No Ordinary Cat

Beaker: 1997-2012

You frequently hear of stories where pets choose their owners rather than the other way around, and that was certainly the case with Beaker. He "targeted" me while I was volunteering at the Forsyth County Humane Society, a "no-kill" animal shelter close to Wake Forest University where I was going to college at the time. I had consciously (and perhaps cowardly) chosen to volunteer at a no-kill shelter so that I would be spared the burden of bonding with animals whose days were likely numbered--and the temptation to turn my dorm room into a zoo. (I think Wake's policy at the time was to allow only pet fish in dorm rooms. Hmm.. How would I have gotten around that?) I was certainly open to the possibility that I might come out of the whole thing adopting an animal, but with a busy new life ahead of me, I wasn't going to push the issue. Two weeks before graduation and I was still holding firm...no endearing pooch or winsome feline had yet stolen my heart. But then I floundered. Here's how it went down: I was on "cat exercise duty" that day, which meant that I would turn half the cats out of their cages for a period of "leisure" time (which usually became more of a wild rumpus than an afternoon lounge.) Then I would round them back up from the four corners (and sometime ceiling) of the room and let the other half have a go. Upon inspection of the "first half," I noticed that there was a new addition: a HUGE orange tabby cat. "You're new," I said. He looked up at me as if to say, "Did you bring me any tuna?" A true Garfield type, I presumed. I looked at his identification card and saw that he was a 3yr-old male neutered domestic short hair named Beaker (had he once belonged to a chemist, I wondered?) When I opened his cage, I expected the same jubilant scamper that the other cats performed as they leapt from their cages, but Beaker lumbered out of his cage and cautiously sniffed around. I sat down in a nearby chair, and within a minute, he had jumped on my lap and was purring--well, it was more like a tweet than a purr--and drooling all over my jeans. Quite an unusual cat. I wasn't going to complain, though. After all, I had spent my whole life wooing cats, most of whom skirted under beds and scurried behind couches when I toddled after them with open arms. I had obviously perfected my skill over the years, and here was one who took the bait! For the next 15 minutes, I sat there and stroked his fur, all the while the wet spot on my pant leg getting larger from his drool. Then, it was time to rotate. I herded all the other cats back into their cages, but I left Beaker out for round 2 thinking he might really want to explore the room. Nope. He jumped right back on my lap and started the drool-fest all over again. I guess you can say he had me a first drool, and I made up my mind that if he were still there the following week (the last week I would be volunteering before graduating), that I was going to adopt him. I would figure out the details (mainly how to break the news to my mother who was NOT a cat person) later. On my way out, another volunteer (a very proper Englishwoman) inquired if I had seen "that new big orange cat, Bee-ka." "Yes, we've met," I replied.

So, I went back to campus to tidy up the end of my college career, and then I came back one week later. "Please be here. Please be here." He wasn't. There was a different cat in his spot, and there was no sign of Beaker among the stacks and stacks of cages. My heart sank. I went upstairs to sign in. One of the office workers passed me on the stairs. "Did Beaker get adopted?" I asked, already knowing the answer. "No, he's upstairs," she said and kept moving without offering any more qualification. (She never was one for chatting). "Upstairs" was the quarantine area. Hopefully he wasn't sick...but either way he was still available and I was going to adopt him! I rushed onward. As soon as I reached the top of the steps, I scoured the room for him. There he was--behind the secretary's (Maria's) desk sitting like a roast turkey in his cage. Bingo! "Is Beaker sick?" I asked Maria. "No, we liked him so much that we moved him up here with us." "Great. I'm adopting him." "Sounds like you've made up your mind," she said. "I have." "You know, he belonged to my sister and brother-in-law," she said. "Really?" "Yes, they're getting a divorce and have to get rid of some of their animals. They've had Beaker the shortest amount of time, so that's why they chose him." How could someone possibly get rid of that cat, I thought? Lucky me, though. "He's a laundry sorter," she added. "He'll collect your socks and put them in a pile." I laughed. Maybe that's how I would get Mom to accept him. "And, he'll give you a hug." "Come on, really?" I opened his cage door, and sure enough, he put both his front paws right on my shoulder and nudged against my face. (Good thing he was available for adoption or I might have spent senior beach week running from the law. Missing: SWF, recent college graduate, has a fat orange cat with her which she stole from the Forsyth County Humane Society.)

Beaker sat in my lap while I filled out the paperwork and was "screened" by Maria, who needed a list of all other pets in my house as well as their spay/neuter and vaccination records. I told her all the names of my step-father's umpteen bird dogs and explained that they were pure-breeds and that he did his own vaccinations. Easy enough. Now for the hard part. I had decided that if my mother wasn't going to allow me to keep Beaker at home (which she probably wasn't), that I was going to let him stay with my dad for the summer. Then I would take him with me to North Carolina where my Teach For America assignment was. I knew Dad would agree (he had always allowed me to have cats). But still this was not an ideal situation. One because those cats had always eventually disappeared and two because my father's various home remedies for animal ailments sometimes terrified me. ("Now, if a horse has foundered, take a rag soaked in turpentine and stuff it up in their hoof. Then set it on fire. This will drive the heat away from their hoof." Counterintuitive...and crazy?) No doubt his tonic for cat sickness was to let the cat go off in the woods and die. But it was my only choice. I would be gone for six weeks training for TFA, and Beaker HAD to stay somewhere. If I had been smart, I would have just failed to tell Maria about my plan--much less about the fact that Dad already had a cat (Rocko). But I did, and thus I was left with the prospect of having my adoption blocked. (As much as I could tell that Maria wanted me to have Beaker, I could also tell that she wasn't going to budge on the screening.) Damn. She had believed my (true) story about my step-father raising purebred English pointers and administering his own vaccines, but I doubt she would believe that my father's lay vet skills were equally impressive for a single barn cat. So I called Dad, and to my surprise, he said that Rocko indeed had been neutered and vaccinated, and he gave me the name of the vet. Ok, small victory, but was he telling the truth? It would be a freaking miracle if he was. I made the other call: "Hello, Allandale Animal Hospital." "Yes, I am checking to see if the vaccinations are current on my father's cat. My father is J.D. Gilreath, and his cat is named Rocko." "Let me check on that for you." Pause. "Rocko, you said?" "Yes," I answered, awaiting imminent doom (they had no such animal on file, I was sure). "Yes, he is on file as being neutered, and he had his shots last fall, so he's up-to-date." "Really? Wow. Thank you." Yes, really! A freaking miracle indeed.

Then I made the even scarier phone call: "Hi Mom. I've adopted a cat." "You didn't." "Yes, I did, and I've got it all figured out, so don't worry about anything."

I wasn't planning on moving back to TN for two more weeks, so Maria agreed to keep Beaker at her house until I could take him home. Mom came to help me pack. I decided not to talk much about Beaker until we had everything loaded up. Then, I would remind her that we had to stop and pick him up. When we got to FCHS, they had Beaker ready to go with an adoption package, and cardboard carrier. I had saved a spot in the front seat for him, but he certainly didn't look thrilled to have to make the ride in a cardboard carrier. I knew where he wanted to be: my lap. Right around the Fancy Gap exit on 1-81, he crapped all over the place. I guess I had made the right decision not to let him roam free in the truck.

By the time we got home, Mom had agreed to let him stay on the screened-in-back porch for a "trial" period. (Little did she know that she too had fallen victim to his spell.) We gave him a bath (as if the cardboard carrier wasn't torture enough), and then let him roam around the deck. In true Beaker fashion, he slouched along, snooping and sniffing. I opened his adoption package and found that his previous family had written a letter for Beaker's new "parent." It said:

Hi! I'm Beaker!

I'm appropriately named after Jim Henson's muppet, Beaker, because I frequently make squeaking and chirping noises when I'm happy, which is often. While I don't like being held much, I will cuddle up with you and sit all night. That is, of course, when I'm not "hunting." I love to gather things like socks and slippers and arrange them in a pile.

I have a little bit of an identity crisis because I frequently act like a dog. I will follow you around the house and I love to play with tennis balls. I sometimes even come when called by name.

You see, I showed up as a kitten three years ago and was taken into a loving home with many other animals. I've been an indoor cat ever since. I get along well with dogs, even big ones. I like to play with my brother cat, but sometimes I get fussy if our litter box isn't clean and I go on the floor right next to it. this doesn't happen often and I may not do it at all if I don't have to share a box anymore.

Please give me a chance and you won't know how you lived without my great personality in your home.

The letter explained a lot--his name (he hadn't belonged to a chemist after all), his tweeting, and his laundry sorting--but it didn't explain why they gave him up (or why they had let him get so fat or develop horrible gum disease). Maria had said a divorce. Maybe so. I never found out the answer to that question...all I know is that I luckily never had to give him up until the end.

Photos of Beaker right after I brought him home...

(in Mamaw's roses)

(peeking out of the screened-in back porch)

(sniffing newly purchased catnip)

(...lounging in the same catnip years later)

For the next twelve years, Beaker was a true friend and constant companion through the many trials and tribulations on the bridge from innocence to experience. After I graduated from college, he moved with me to North Carolina, where he "counseled" me through the challenge of teaching 7th grade English to restless tweens in the close-knit community of Louisburg (and when I say "close-knit," I mean that the ancestors of many of my white students at one time owned the ancestors of many of my black students.) In NC, Beaker and I shared a little white house with my roommate and good-friend-to-this-day Erin, and her two cats, Chelsea and Miranda. And on special occasions, Erin's boyfriend (now husband) Roberto would come for a visit and bring his Jack Russell terrier, Phoebe, whom I think Beaker preferred to the cats. Beaker proved to be quite the potent tonic for my weary teacher-soul. I would come home exhausted from school, and Beaker would be waiting for me in his window perch. Erin and I would muddle through dinner--usually tomato soup and rice--and the cats would keep us company while we graded papers (Beaker and Chelsea were lap cats; Miranda preferred to keep watch from above while precariously lounging in one of my jade-ite bowls on top of the kitchen cabinets). Beaker and I would then settle in for the night. He would snuggle up against my shoulder and stay there until about 6:00am when he would gently paw at my face: "Breakfast please."

All in all, we were quite the family at 28 Strange Road: Me, Erin, "Beaker Sneaker," "Chelsea Welsey," "Miranda Panda," and occasionally Roberto and "Phoebe Weebee." And when Lance entered the picture half-way through my tenure with Teach for America, he decided that Beaker's sagging pouch (or "tuna gut") deserved a name all of it's own, and thus it was dubbed "Ralph the Pouch."

Photos from North Carolina...

(the whole gang snuggled up on the couch
L to R: Beaker, Chelsea, Miranda, Phoebe)

(cats on Erin's bed)

(Beaker on the window perch)

(getting some fresh air with Chelsea)

(Miranda "guarding" Beaker. I can't tell: Does she want him to go or stay?)

After my two years were over in Louisburg, Beaker moved back to Tennessee with me where I was going to begin my Masters degree in English at ETSU. By that time, Mom had relaxed her restrictions on where Beaker could and could not go. Now, he could stay on the screened-in back porch OR in my room. (By the end of the summer, it was "everywhere but the kitchen," and by the end of the year, it was "everywhere but the kitchen when I'm canning in it." I told you he cast a powerful spell.) In August, Lance and got engaged, and in October, we bought the farm. Beaker and I moved into the farmhouse, which quickly became a construction zone. I would sit at my little desk and write papers while Beaker slept at my feet while various Billy and Joe Bobs lugged heating and air ducts through the house. I remember one specific occasion when I was writing a paper on "the Apollian and Dionysian tension" in Moby Dick. The HVAC guy nearly lost his duct when he saw Beaker. "Man, that's a big cat!"

And so it continued. Lance moved to the farm in June of the next year, and for the next several years, we hauled Beaker back and forth from the farm to "Mamaw's" during various stages of restoration. While at the farm, Beaker bonded with our beloved black barn cat, Poe, who though infinitely wiser and more agile than Beaker, still allowed Beaker to be "boss cat." They would lay at the foot of the bed and bathe each other in a pink-tongued frenzy, and then suddenly, they would begin to tussle, and Poe would inevitably jump off the bed and find another nap spot.

(Beaker and Poe sharing the window perch)

(Beaker in the hollyhocks)

(This is one of my favorite pictures of him. He looks so confident and content!)

(Stretching out on the floor)

("Reading" a biography of Thomas Jefferson)

(Checking out our "new" bathtub)

(A rare sight--Beaker in the snow.)

And then along came Thomas, whom Beaker sensed even as a wee zygote. For not long after I got pregnant, Beaker began peeing in Lance's shoes. I guess he thought it was all Lance's fault. No matter where Lance hid his shoes, Beaker would find them and deposit his angry liquid missive in them. This went on until we moved in with Mom because I was puking my brains out. And there Beaker laid with me day in and day out on the couch. He would get up with me when I scurried off to the bathroom, and he would cry when Lance hooked me up to IV's, thinking once again that Lance was the villain. (Poor Lance. Even after he told me that the father is responsible for the strength of the placenta--and mine held superpowers indeed--I still didn't blame him for my woeful situation. Beaker, on the other hand, cast a swift and harsh judgement.). As much as Beaker liked having 24-7 nesting time with me when I was splayed out on Mom's couch, I think he knew that I wasn't having as much fun as he was.

I figured that after Thomas came, Beaker would have a pee-fest in the nursery (and they don't make diapers for cats), so I decided it would be best for all of us if he stayed with Mom, who through a weak veil of objectivity let her heart be known: "I'll have Beaker all to myself!" Beaker never vilified Thomas the way he did Lance, but he didn't rejoice in his presence either. Flat tolerance was about all he could muster.

(Beaker with Thomas)

(on Mamaw's couch)

And so Beaker bunked at Mom's for two years, glad for the peace and quiet and nighttime nesting with Mamaw and Poppy. He would patiently endure family get-togethers, when Thomas and his cousins would wool him over. Usually the whole affair would take him by surprise, and before he could run under the bed or behind the Christmas tree, he would be swept up into the arms of an exuberant child. My niece, Reese, especially loved him, and stayed hot on his trail until she finally caught him and stuffed him under a blanket for some snuggle time. Like me, I think Reese would agree that time is best spent with a cat (even when the cat doesn't think so!)

(on the Christmas quilt)

(The "Christmas cat" among the packages)

(A rare glimpse of Beaker engaging in physical exercise)

(Not another family Christmas photo!)

(snuggling with Reese and Jackson)

(nesting with Reese)

This last Christmas, I could tell that poor Beaker had no fight left in him. He made little attempt to flee his pursuants but merely laid around and endured all the rug-rat love that spilled over him. He had become increasingly disoriented in the preceding months, often bumping into tables and rooting around for his food bowls right in front of him. And increasingly crotchety. On one occasion, he pooped and peed in the middle of the great room floor because Mom wouldn't come down from her bedroom and "attend" to him. She said when she walked out on the balcony and saw what he had done, he shot her a nasty glare as if to say, "See, this is what I'll do if you don't answer my yawls!" He had also lost a lot of weight. That was my cue that something was indeed wrong, because he was no Weight-Watchers poster-cat for sure. He was obese when I adopted him, and no manner of diet would slim him down (Mamaw's tuna treats didn't help either). So when I took him for his yearly wellness in August and saw that he received a "normal" mark for weight (his first ever!), I didn't rejoice as I would have five years ago. More than his abnormal kidney enzyme count, his bony frame told me that the end was near. And so I began to prepare for goodbye. Lance would be gone to Naval Officer Training Academy the last two weeks of January, so I would take that time to spend as much time with Beaker as I could. Unfortunately, though, he couldn't hold out for our last nest-fest. The Thursday before Lance left, Mom called me. "There's something wrong with Beaker." I could tell it was serious. I rushed over to her house and found him seizing and writhing about on the floor. I scooped him up in a quilt and rushed him to the vet, where we were told that he was having neurological malfunction. The vet squeezed his paws with hemostats but Beaker made no attempt to fight or pull away. He was likely brain-dead. So there Mom gently tugged on his tail one last time and I said goodbye under the bright florescent lights of the exam room.

It snowed the next day when we buried him. Mom and Thomas sat in the car while Lance and I dug the grave. I threw a spring of catnip in with him before we covered him up. Now, Thomas and I visit his grave when we do our morning rounds on the farm. "Beaker died," he says. "He's asleep in that hole. Mommy and Mamaw cried." That's about right.

Goodnight Beaker. Sleep tight.