My First Love, Our Orange Tabby, Cape Cod
By: Toni Crowe
Tags: Pets, Cats, Love, Happiness, Short Story

Image by Toni Crowe

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” — Jean Cocteau

When I became an adult and moved out of my mother’s home, I discovered that I liked cats. Since then, I have had a parade of cats, normally, 2–3 or 4 at a time. There were always characters among the cats that stood out.

We loved them all. When I own a pet, I shelter it forever, even if the pet refuses to conform to the cat norm.

The first cat we owned was a male orange tabby. My mother-in-law took my daughter over to see the kittens. The only kitten we could NOT have out of the litter was the male orange tabby. He was a beautiful bright orange color, feisty and playful.

My daughter, who was three, walked over to the kittens. Immediately the orange Tabby ran up to her and she picked it up. No one could get her to put it down. The kitten came home with us.

Cape Cod was my daughter’s cat. We lived on the Southside of Chicago, not the best environment for a cat. CC did not have an inside litter box. We let Cape Cod out like a dog. He always showed up the door at dinnertime to eat with the rest of us.

Since I was often the last one home, Cape Cod would wait for me by the door. He was not satisfied until everyone was safely home. I remember thinking how nice it was to have that cat waiting for me every day when I got home, no matter how late. He was always there to bump his head against me. My day was better because of his waiting.

Once he was gone for four days when my daughter was ten. My new boyfriend, eventually my husband, walked our neighborhood for three days looking for the cat. He found him sitting in a basement window with a broken paw. Someone had caught CC, hurt him while trying to detain him, and trapped him in that basement.

My boyfriend knocked on doors in the apartment building until someone let him in, then got the person to let him get our cat. Cape Cod, who had treated him as an interloper until that point, came willingly.

When he brought the cat home, it was obvious CC needed treatment. There was no hesitation although the cat's treatment for the twisted/broken paw was not in our budget. Our food quality went down for weeks while that cat was in treatment.

We ate peanut butter sandwiches. We walked instead of riding the bus for short jaunts. Everyone willingly gave up treats and snacks. I don’t remember one complaint. His paw healed good as new. We all lost weight.

Cape Cod was a large cat. He could jump from the floor to the top of the kitchen cabinets in one leap. He once leaped up so high that a visitor left our home rather than stay in it with our demon cat.

Another of his favorite tricks was to tease dogs. He would innocently sit on the stoop or the stairs until a dog ran at him. Then as the dog chased him up the stairs, he would turn around and jump over the dog to run the other way.

“Cats choose us; we don’t own them.”

— Kristin Cast

When we moved to California, we left the cat with my ex-husband. My children would visit my ex every Summer, so my daughter saw her cat every year.

My husband and I didn’t think about Cape Cod again for years, and then we got a phone call from my ex. It had been eight years. The cat was getting old and required care, did we want him back?

Yes, yes, we did. My daughter agreed to care for the cat no matter his condition. My husband and I paid for a medical certificate to fly the cat to California from Illinois, with the agreement we would immediately treat the cat for his problems.

CC arrived, he was thin, turning gray, scraggy, and kept shaking his head from side to side. He walked out of the carrier straight into my daughter's arms. He had a multitude of problems. Mites, skin sores, nutrition, dehydration, ear, and paw issues. His treatment required that I leave work, take him to the vet, get him treated, then return to work at least once per week. It took months. My daughter's thankful eyes made me willingly drive back and forth in that crazy California traffic.

It didn’t matter that he was not up to par. From the day he walked into the house and up to my daughter s room, Cape Cod was in charge of the other cats. We did not allow him to go outside. Instead, he had a litter box in the garage.

We had a little white alley cat named Sky who had been head cat until CC came back home. Cape Cod would trap her under his paw and pull her hair out from her butt. She wasn’t hurt. she was mad. He did it to show her who was in charge.

Sky liked to catch large moths and bring them in the house and release them in front of whomever she wanted to play with. She never brought a moth in for CC.

He lived happily with us for many more years with all the food, water and treats we could provide.

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” Ernest Hemingway

I remember when CC had his first seizure, my daughter called me at work crying. My assistant pulled me from one of my bosses’ customer meetings to let me know. I asked my boss to step out of the room and told him I needed to go home… my daughter’s cat was ill.

My boss did not understand. I did not understand his not understanding. I must have looked at him as he was asking me to stay as he suddenly decided that I needed to go.

I went. The cat needed new and exciting treatments that included going in once a week to be hydrated. Once again, I was the taxi for the cat.

He knew this routine. I would pick him up and put him in the front seat of the car. He would settle into the passenger seat to be buckled in his pet harness, softly meowing all the way.

At the vets, he would sit in my lap and take his treatment, looking at me as if I was the worst cat mom in the world. I would take him home and the same cat that was almost limp when I picked him up for the treatment would strut back into the house.

My husband got into the action. He liked to work late when I and the kids were asleep. He would sit at his desk, and that old cat would insist on sleeping in his lap the entire time he was working. At first, he tried working without the cat. The cat would keep trying to get into his lap until he was successful. This became their routine.

Once my husband went to bed, the cat would follow him to our master suite and sit on his side of the bed. Once my spouse was settled, the car would hop into our bed and sleep on my husband’s chest, getting up only when my daughter stirred to get ready for school.

When we lost Cape Cod, he was sixteen years old. I cried for my cat for weeks.

He was my first cat love.

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