Texas Hold 'Em & The Feral Five
Episode 09:25:2023 - Prompt: CATS!
Where CATS! took me…
The first time my partner drove us from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, we met up with a woman we had known during our Pasadena catering days.
Her name was Diana B.
She had straight, reddish-brown hair, and because when you live in Los Angeles, you think like a casting director, it’s easier to say she was a cross between Laura Linney and Julianne Moore.
Diana, like many folks I met at that time, was auditioning while catering. I later read she was also known for her creative tarot & astrological readings.
Flipping the cards of luck & destiny.
I don’t know why she moved to Las Vegas to become a professional poker player.
Apparently, Texas Hold ‘Em was her game of choice.
I remember thinking how strange it was to sit inside of a casino for hours with the constant ringing of slot machines in your ears. I also didn’t truly understand that poker was a way to make money.
I thought you only lost money gambling.
But there was Diana B. at the tables making a go of it.
I wouldn’t have held onto a memory of a woman I liked, but barely knew, if the news of her death wasn’t so striking.
It turns out, she didn’t spend all of her days inside a casino.
She was an avid hiker and outdoors person who left Vegas for Oregon where she met her fate in a run-in with a wild cougar. She was found days after she went on a hike with physical evidence that an attack by a mountain lion had taken place.
I couldn’t wrap my mind around the image of the woman I saw sitting at a poker table for hours with the woman who ran out of luck 300-feet from a main hiking trail at Mt. Hood.
One large cat can be the end of you.
Which brings me to the five feral cats we feed…
Dogs ruled the upper plaza when…
We first settled near Alhama de Granada, Spain about ten or so years ago.
They cruised restaurant terraces, trying their luck for scraps.
The dogs lived in a Disney movie all their own, a scruffy, hard-knocks family of mixed breeds making eye contact with humans only long enough to get a piece of jamon serrano.
A group called ASAP was formed (Alhama Street Animal Protection) to successfully rehabilitate & re-home the many dogs abandoned in the area.
Now cats populate the upper plaza.
There’s no shortage of cats, which makes it difficult to find homes for kittens.
And when cats aren’t spayed or neutered, you’re guaranteed to have multiple litters. My neighbor came up with an idea for cat birth control to put in their food since catching & fixing a feral cat is difficult. This doesn’t exist yet.
She suggested birth control because she had fed a feral cat who decided to deliver its kittens in the back yard after my neighbor went back to England.
The idea of having more than one cat, if any, was foreign to me.
I grew up with one cat… D.D. Puss. And then we had Other Kitty who I gave to my friends when I left the country.
Other Kitty became Anakleto and lived to be 22-years old.
But my partner grew up with a lot of cats.
Indoor cats. Outdoor cats. Family cats. Random cats.
And so he continued to feed the family of five next door in our neighbor’s absence. We both decided these were some good looking cats.
They were free yet fed, living a nice life, keeping mice & rats away.
Then the late night yowling began.
Four of the five cats were female and just hitting the age when they could breed.
Interloper male cats from far & wide began circling our little barrio.
How did they know?
I called our neighbor and alerted her to the situation, as she was supplying the food to care for the cats. They were “her cats” even though she wasn’t here.
Our neighbor returned and, over a period of 10-days, managed to catch every cat and have it spayed or neutered. This was a massive undertaking.
Each cat returned from the vet in an anesthesia daze with a clipped ear to indicate they were no longer in the business of procreating.
I now say something I never thought I’d say…
Five cats are fine but no more!
YOUR TURN: I found that even though I’m not a “cat person” I had many stories about cats that informed me of my feelings about nature, human & animal.
Living in the countryside with animals has changed my original urban need to control how animals live… at least to an extent.
We didn’t want nine cats!
Where does the theme CATS! take you?
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Cats?? I cannot write about cats. Nothing about cats resonates with me. They seem aloof and I am not good with aloofness. I love my outgoing lab who even at 13 is always so delighted to see me in the mornings, like he can’t believe his good fortune, all wags, pushing his head between my knees. I love exhuberant affection from my animals and my people, affection in large type, like my husband’s broad smile, his big twinkling eyes, that used to make even my most shy or hardest to engage little patients grin back up at him when he would pop into my office to change a bulb or fix the heat, or attach a bookshelf to the wall, cheerful bright yellow ladder or toolbox in hand, or put toner (what IS toner, even) in the printer, solving my impossible problems, and I love his generous affectionate wrap-around hugs, that used to fully envelope and practically smother and mortify my shy, tiny (cat-like?) mother, the hugs that are my haven. Admittedly I’ve never known a cat up close and personal. They must be affectionate in their own ways. But I’ll take my love, like my dog and husband, in Extra Warm.
I wasn't a cat person either, until I was. It's only the barest shreds of self discipline and consciousness that keeps me from becoming a quintessential cat lady. With too many cat escapades, rescues and reunions to recount here, all I can say is I find their personalities fascinating, their colors and coats fetching and am astounded -baring any neglect or abuse- how amazingly self confident they are. There's this that sums up felines well: Dogs look to their humans and think, "you feed me, you shelter me, you love on me and pet me, You must be God. Cats look to their humans and think, "you feed me, you shelter me, you love on me and pet me, I must be God."