Dusty, the Ducati Cat
Background
All of us guards that were posted at the junkyard knew about the wild cats that lived there, and the many rats, living in the junk piles, that made up at least part of their diet. I had once found two tiny kittens, abandoned by their mother, meowing pitifully at the door. They both died before I could get them home, and it broke my heart. But it also filled me with a resolve to prevent it from happening again! I caught one black kitten in a small tool shed (must've been part Tasmanian Devil, from the look of my arms when I got done), but decided I had to become more efficient. We found a very good home for "Taz" and I improvised a trap from a spare cage we had lying around. I'd park it by the dumpster, and wait. Kittens would show up, and whiff the wonderfully smelly canned cat food within. They'd circle around, distrustful of the enclosed space, but their stomachs always won out and in they would go. I'd wait until they were all chowing down, and pull the wire to close the door.
I caught a total of nine cats, and we found homes for them all. Some of the cases were real heart-warmers-- I'd catch a cat that looked like the one somebody had just lost or always wanted. I also lured one starved, fire-point Siamese-type out from under a dumpster with a lot of "kitty-kitty" calls and a can of stew, and just picked him up. He is still with us. At that point I figured I had the place cleaned out, except for that mysterious, elusive, shadowy cat that would shoot off into the trees whenever we came into view. It never came near my trap.
Capture
It was big, grey-brown, and shaggy, and possessed of amazing speed, but one night I came into the break room, and there it was. It got a very distinct "Oh, %#@*!" look on its face, and tried to dive out the door, but I closed it quickly. After a Wild Kingdom trapping effort, I got her cornered and stuffed into a box. I guessed that this wild, untamable, furious beast was the probable source of all those kittens and needed to be put to sleep.
When I got it home, I saw that it was indeed a "she" and had one blue eye and one gold eye! They even reflected different colors! And the very tip of her nose was white. I showed her to my wife, a great animal lover, and she was impressed.
Surprise
I assumed the hissing, snarling, growling, spitting, animal would be safely put away by the time I got home from work the next day, but instead found her snuggled up on my wife's shoulder, purring. Obviously tame at some point in her life. And she was actually a white cat! We decided to take her in, and named her Dusty. I wanted to name her "Ducati" after a motorcycle which has two headlights, one amber and one white, but wives always get their way. She took her in to the vet for a bath (which turned out, to Dusty's dismay, to be a shave) and had her tested for feline leukemia (felv).
She came back pink and indignant. We got bad news later-- she tested felv positive and was pregnant. The vet told my wife that Dusty was probably a goner for sure, and that we should have the kittens taken, since they would almost certainly have the disease and die young and miserable. But my wife had this feeling-- what if we got to Heaven and found out the kittens would have been OK? The vet had said _almost_ certainly...
The Kittens
So, after a number of anxious weeks, the kittens were born: one pure white, one pure black, and one white with a mere speck of black on her head. Whiskers, Cynder, and Spot. My wife fed (and, um, pottied) the little beggars until they were old enough to eat solid food. They all passed their first felv test! Two of them were felv positive with the second "first" test, but they all seemed very healthy. Of course, we had two quarantine areas, Dusty's and the box the kittens were in. After a while, the animal hospital staff got to know the cats' story, and once we found the receptionist in tears. She felt it was so wonderful that the cat family was being take care of. (Now THAT'S the kind of animal hospital you want!)
The Happy Ending
Eventually, all four cats tested felv negative on two tests, and the vet was amazed. She said they must have some pretty potent immune systems! The receptionist said we loved it out of them. The kittens are so incredibly spoiled and affectionate, having been bottle-fed. But the real mystery is Dusty. She is a beautiful white Persian, with ears trimmed and very spoiled herself. We didn't teach her to come into our bed-- she takes it for granted. If she's running to hide under the headboard, we can get her to instantly change her mind and hop on the bed if we pick up her brush. If she catches any of us on our back (i.e., the boys on the floor watching TV, or me in bed), she'll lie down on our chest, and say, with her eyes, "You may pet me now..." When we brought our new baby home, she felt it her responsibility to look after him. If he was lying on a blanket on the floor, she would curl up on a corner of it, just to be nearby.
So how did such a people-loving, spoiled cat wind up on her own? Did she get lost? Left behind when her owners moved? Dumped off? Did her owner die? Sure wish the cat could talk.
Well, I'm sorry if this story is too long, but I didn't know what to leave out. By the way, we keep all four cats indoors, and none of them can reproduce!
Email Lyle
Fri, 31 Dec, 2004