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In 1988, following a summer long, motorcycle trip across the United States, to the east coast and back again, I took a job driving a Yellow Cab in Santa Cruz, California. I was driving from five PM until five AM, four nights a week. Nancy was one of our dispatchers and she was a quintessential Cat Lady. There was also a driver who went by the name Bubba and he and I had become friends soon after I started driving.
The end of Thompson Ave, where I lived, is a dead-end road that was zoned as industrial so there are very few other residences on this end of the street and very little late night traffic.Because this end of Thompson Ave was just off of one of the main cross town avenues it became a convenient place for Bubba and I to meet up late at night when business had quieted down.
Next door to the small house I had been renting for several years was a storage complex and on the other side of the chain-link fence that ran behind the storage units was an overgrown vacant lot. One evening, while out in the cab, I met up with Bubba and he told me he went by my house and saw some kittens out in the road, in front of the storage place next door, so he gathered them up and took them in to Nancy. I figured they must have wandered over from the vacant lot and speculated that perhaps something must have happened to their mother.
A few nights later, after dropping off a fare in my neighborhood, I stopped at my house and as I pulled into the driveway I thought I saw something move at the bottom of my front steps, near the garage door. I didn’t give it much thought but over the next couple of days I realized that some small critter was eating from the food bowls I kept on the front steps for my two old, outside cats, LeRoi and George The 2nd. They were free to come into the house whenever they wanted but rarely did so. I finally caught a good look at a very small grey cat as it ran from the steps to the large gap under the garage door, so I knew I had a feral cat living in my garage and figured it was probably one from the litter that Bubba had found.
On the first of my three days off I got up and was sitting out in the living room, having my coffee. The front door was open and I heard what I assumed was one of my cats eating but when I looked out the through the screen door I saw the small gray cat on the steps, eating from George and LeRoi’s food bowls. At first I thought the cat was a Manx, due to its stub-tail but from the tail's odd shape, I concluded that it looked more like a birth defect.
As I stood up, to get a better look, she saw me through the screen door and ran down the steps where she slipped under the garage door. I decided I was going to have to capture her. I brought the food and water bowls inside and propped open the screen door. Inside the house, I hid behind the solid door so that I could see out through the gap on the hinge side. To my surprise, in a matter of a minute or so, the cat slid out from under the garage door and cautiously came back up the brick steps, sniffing around where the food bowl had been. Seeing the open doors, she nervously and hesitantly crept the rest of the way up the steps and looked inside the house. I had hoped, her natural curiosity would lead her in and she moved, almost shaking with caution, step by step into the house until she was well past the small love-seat couch that was against the wall, to the left of the door, and then I swung the door shut.
The instant the door closed she went absolutely ballistic, running throughout the house and circling the living room multiple times going over and under furniture so fast I could barely see her until she found a place to hide. Then she began to wail and cry but after a while she just went quiet.
Exploring the house, she discovered the litter boxes in the back hall and the food and water bowls in the kitchen. When I was at work she had the run of the house and could relax and sleep where she wanted but when I came home she would run and hide. As time went by, she stopped hiding so much and seemed to accept the fact that I was there, though there never was the connection that I had hoped would develop.
On one of my days off, I was sitting on my couch and I could hear Short-Cut in the kitchen, munching on her dry cat food. After she finished eating she appeared in the kitchen doorway where she stopped and stared at me for a moment, then she slowly crossed the living room, never taking her eyes off of me until she reached the couch. It was a large couch that pulled out into a bed and I was sitting on the far right end, watching TV. She jumped up on the far left end and in slow motion, climbed up onto the arm of the couch. While still keeping her eyes fixed upon me, she settled herself into a sphinx position.
The door was open, and from her perch she was able to see out through the screen door while still keeping a cautious watch on me and I knew that if I started to get up from the couch she would immediately jump down and run away. My thoughts, at that time were, “Oh well, maybe opposite ends of the couch is about as much affection as she can show towards me, as long as we each keep our distance, then everything is ok.” Just the fact that she was willing to be on the same piece of furniture with me, seemed like a form of acceptance.
One day, I came across a picture book of different cat breeds and as I looked through it, I turned a page and was stunned by the image of a gorgeous cat that was a dead-ringer for Short-Cut, except for the tail. The cat was a Russian Blue and from the look of its face and muscle structure I had no doubt that this was Short-Cuts dominant gene.
I don’t recall exactly how it happened, other than an apparent moment of carelessness, but one day Short-Cut got out of the house and I did not know if I could get her back. From time to time, over the next few days, thinking she must be getting hungry, I would go out and walk around the yard, calling her while shaking and rattling a bowl of her dry food kibbles. During the day, I was leaving the doors propped open just in case she came back and after the better part of a week, at the point where I was trying to tell myself to accept the fact that she was gone, she surprised me when she came trotting through the door and across the living room, headed for the kitchen. I immediately got up and shut the door and went to look in the kitchen where she was parked in front of her bowl, munching on dry cat food. She still might not like me but at least she knew where the food bowl was.
A few weeks after Short-Cut’s return I noticed she seemed to be putting on some weight and I suspected that she might have been up to some hanky-panky during her time outside. Later, while she was grooming herself, I noticed that her nipples were all showing a pronounced bulge and my suspicions were confirmed. My little feral cat was pregnant and as the weeks passed, I wondered what her kittens would look like.
Despite her returning home on her own there was still a gulf between us that I could never breach. She always kept her distance from me and had never known the touch of a human hand as I had never got close enough to pet her. I had always hoped she would eventually learn to trust me enough to come to me on her own but perhaps she was just unable to overcome the natural mistrust from her wild origins.
One evening, when I did not have to work, I had a girlfriend over and we both noticed that Short-Cut was restlessly going from room to room, making little chirping noises. We realized she was going into labor and we were both excited that there was going to be new kittens tonight!
When the time came, it was fortunate for Short-Cut that she chose to give birth under the small love-seat couch, which had a light, open wood frame and plenty of clearance space under it as it became apparent that she was having some difficulty with the first, and as it turned out, only kitten.
The kitten was stuck halfway out so we called a local vet and explained what was happening. She said I would have to pull the new kitten the rest of the way out and then cut the umbilical cord. She also advised that we bring Short-Cut into the office so they could check her out. Following the vet’s instructions, I wiped a pair of scissors down, with alcohol, crawled under the loveseat and touched Short-Cut for the first time as I pulled the stillborn kitten out of her birth canal and then snipped the umbilical.
I then lifted Short-Cut out from under the couch, placed her in a cat carrier and we drove her to the vet’s office where she stayed overnight. They x-rayed her and found no more kittens inside of her so I had them spay her and administer her shots.
When I brought her home from the vet’s she spent most of the day sleeping but later in the evening I was watching a movie, sitting in my reading chair, which was close to the door between the kitchen and living room. Short-Cut was in the kitchen, eating. When she was finished she came to the living room door and sat there for a while, cleaning herself, then without warning, she came over to my chair and hopped up onto my lap where she snuggled down and began to purr a deep, rhythmic purr.
To say that I was taken completely by surprise would be an understatement and I said;"Oh my god!Short-Cut!" My girlfriend came in from the bedroom to see what had happened and was shocked to see Short-Cut laid across my lap.
Now, for the first time I was able to pet her and was amazed at how soft her thick, light grey, Russian Blue fur felt as I ran my hand down her back from her ears to her stub-tail.
In all honesty, I was so choked up by this event that I was ridiculously close to crying when I said, "Nobody is ever going to convince me that animals don't know when we try to help them."
When I first captured Short-Cut, I had two other large, indoor cats named Spot and Streak. They were brothers who were born just before the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and I talk about them in a story titled; 'My Earthquake Experience'.
Around my fortieth birthday I was beginning to have a recurrent health issue on which the general medical consensus was that it was an allergic reaction to something. Testing revealed some allergic sensitivity to a multitude of things, including cats and my doctor recommended that I consider giving up my house cats. Eventually, I reluctantly took Spot and Streak to the local shelter, though before I took them down there, I wrote a short essay about them called, ‘Loma Prieta Cats’ and I guess it helped because a lady who worked at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter called me to ask a few questions and said she wanted to adopt both of them.
I really wanted to keep Short-Cut as I had a special attachment to her but as time went on I continued to have the allergic reactions and finally gave in and took her to the shelter. I gave them my phone number and said it was ok to give it to people who were interested in adopting her. Shortly after that, I received a phone call from a young woman who lived in Santa Cruz. She explained that she had adopted Short-Cut but had a few questions about her and I did my best to answer them all.
I was really happy to know that Short-Cut had been adopted and while talking to this woman, my impression, even over the telephone, was that she was a nice person who would give Short-Cut a good home. She gave me her phone number but I never called her.
It has been over twenty-five years and I would imagine that Short-Cut has passed on from old age by now, but I have always had a sense of guilt for giving her up, especially due to the fact that a couple of years later I came to the conclusion that neither she or any of my cats had anything to do with my health issue. In fact, eventually the day came when I trapped and rescued another feral kitten and told myself, the hell with allergies, I've had cats most of my life and I am tired of not having one so I am keeping this little guy and allergies are not going to stop me!
I have had several cats since then but I have never forgotten Short-Cut and still have a small picture of her, which I look at from time to time, and I always hope she had a good life.
I can't believe I'm posting a reply to my own original post. Oh well, I guess that's one way to start a thread.
It has occurred to me, being new to these forums, that maybe I should have posted Short-Cut's story as a blog. I don't know. My reason when I posted was to put it in a thread for Santa Cruz, though I have since been told there really isn't one. Nevertheless, my hope, though I realize it was really a long shot, was that perhaps, the woman who adopted Short-Cut or someone who knew her and therefore, knew Short-Cut, might read it and maybe it could lead to hearing from her to actually find out how Short-Cut's life with her was. I know it sounds impossible, but stranger things have happened in my own life.
I also thought that if I got any positive feedback, I might post another story about the feral kitten that I caught a couple of years after I gave Short-Cut up for adoption. If even one person is interested, I'll post it.
Last edited by Maj.D.Saster; 05-16-2017 at 01:39 PM..
Thanx!
I didn't know there was a Pets Forum. I just wish there was some place to post that was more specific for Santa Cruz.
I'll post Dusty's story in Pets.
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Why I posted Short-Cut's story
