Confessions of the Cat Lady (5) - The Devil's Garden

I love nature. All of it. I've always cared about the little flowers and the big trees. The little animals and big animals. I've always worried about them and try to help them. It can be very peaceful.

There's a time in the spring when other people are mowing and trying to make things neat, I kind of let things go. Very much so. Honesty grew up in the dirt driveway in different colors. There was lady's mantle. They would grow up and be all tangled together with some of the monkshood and it was so beautiful, to me. You had to be the kind of person who likes to allow plants growing, not all regimented in neat little rows.

As far as the plants go, I had seeds from everywhere. I bought some. I borrowed them from other people. They just showed up. The monkshood and wolfsbane I planted behind the house in my little cottage. It had whatever kind of weird plants I could find to put in it.

I owned a little house on the side that was my house absolutely, that I didn't share with my parents. There are some quirks I wanted to try. I did have poisonous plants in it. Thorn apple. Thorny seed pods. I had one of those growing there. They're very sturdy plants. I just wanted to have a few dangerous plants. I wasn't going to try to kill anybody. They're pretty sometimes.

Thorn apple has a blossom like a morning glory. I saw some in Gloucester on a traffic Island. I wasn't going to do anything bad with them. They're pretty plants, foxglove and monkshood. My sister comes and looks at it and says, "What is this, the Devil's Garden?" She's a botanist.

In the front of the house I had what I called the Magic Kitty Garden. It had a little fenced-in yard. There was a bird feeder. There was a little place to drink. I used to call that the Buzzy Wilson Memorial Drinking Hole. When my cat Buzzy was killed by coyotes, that made me very mad, so this was a place for them to drink. It had wind chimes hanging over it.

Why don't I put that old thing that's been laying around the yard in there and plant stuff around it?

That was a great place for plants. I had a partly enclosed garden to make it safer for the cats because the dogs were constantly going by. The cats like catnip and they like certain kinds of grass. I planted catnip. I mostly kept that in the house in pots. Once I bought seeds of cat grass at the pet store. They liked it. Wide blades of green grass, not very fancy looking. They eat it. They roll in the catnip, but I don't think they roll in the cat grass.

People sometimes plant with themes. My gardens were always eccentric. I planted what I wanted where I wanted it. When I wanted. It didn't always pass approval with people who like their plants all in a row. I was careful. If the weeds weren't bad looking I'd leave 'em. Some of them aren't that bad. Wild flowers like my wild cats. Sometimes there's something wild that should be left alone.

 

Confessions of The Cat Lady (4) - Cats and Dogs

Cats are superior beings. They're a wonderful, charming animal. They make a good friend. They're not like dogs. Dogs are glad to see you when you come home. Cats - they are, but they pretend they're not. Some of them are a little more high maintenance than others. They get in habits. If it was your habit, it worked well. I never had any problem with them that way. 

Cats aren't dogs. They don't believe in doing the things dogs do. I like dogs, by the way. I had a lot of dogs. Dogs are pack animals and so are humans. They get along together. Dogs think more the way we do.

I ought to tell you about Ollie the Beagle. He was a friend of my cats, sort of. He lived down in Andrews Hollow, one of the newer houses down there. He was a funny dog. He showed up in the yard, baying at my cats. I told him to get lost. He kept coming back. I used to call him Elvis, from "You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog." Afterwards I found out his name was Ollie. 
 
I was taking care of my mother. It was getting to the point where I probably couldn't anymore. I would work mornings and then come back. I would leave everything she needed, very carefully, and then I would come back around noon or one o'clock, and I'd settle her again. This time she said, "The ground floor is a thunderstorm." The pillow case was leaking. I would never have sewn it up again. I put one pillowcase on one side and the other pointing the other way. I put some duct tape on it. When I came back she had managed to open it. The room was full of feathers.

I took the whole thing outdoors. Ollie had showed up and was barking and mooing at my cats, who were eating on the picnic table. I just lost it. I said, "Get out of here Ollie, damn it all. Go. Go." I started whacking him with the empty pillow cases and feathers. It didn't hurt him any. He started running down Gott Avenue towards the street. I was whacking him and whacking him.

I had a half grown orange and white kitten who joined in the fight. We all were flying down the road after Ollie. I think everybody enjoyed it, actually, Ollie and the kitten. We were laughing. I worked off some steam. We went right by the neighbors across the street. They were all sitting there watching. I gave up the chase when we got to the corner.

Ollie came back to visit us all the time. He liked my yard. He knew when I fed the feral cats. I'd give him a dog biscuit and hook him on a piece of nylon rope on the lilac bush. He could just sit there and look. He really didn't mind. My yard would get overgrown. There were tall wildflowers and cultivated flowers all over the driveway. It made a wonderful place for a dog to take a nap. That's what he did - go out there and take a nap. Right in the middle of the Cat Farm. I wonder if he thought I was maybe the leader of a really big pack that he was going to join, or what. He was kind of a member of our gang.

I did put my mother in the nursing home. She lasted there a few months. I think this was in the spring. I was cutting some of the long branches off the rose bushes. I was feeling bad. Ollie came up and gave me this sympathetic look and leaned against my leg. I honestly didn't cry much anymore, but I did cry. He really was being sweet. I always said afterwards that beagles know the Blues.

Cats are capable of sympathy. They're a little tougher than some dogs are. Dogs are more sympathetic, at least more showy. Sometimes when I'm feeling sad a cat has curled up alongside me. They're a lot more complicated than people who've only known one or two cats might think. I've seen them do things that nobody would believe. They're smart and they notice things. Some of them are super predators. They come from a family of super predators.

One time we were blowing a dog whistle. We were holding a stick for the dog to jump over. He'd run and jump over, then he'd be so pleased with himself. The cat was there watching. He walked over, and just from the sitting position he levitated over the stick and then he walked off. Cats do strange things.

 

Confessions of the Cat Lady (3) - The Animal Aid Association

Speaking of cats and what I wish I did, I helped Ruth Spoor begin the Animal Aid Association. This was the early Sixties, I think. Ruth was a famous artist who lived on Bearskin Neck. She loved cats and I loved cats. She asked me if I would help her, partly because she knew I had a place to put them. That first shelter was a shed-type barn that you'd put a horse or a cow in, and the chicken coop. None of them were especially marvelous. They're not there anymore. They fell down.

 

 

I had tons of cats in the cottage. I called it Cats Behind. We first put some of the cats into the chicken coop. There was a variety of weird cages. The ASPCA did give us some decent cages, after a while. We put those in the barn. I took care of mostly cats, a few puppies. That was the original home of the Cape Ann Animal Aid Association.
 

Ruth Spoor was one of the Cape Ann "old maids." She was a tough old girl. Wouldn't put up with any foolishness from anybody. There were several old maids. They had their own little car. Sometimes they had their own little dog. People would say snotty things to them. They had to give as good as they got. I was sort of in training for it. I never minded the life, the choices I made. Stayed single. I would have been a terrible parent. I did okay with the pets. I don't regret the weird things I did. I probably should, but I don't.

There was one time that the people who volunteered to help, and they were good, one time I came home from work and there was snow on the ground. The first thing I would do was check on those cats in the chicken coop. We had a little propane heater in there. There was a wooden cage with two kittens in it, sitting on top of the heater. One of the aids had gone to sweep up and clean the floor and forgot to take them off. Those two were kittens panting and panting. Smoke was starting to come from the bottom of the cage. I grabbed the handles quick and ran out the door. I put the cage and the kittens and everything in the snow. They were okay after that. That was a close thing. I was furious.

 

Mom and Mooey, c. 1953

I did get paid. Not much. I'd go to work, do housework all day, come home and take care of the cats. But they never gave me one bit of credit for it. Anytime they mention it anywhere, ever, I never get mentioned. That ticked me off right from the start. It really did. I didn't want them falling all over me. A friend of my mother worked for the Gloucester Times. She wrote an article about the Animal Aid and how wonderful it was. It was taken care of by this great big black dog, which was my black dog. Come on. They stole all my thunder.
  

Eventually they got enough money to have their own building in downtown Gloucester.

 

 

 

 

Confessions of the Cat Lady (2) - The Cat Farm

It's called the Cat Farm because I had a lot of cats there. They found me. Cats have always found me. They found my grandmother, they found my aunt, they found my mother. We are all the Cat Ladies. It was a big wild yard.

People will drop off mom cats out in the bushes. They have their kittens wild. They're not as good as a wild animal at taking care of themselves. What ones come to me I always fed. Some of them never really wanted to be petted. That was okay with me. I didn't want them all living in the house. They wouldn't fit.

I also fed the wild animals, which I shouldn't have done, but they were there and they were eating. They weren't ferocious. Probably the most ferocious - it wasn't ferocious, it was definitely a dog, but it wasn't a dog. Everybody called it the White Fox, but it was too long in the legs to be a fox. I first noticed it when I came around the corner of a building. It came around the other corner. We both stopped and yelped. I think he knew when I was feeding the cats with the dry food, and the birds, and he'd show up sometimes for that. I wonder if he was a cross between a coyote and a dog. He was tamer than a coyote. But he didn't want to see me, and I didn't want to see him.

It's not a good thing to live with your parents but I had to live somewhere. I always worked, but not well paying jobs. A lot of kids in that age, we didn't get a fancy apartment with that money. We stayed home, paid the rent, helped pay for the house. When we did get married, and I didn't, then we'd move out.

I saved up enough money, $1,000, to make a down payment on the little cottage behind the Cat Farm. That was mine, absolutely. That was my place. I paid for it, I bought it, I took a mortgage on it at the Granite Savings Bank. It was only a summer cottage. I lived in it all summer, as long as I could. It was a wonderful house. It had a fireplace. I put in a wood stove to make it last a little longer.

The cats went up to the State Park sometimes. Once I saw my old Tomcat coming back from the State Park. I think he was bringing his lady friend down. "You'll be okay here." I made little shelters out of boxes. It was better than living on their own out on The Point.

I did take the cats on the CATA bus sometimes. I got so I could go all over Cape Ann. Sometimes people would have object to it. But they were in a carrier. They couldn't get out. They don't sound any worse than a baby with diapers. I told them that once. Waaa. There was a lady who used to ride on the bus who was giving me the third degree about how I lived. Everybody is listening. It was getting to the point where she said, "Don't you mind living alone?" I said, "No, I like it." It was true. This tough, female bus driver laughed her head off and cheered, "Atta-girl." Grace wasn't a bad old girl. She just wanted to know everybody's business.

I was pretty much on my own. I took care of myself and my dogs and my cats, on my own. For a while I had rescue animals that people brought, before there was an Animal Aid Association. But my mother thought I shouldn't have the animals in a cage. They should all be out. So while I was working she'd let them all out. All the caged animals that were supposed to be in the shelter, all running around Halibut Point. I had to go around and say, "Okay, guys, suppertime. Suppertime." That would get them back in. But I didn't want to be doing that every goddamn night.

Finally my mother got to the point where the doctor insisted that she go to a nursing home because I wasn't there 24/7. He was afraid something would happen to her while I was not there. She went into Greycliff or Golden Living. I don't know what the devil the name is now. I felt bad. I told him, "She's happy here. She has her cats and her TV. All her things are here. She won't be happy in the nursing home."

I knew I wouldn't be able to take care of my mother forever. But I thought a little while longer, we could still hang out and do what we are doing. I was very careful to make sure I gave her a good breakfast before I left for work and would also leave her a big bag of peanut butter cups. I left her water and her radio on the night table, her walker near the bed, her commode down at the foot of the bed. It worked very well. She didn't fall and hurt herself or anything. I knew we couldn't do it forever, but I thought a little while longer.

He said he didn't care if she was happy. He just wanted her safe. So I said, the hell with it. If I didn't go along with it he would have me arrested for neglect. If he was going to have me arrested she may as well go because she'd have to go anyway because I wouldn't be there. I'd be locked up. The cats would probably be put to sleep. It wasn't worth the fight.

Confessions of The Cat Lady (1)

My mother was born in 1907 on Breakwater Avenue, Pigeon Cove, in a little house that was swept away in the Blizzard of '78. My great-grandparents the Areys would watch, from Phillips Avenue, the fishing schooners returning from the Grand Banks.



At home on Halibut Point, 1952
Mom, my sister Jane, and our 1941 Dodge

I was born in 1929. I always liked cats. Once my aunt's poor old grey mother cat had some kittens. One of them, Stripey, came over and looked up at me. When I picked him up and petted him he started to purr. I was gone for him. That was my first step down the Primrose Path. I was probably seven or eight years old.

I'd played with kittens before. But there was something about this little guy. He was a pale gray tiger. He had a horrible life later. All kinds of things happened to him. He lost an eye. He hurt his leg. I thought he disappeared. Then about two years later I heard something at the door. I opened the door. There he was.

Stripey had a bad life. My father was not good to him, for one thing. Stripey sat under the neighbor's bird feeder. They told him to get lost and complained to my father about it. Cats don't get it at all that they're being punished for something they did yesterday. My father - my mother should have stopped him - took the cat by the tail and swung him around and around and let him fly. He called it the Airplane Whirl.

When did the cats really start? I'd been living on Halibut Point quite a while. I started feeding the wild ones when my parents were still alive. That would have been in the late '80s, early '90s. Some of them did become tame. The last one I had, Devil Cat I called her, because she and her siblings were running around doing fresh little kitten things. I said, "That's a little devil." Devil had beautiful long, long orange fur. A sweet, laid-back cat, really.

And so was Buzzy, white with long hair. He came up the steps, as a half-grown kitten, and looked in the door. I didn't trust him to do that. Once in awhile if they got in they'd go crazy. They'd climb the walls, they'd climb the hutch full of dishes. They'd throw themselves at the windows. They felt trapped. It's hard to get them between you and the open door to get them out without the rest of them coming in.

He was definitely a feral cat. He looked at me and I looked at him. I said, "Buzzy, would you like to go in?" I took a chance on him. He was only about this big. He said, "Oh yes," he wanted to go in. He walked in, he walked around, he didn't go crazy. There was tuna, and a can of milk on the kitchen floor. He ate that. He had a little nap on the couch. Then he got up and he said, "Okay, I want to go out again." He did that all the time I had him. He was an in-and-out cat.

"Little Mutt acting snooty on the rose trellis, July 1955"

My neighbors the Vierecks had cats. I called one of them Muffer Paws. She had big fluffy paws. Then there was Circe, who looked like a Siamese. Well, it may have been a sacred cat of Burma. She was random-born, a random-bred cat. Of course she was a beautiful cat, and she was sweet and nice, and popular with everybody who came to visit. Then there was Cecil, a big strapping tiger with white trim.

Some of them used to walk down to the shore with us, down the trail to the Reservation when we first moved there. Some of them would hide in the bushes, wait until the others came back, and jump out at them. Sometimes we met dogs. That didn't go well. The dogs chased the cats and I'd yell at the dogs and the dog people would yell at me. That's just regular stuff. The dogs couldn't find the cats in the bushes. They didn't even want to, I think. Cats are good at disappearing into the bushes. Better than dogs, probably.

The cats do quite well but they usually have to have some kind of sponsor like me. I put a lot of work into those darn cats. I was the Cat Lady of Halibut Point. There must have been fifty to sixty over the years. Some were pet cats. Some were so-so. Some never got tamed. They were beautiful cats. They weren't scrawny or nasty-looking things. They had beautiful, beautiful coats. I fed them well.