Whiskers was the child of a wildcat. She would never let a human within five feet of her (except my dad—he fed her), so I knew something was wrong the day she came to sit on my lap. Noticeably pregnant, she meowed constantly and rolled around hoping to be rubbed. Considering I had never been given this opportunity, I happily obliged. As I rubbed her sleek fur I marveled at how pretty she truly was...she had ash blue fur, white feet, a white splash from her chin all they way down her belly, and the biggest, sweetest amber-colored eyes I had ever seen. After about 15 minutes she grew restless and abruptly jumped up and ran toward our pasture. I followed her to a little clearing in the middle of cool, green honeysuckle vines where she simply laid down and allowed me to continue petting her. Her breath came more rapidly and before I knew what was happening a tiny, wet head was emerging into this world. For an eleven year old, this was an amazing sight! I stayed with her for another half hour until my mom called me in for dinner. She had still only had one kitten, so reluctant to leave her but assuming it was all over, I went inside. I came back out around dusk to see if she was still under the honeysuckle, and not only did I find her and the kitten, but I also found two more little additions to the family. I visited Whiskers' mother and her three kittens every day until the day finally came when the wildcat decided she was ready to resume her life of minimal human contact and took her children away. I was sad to find them missing, but I understood.
A few weeks passed, and just when I had nearly forgotten about the wildcat and her kittens, I hear the faint, high-pitched sound of kittens calling their mother coming from our woodshed. The wildcat soon came trotting out of the woods and disappeared into a hole in the woodpile. I was ecstatic...the kittens had returned! After some prodding and pulling (and not a few splinters!), I managed to get my hands on two of them—a calico and a gray tabby. Both had fuzzy little bodies and bright blue eyes and purred when you scratched them just behind the ears—I was in love. While I was very happy to be reacquainting myself with these two, I knew that there was still one tiny body waiting to be cuddled still hissing and spitting at me from deep in the woodpile. I tried to imitate the calls of his mother and siblings to coax him out into the sunlight and finally he started to emerge.
I'll never forget the day Whiskers got his name. As he came to the edge of the woodpile I peeked inside—the only thing I could see in the black hole was one little white patch and the longest, whitest whiskers a kitten can possess. Those whiskers belonged on an adult cat, not this little black and white ball of fur! Although it wasn't very original to name a cat Whiskers, the name suited him so it stuck. He was far fuzzier than his siblings, a longhair without a doubt, and looked very much like his mother. He was black where she was blue, and had one white upper lip, but they had the same white feet and white trail from lip to tail that looked like they had just gotten into a fresh bowl of milk. Whiskers' fur was a marvel. Not only was it the softest fur I had ever felt, but even though he looked like a black cat on the outside if you were to part his fur you would find that the roots were a smoky white. He was beautiful. Another marvel was Whiskers’ eyes—his pupils weren’t the same thin slits his siblings had, they were round like a human’s. Only on the brightest of days did his pupils retract.
Both of Whiskers' siblings died mysteriously, as kittens sometimes do, but Whiskers was a survivor. It's a good thing, because he had the hardest life health-wise of any cat I've known. Not long after Whiskers was weaned, he contracted a parasitic screw-worm (or as us country folks call it, a wolf). The screw-worm had embedded itself in his neck and despite the sprays, medicines, etc., it continued to suck the life out of poor little Whiskers. Because we had so many animals and vet bills were so expensive, my parents preferred to take care of our pets' veterinary issues at home. My dad finally had to cut the worm out of Whiskers' neck to keep him from dying.
Whiskers' neck healed fine and soon a bitterly cold winter was upon us. Whiskers then became afflicted by a horrible respiratory infection that left him weak and unable to maintain a normal body heat. I talked my mother into letting him live on our enclosed back porch so that he could stay out of the wind and cold and I could nurse him back to health. We finally took him to the vet where he was given several medications and pulled back from the brink of death once again. However, he was never able to meow correctly again...it was more like short bursts of a meow and purr mixed together (mrrt, mrrt, mrrt...). The only time he really meowed was when he was scared or getting his tail stepped on.
Since we had spent so much time, money, and effort with Whiskers and he and I had become so closely attached, we took the step to have him neutered and allowed him to live in the house with us. He spent a year or so inside eating treats of cheese and bologna and attacking unsuspecting feet when they walked too closely to a couch or bed he was hiding under. One day I noticed that he was developing sores in his fur and that his fur was falling out. We took him to the vet again where they tested him for various allergies but could not find a singular cause for his problem. We kept him loaded up on various flea and tick medications thinking that was his most likely allergy, but nothing seemed to work. Finally it was decided that he must have developed an allergy to something in our house that we couldn't identify, so he was put back outside for his own sake. He looked terrible—basically bald and covered in sores, he was not the beautiful, fluffy Whiskers I had once known. Luckily Whiskers liked being out of doors, but I was very unhappy with the situation and worried about him being beaten up by other cats, crossing the road and getting run over...my list of worries was endless. After another year or so passed, Whiskers stopped showing up for dinner with the other cats. I came to the conclusion that he had either taken up with another family or had been killed.
One day when I was around fifteen or sixteen, I was sitting on our front porch reading a book and happened to catch some movement in the pasture out of the corner of my eye. I squinted to see which of our cats was out there mouse-hunting and couldn't believe it when my eyes landed on Whiskers. He had grown all of his hair back, but was very skinny. I called to him and he called back, but would never come to the house. I tried to go out into the pasture to get him, but he wouldn't come to me anymore. I didn't understand—it was obvious that he knew me, but he acted as if he were afraid of me. A few days later Daddy told me he had seen Whiskers come to the house to eat while it was dark, so I was relieved to know that he was at least coming home to get food. I wondered just how long he had been living in the pasture before I had spotted him, because every day after I would gaze out into the pasture and see him sitting in the grass looking toward our house.
Finally a few weeks later while I was in the living room watching TV, my dad stepped inside to say that Whiskers was on the porch in the middle of the afternoon. I quietly and softly stepped outside so I wouldn't scare him, and then I walked over and picked him up. At first I thought it was if he had never left—he started purring and rubbing against my legs and being his usual cheerful self, but it didn’t take me long to realize that something was wrong with Whiskers. He had jumped off the porch and when he tried to jump back on he ran into chairs, the bench, and other various things on the porch. Whiskers was blind. After watching him walk into and fall off of things for a few days, I moved him back inside where it would be safer for him, against my mom’s wishes. It didn’t take him long to learn where everything in the house was located, and even though he had stopped walking into walls and kitchen chairs I worried that a serious disease might have caused his blindness. I took him back to the vet for an examination where he was tested for various deadly cat diseases including feline leukemia, but all of his tests came back negative. It seemed that his unique eyes that were always slightly dilated had caused his downfall. During his first few years inside his eyes were not very damaged, but once he was put back out to recover from his allergies the sunlight had taken its toll. His eyes were now fully dilated at all times—big and round like a cartoon character—and his retina was wrinkled and folded. He couldn’t see a thing…not even a cotton ball dropped an eighth of an inch in front of his face.
Whiskers was not like a normal cat anymore…you couldn’t play with him with string, kitty toys, or any of the other usual favorites…and he became very dependent on me and trusted me completely. Whiskers and I formed a very special bond that included a lot of cuddling that first year of blindness as his other senses tried to catch up. We even developed our own little special language—I would make noises similar to his when I called him, if I wanted him to sit in a certain spot or show him where his treats were I would scratch that spot on the floor, and if I noticed him trying to jump on the couch or bed I would scratch a spot free of obstructions so that he would know where he could jump up without running into anything. He got is claws hung in he carpet frequently and had to be rescued from the floor at least six times a day, so we finally had him declawed to make his life a little easier. He slept against my back every night—I suppose it was comforting to him to be touching—and every morning he would wake me with little kitty Eskimo kisses. As I got on up in dating and working years I would only see him when he woke me in the morning before school or when I got home from work or my boyfriend’s house. As I reflect back on those times I realize he probably felt like I was neglecting him, but regardless he would be waiting for me by the front door every night when I came home without fail.
When I was nineteen the time finally came when I was ready to move out and get married. My husband and I moved into a little house in a subdivision about 45 minutes away from the home I had known for 17 years. I decided to get everything situated in the new house before I brought Whiskers so that it would be easier for him to get acquainted to his new surroundings. It took about a week to get everything in order, and my parents said that Whiskers stayed by the door every night waiting for me to come home. It didn’t take Whiskers long to get the hang of navigating his new house, and he even seemed much happier because none of my nieces and nephews were around to terrorize him any more. About a week after he moved in, we added another family member to the house—a Great Dane puppy named Shelby. At first I was worried because it had been a long time since Whiskers had been around a dog, but after a few initial slaps to Shelby’s nose they became fast friends. Shelby liked to chew on his ears and he liked to follow her around and smack at her feet.
Whiskers became so in tune with his new surroundings that many of our friends meeting him for the first time did not believe he was blind. He knew exactly where everything was, and could follow the sound of you moving through a room so precisely it was as if he was watching you. He could even walk directly up to and sniff something brand new that you had just laid in the floor, even something like a q-tip, although he never knew it was there before—this is what really discredited his blindness as far as our friends were concerned.
My husband, Brandon, is not a cat person at all. He had a bad experience with a cat as a child and didn’t always get along with my Whiskers because he hated the fact that Whiskers couldn’t cough up a hairball without also losing his lunch. However, I still saw Whiskers cuddled up next to Brandon getting his ears scratched on more than one occasion. It took some doing, but I eventually talked Brandon into letting me adopt a little orange kitten (O’Malley) from the animal shelter. Again I thought this new addition might be unwelcome to Whiskers, but as with Shelby he got along with the new baby just fine. Whiskers and O’Malley spent their days cuddling up, grooming each other, and wrestling. Whiskers was fat and happy…about 20 lbs…and seemed to be having the time of his life. Everyone who met him commented on how soft he was—he is still the softest cat I’ve ever known, and believe me I’ve petted a lot of cats!
Brandon and I decided that we wanted to move back to the area where I grew up and were discussing asking my parents if we could pay them to take Whiskers while we tried to sell our house. The last thing we wanted was to have someone come view our home on one of Whiskers’ hairball days and find a “kitty surprise” on the floor. We came home the next day, a Friday, to find a little gray female tabby, who was about the same age as O’Malley, had followed our neighbor over and decided to take up residence at our house. She didn’t belong to our neighbor either, so we fed her and allowed her to come inside while we were home, and named her Cooter. My husband had a “two cat rule”—no more than two cats in the house—so she couldn’t stay in at night or while we were at work, but every day that we came home she was waiting to come inside. On the following Thursday evening we came home to find Cooter missing and were worried because a storm was coming up. My husband informed me that he really liked Cooter (an amazing admission coming from him!) and that since I was so fond of her he would break the “two cat rule” and she could move in if we found her. I was so excited! She too got along well with Whiskers and our other babies, so we would be a big happy family of six! I called my neighbor to see if they had seen Cooter, and sure enough they had her. I brought her home to spend her first night in.
What happened next I jokingly blame on Brandon’s “two cat rule,” but that obviously isn’t true. I sat on the couch reading my book while Shelby chewed her toy on the floor and O’Malley and Cooter chased each other around the house. I commented to Brandon that I hadn’t seen Whiskers yet, but it wasn’t unlike him to hang out quietly under the bed or in the “cat room” where their litter boxes and food were kept. I was unable to sleep that night and didn’t crawl into bed until around 3:45am. Right before I got in bed I heard Whiskers in the living cough up a hairball, but I was too tired to deal with it. After about two hours of sleep I woke up to get ready for work and walked into the kitchen to give the animals some water and then into the cat room to give them some food. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Whiskers sleeping curled up in front of the couch. I called to him in our special language to come get some food, but he didn’t even look up. I took less than a second for me to realize that yesterday, during the early morning hours of July 11th, he had curled up to go to sleep and never woke up.
I walked over to talk to him and scratch his ears, but it was no use…he was already gone. My friend of ten years had slipped away from me quietly and peacefully during the night. I have so many regrets—had I realized it would be the last night I could hold him like a baby and get kitty Eskimo kisses I would have went looking for him the night before. I could have been holding him and loving him the whole time I was unable to sleep…we could have spent his last night together. Maybe he would have curled up next to me to sleep like he used to and would have been dreaming of me when he passed away… I’ll never know. Work was very hard that day—running on only two hours of sleep and having lost one of my best friends, it was very hard to focus on what needed to be done. Thoughts of Whiskers would drift in at odd times and I would have to stop and struggle not to cry. Everyone was very sweet and sympathetic and related similar stories of losing beloved pets, but I don’t think anyone could realize what a difference it is to lose a beloved pet with disabilities. The bond you form with such a pet goes beyond the usual parent-child type feeling you get with the pets you love…you have to learn to see your pet on an even deeper level to understand their needs because they depend on you to survive. By the time 5 o’clock rolled around I dreaded coming home…I knew what had to be done. Thankfully Brandon had already gathered Whiskers up and put him into a box for me by the time I got home. I called my mom to see if we could bring him home to bury him because I couldn’t stand the thought of moving away and leaving him here all alone. I rubbed his soft black fur and talked to him one more time before closing the box for good. We got to my parents house and buried him on the same hill I had buried countless other pets throughout my childhood. We covered his grave with rocks, visited with my parents for a few minutes, and came back home without him. Hearing him call to me and he came down the hallway—his sweet little half meow, half purr—is now only a memory…something I’ll never hear again.
I’m sitting here with Cooter curled up, purring my lap and I think that maybe she showed up at just the right time. Her first night in our house as an official family member was Whiskers’ last. While I know that I will NEVER love another cat the way I loved Whiskers, it’s nice to still have a little fuzzy kitty to cuddle with while I deal with my loss. I suppose the “two cats rule” is back in effect now, but I’m hoping that one day I will find a little fluffy kitten just as soft as Whiskers to call my own.
Experience the Love of a Cat--Adopt!
Madison-Oglethorpe Animal Shelter
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