Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 15, 1993 TAG: 9303150564
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW
IN JANUARY, I lost my cat of 13 years. About a month later, I confessed my grief in this space. The day that column appeared, a very nice woman in Roanoke called and offered me a stray."A very nice stray," she insisted. "Healthy, all grown up. Already neutered."
I said, "I don't know." I didn't really want another cat so soon.
But she was insistent, persuasive. And when I met her at the vet's where the cat had been temporarily housed - "Oh, really. You don't have to meet me there," I said. "No, no. I insist." - she brought her even more persuasive 3-year-old along.
"Nice kitty," the little boy said.
All right, all right! I gave in, despite the very nice cat's apparent head cold, despite his cockeyed walk and his fur that came out by the handful. I named him. I took him home. I snapped at my husband who said, "I thought we were going to pick out a new cat together."
The next morning I took him back to the vet. Because that "cold" had lapsed into something terrible: Richard Wilbur would neither eat nor move from his place on the couch.
The vet looked him over. Called me in. Asked me, "How attached are you to your cat?"
How attached? I said, "I've had him for less than 24 hours."
Fortunately, this particular vet is very interested in finding homes for stray cats. So, understanding the situation, she kept him for a week - a week! - at a very reasonable price, until he'd recovered. And once again I took Richard Wilbur home.
"Well, Dick," said my husband. "Are you ready to live with us now?"
Now, after a month with Wilbur, I must admit that this is a pretty nice cat. Handsomely striped, affectionate, gentle with nieces and nephews. He doesn't scratch the furniture or sink his claws in your thighs. He climbs trees efficiently, which keeps him safe from stray dogs. And, so far at least, he's not killed any small animals.
But this cat hates the outdoors more than any other cat I've ever known. Even on beautiful days, he scrambles to get in the house or to stay in the house. I've never once seen him stretched out on the porch in the sun or wandering around the nearby fields on his own.
And now, in his zeal to get inside, he's started waking us around 4 a.m. by scratching his claws across the tin roof just outside a second-story window. We can't figure out how he's getting onto the roof in the first place, unless he's climbing a tree whose limbs hang over the house and leaping to the roof from a limb.
Which is a very precarious journey, if it's the one he's making, because those particular limbs can scarcely bear a cat's weight. And Wilbur's weight has improved considerably since he's been living here.
But, you know what? He still wheezes. He snores and gurgles and sneezes, and clomps around on a leg that's obviously been broken at some point. He falls off the couch. He falls off your lap. He tries, but he never quite gets his aim right when using his litter box.
Yes, he's a very nice cat, Wilbur is. But I still miss my cat who died.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.