the Last Homely House. And some birds. A mouse. A lizard. People sometimes ask why we have so many pets. It’s a silly question. “Because they live here,” I answer incredulously.

I’ve written here about myself, about Micheal, our sons Sean and Eric, and various other relatives and houseguests. In fact, virtually everyone I know is a potential victim of this column.

But I’ve never written about the non-human residents of the household. Because of this oversight, and the fact that I had no brilliant column ideas this week, I decided to introduce readers to the rest of the crew.

Katy is the Big Dog. Her genetic makeup is obviously based on black Lab, but includes something with enormous jowls—I’m guessing sea cow. She likes to wipe her jowls on someone’s knees after she gets a drink, and has a talent for picking the person with the nicest pants. She was left on our doorstep many years ago by her mother, who had German Shepherd markings and who was chased several blocks by eldest son Sean in an attempt to make her take back the hairless, scaly, underfed puppy. Now she has long, silky, curly hair, although she still suffers a little from the allergies that caused her to look like a rat when she came here. It’s hard to imagine life without Katy. Some of her most endearing traits are nibbling toes she finds exposed in the middle of the night, and a very expressive language of her own, which includes the plaintive “Ah-roooooo,” the interrogative “Ro-ro-ro-ro?” and the more exclamatory, “Boof!” She is an expert prancer, and has appointed herself Toy Sheriff—no other animal here is allowed to have a toy. Any cat or dog caught playing with a toy has the toy seized immediately, and the confiscated property is then hidden beneath the bed. She’s had to be admonished several times about taking toys from the grandboys when they visit. She knows how to shake hands, although we all recognize that this stems less from wishing to perform than from the knowledge that raking her big, blunt nails down your shin is an excellent way to get you to rub her belly.

Gladys is the Little Dog. She is one of only two animals brought to this house on purpose. She was at the Houston SPCA shelter when I was sent there on a story by the Chronicle some years ago. She had been rescued from neglect and abuse but was being kept in the back, not on view for adoption, because she suffered badly from heartworms and was scheduled to be euthanized. She became so excited when I stopped to talk to her and touch her, she trembled with ecstasy and had a horrible coughing fit. When I finished gathering material for my story, the volunteers all asked me to adopt an animal. I forgave them—they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t ask. I said I would if I could have the little, sick rat terrier. She was treated for her heartworms and now spends her days ensconced on either the sofa or the bed, depending on where I am. She plays with Katy sometimes, but has learned to play from a distance. She dislikes cats but bears them stoically. She sleeps under the covers. Her favorite hobby is standing at the backyard fence yapping wildly at, and with, Neighbor Ron’s dogs, who she suspects of attempting to subvert my affections.

Mario is a very, very old yellow cat. He nearly died a couple of months ago, and now he gets away with a lot of Bad Cat behavior. He knows this and exploits it. He is the only one of our extensive cat population who knows his name, although he won’t respond to “Mario” unless it’s followed by “b-a-a-a-by.” In his younger days, Mario was the Master of Gravity: He would stretch out along the top of a table, desk, dresser or any surface on which things had been placed—books, bags, keys, glassware, intricate and delicate things built from tiny Legos—and place one front paw very lightly against the object. Then he would embark on a power nap, during which he would occasionally shift positions and stretch, nudging the object a tiny bit with each stretch. Often it would take hours to actually cause the object to fall, but Mario is a very patient cat. When he succeeded in pushing something off an edge, he would pretend to be startled, peering down at the object as if he’d never seen such a thing make such a noise. Now he contents himself with sneaking up behind people on the sofa, leaning close to their ear, placing a paw on their shoulder, and bellowing, “NOW!” which is the victim’s cue to adore him, preferably around the ears.

Mama is second in cat seniority, a gray striped cat nearly as ancient as Mario. Her real name, given to her by the boys when they were young, is Squishington Screamer III. “Squishington” because she was very sick when we rescued her, and you don’t want to know the rest of that story. “Screamer” because she has a voice like a tornado warning siren—in fact, the way she came to live here was, a neighbor called early one morning and told me to come get my cat, it had been screaming in her back yard all night. It turned out not to be my cat. Instead it was this tiny, starving, sick kitten. So then it was my cat. “III” because the boys felt it was needed. Mama because it turned out that, tiny as she was, she was pregnant when we found her. We’d had her for some years when, one day years ago, we came home from work and found her tail in our driveway, and her cowering and screaming pitifully. The wound wasn’t fatal, just painful. It healed up and she wears her stub well, like a Manx, but since then she’s been so afraid of almost everything that it requires a lot of patience just to feed or pet her. It’s just as well I never found out who or what cut her tail off. I’m a firm believer in turnabout being fair play.

Smacky is a brindle cat, with swirls of gray, cream, brown, orange and some spots that are sort of pink. Her name suggested itself soon after she got well enough to begin hitting us, other cats, dogs and, sometimes, inanimate objects. A friend found her when she was just a baby, cowering on one of the overpasses between here and Houston, with missing hair and skin indicating she had been hit by or thrown from a vehicle. The friend, a hardcore cat rescuer, already had too many cats for her apartment, so she brought the kitten here, knowing what a soft touch I am. Smacky is the alpha cat of the house, but suffers from violent mood swings that cause her to climb up your chest, nuzzle your face with her head, nurse your shirt, purr loudly, then suddenly bite and scratch and leap away as if you’d try to light her on fire. You should never stroke Smacky casually as you pass her sleeping in a chair—she views this as an attack. She has developed an animus toward two of the other cats, and likes to sneak up on them while they’re sleeping, stand over them, go into full “attack cat” posture, and scream like a banshee. It has been explained to Smacky repeatedly that sleeping cats can hardly be accused of provoking her attacks. She doesn’t listen. Also, she has a substance abuse problem, and could well end up in the catnip ward of the Old Cats Hospital someday.

Speedy-called-Lovey has a Biblical name because I changed his name too late to prevent us from sometimes calling him Speedy, and sometimes Lovey. He lived in the parking lot of a Clute grocery store, where my cat-rescuing friend fed him for some weeks before talking me into taking him in. “Well,” I said in accepting the responsibility, “we don’t have any black cats.” This proved to foreshadow a rather disturbing trend, but we’ll get to that later. He is the most loving of cats, but has some problems with his feet that prevent him from retracting his claws. Ever. He is a very sharp cat, and his loving nature is a double-edged sword. I named him Speedy because he seemed to be everywhere at once. You could let him out the back door, walk through the house and let him in the front door 20 seconds later. It was amazing, even alarming, how fast he could move. I honestly don’t know how long it was before we realized that we actually had two black cats.

Squeaker is a huge, over-muscled black cat who reminds me of Aaron Neville—looks like a thug, sings like an angel (or a little girl, depending on whether you like the falsetto or not). His chest is so wide, it gives him a bowlegged appearance, and his head is big enough to be quite startling when it comes up over the edge of the bed into your face. I would suspect him of steroid use, but for his sweet disposition. He has a teeny-tiny voice that sounds incongruous coming from such a big cat. He evidently followed Lovey into the house one day and stayed, causing a great deal of confusion and the misnaming of Lovey as Speedy. I discovered Squeaker one day when I passed Speedy-called-Lovey on the front porch, went into the house, and found him sitting in the living room. I opened the front door again. There he was. I closed it and turned. There he was. “Where did this other black cat come from?” I demanded. “What other black cat?” Micheal asked. I repeated my door-opening trick. “I’ll be damned,” we both said. “You don’t live here,” I told Squeaker. But, of course, he did. An aside: Speedy-called-Lovey really dislikes Squeaker, possibly because he came here with the understanding that he was to be the only black cat.

Spider is the third black cat, who was rescued by one of Eric’s friends and came here to live because of more silly rules about animals and apartments. He was sick and starved and ugly, but turned out to be a truly gorgeous, long-haired, yellow-eyed cat. He is the most fun-loving of all the cats, which is a mixed blessing. He thinks everything is fun, from falling into the toilet to knocking all the books out of a shelf of the bookcases to being chased by the dachshunds some of our neighbors won’t keep in. I think it’s this flippancy that causes Smacky to attack him regularly—how can she rule her queendom if some of her subjects think she’s funny?

Lucky is a gray and white cat with the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. He is suave and indifferent and a little standoffish until, once every few days, he becomes kittenish during his daily nap, and begins mewing and kneading the air until you come and scratch and stroke him. No one knows where he came from, or why. I came home one day to find him napping on the front porch with Mama, which was very odd—Mama doesn’t like other cats, and avoids them as a rule. “Who are you?” I asked. He didn’t answer. When I opened the door, he strolled in right behind Mama, as if he’d always lived here. I just sighed and named him Lucky. I was still a little shaken by the Speedy-Squeaker thing: Maybe Lucky did live here all the time.

The three parakeets are Birdy, GB and Cash. Birdy is ancient in parakeet years but remains the alpha bird, which means she gets first crack at seed, treats, the swing, the cuttlefish bone, and whatever else she deems desirable. GB is the surviving half of a pair of parakeets named GB (for Green Boy) and Heebie, because it went well with GB. Cash was found by a friend’s children after some jackass put his cage, with him still in it, out with the trash. If you have one parakeet, you can teach it to say words and interact with you. If you have more than one parakeet, they’ll talk to each other and pretend you don’t exist. Our birds do pay attention to Miss Mousie, whose cage is near theirs. The attraction is mutual—if the two cages get too close to one another, it sparks a round of tail-snatching on both sides.

Miss Mousie may be a rat. No one is really sure. If she’s a mouse, she’s gargantuan. If she’s a rat, she’s on the smallish side. No matter. She’s named for the song “Froggie Went A-Courting,” in which Froggie took Miss Mousie to the picture show and later asked her to marry him. Miss Mousie is the color car manufacturers call champagne, and has the cutest, humanlike little hands. She’s way too clever and cute to be snake food, which is where she was headed before Eric brought her to me. She wasn’t happy in the wire cage I put her in, until I gave her a cracker box to hide in. She chews windows in her boxes, then stuffs pieces of cloth into them so you can’t see her. When I call her, she removes a piece of cloth, looks out the window to see what I’ve got for her and then, if it suits her, she stuffs the cloth back into her window and comes out to meet me at her door and accept the gift. If she doesn’t like it, she throws it down and holds her hands out for something else. She lets me rub her belly now, mostly without biting me. She’s omnivorous and voracious, favoring nuts, berries, carrots, bread crusts, banana, cookies, potato chips, and pizza. My sister thinks I should get a big, fat frog to marry Miss Mousie. I’m afraid she’d eat him.

Tigerlily is Eric’s Australian water dragon. She has the distinction of being the only pet besides Gladys to be acquired deliberately. It’s hard to get to know a Australian water dragon, but I think we’ve made progress. She used to hiss at me and run away when I looked at her. Now she just runs away some of the time. She has an odd expression that I interpret as an effort to determine whether I might be edible.

I think that’s all of them. I can’t ever be sure.

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