My Third Son, Stripes

Officially, I have two sons and a male cat. But as any cat lover will understand, in reality I have three sons--Joe, John, and Stripes.

Stripes has been part of my family for more than 12 years now. I adopted him and his brother (okay, his littermate), Tubbu, in the summer of 1998. (Tubbu developed a tumor when he was nine years old and had to be euthanized.)

At that time I was going through a separation and eventual divorce. As part of the agreement, my ex-wife got our three cats. It was a very difficult time for me, and I really needed a pet for companionship. At the time I had no idea that my relationship with Stripes would deepen and strengthen to the point where I now consider him to be an adopted son and not just a pet. Tubbu had a mean streak and I never bonded with him the way that I have bonded with Stripes.

When I was married, we lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. From time to time, one of our cats would get out. We would rush into the kitchen, grab a can of cat food, run outside, pop the can, and hope that the cat would hear it. If John or Joe were around, we'd recruit them to catch the cat.

Shortly after I adopted Stripes, I moved to a town house with a front door that faces the main drive in our community. Moreover, I was in no shape to go running after cats. I realized that I had to train Tubbu and Stripes to respond to my voice commands and hand gestures. In an emergency situation, I might not have time to run and grab a can of cat food. I also realized that I couldn't always grab a bag of cat treats every time that they responded the way that I wanted, so I had to find another way of rewarding them.

Finally--and this was the key to my success--I realized that I didn't know what it meant to be a cat, but I did know what it meant to be a young child, and I saw many characteristics of young children in both cats. So I began to think of them not just as cats, but also as young children who happened to be feline rather than human, and I began to treat them that way. You don't reward a young child by popping a piece of candy in their mouth every time that they obey you. Instead, you reward them with love, affection, and reinforcement, such as hugging them and telling them that they are a good boy or girl.

Much to my amazement, I found that this worked with both Tubbu and Stripes. Both had low-keyed, even-tempered personalities, didn't jump on anything taller than a dresser, stayed off the kitchen counter and stove, and didn't climb the curtains, so I only needed to train them to a few commands.For example, I trained them to go to their spot whenever I came through the door ("Tubbu, Stripes, go to your spot and stay"). Stripes would go half-way up the stairs. Tubbu would park himself in the hallway in front of the entrances to the bathroom and kitchen--right where I needed to go, of course, but hey, you can't have everything.

Tubbu never got out of the house, and Stripes has only done it once, even though I have left the sliding door to my backyard patio open by mistake a couple of times. One night, I went onto the patio to put out the trash and Stripes followed me out. I was worried because my new, motion-sensing patio light wasn't coming on. He walked along the bottom of the fixed part of the sliding door, decided that this was not where he wanted to be, turned around, and went back inside.

Every time that Tubbu or Stripes did something that I asked them to do, I would pet them and tell them that they were a good boy. Stripes has come to expect this as his reward. For example, when I am ready to go to bed, I find him and tell him "Bedtime. Time to come to bed with Daddy." More often than not, he will follow me to the staircase and start climbing the steps with me. Sometimes he stops and asks to make sure that we really are going to bed. I pet him and tell him to move on. When we get to the top of the stairs, I pet him, tell him that he's a good boy, and thank him for coming up with me. He has come to expect this and he waits for it.

Sometimes, of course, I have to indicate my displeasure, as when Stripes gets up on the dining room table and tries to eat my dinner. He has his end of the table and I have mine. I don't mind him being on the table while I am eating. In fact, I enjoy his company. But when he starts sniffing out my food, I hiss at him and tell him to go to his spot and stay. When a mother cat is training her kittens and they do something wrong, she hisses at them, so hissing is a good way of expressing your displeasure without hurting the cat.

There was one time when I did hurt Stripes, and I will never forget his reaction. It was about a year ago. By this time, we had become very close. I had purchased a new flea collar. The supermarket didn't have the usual cheap Hartz collar that I normally use, so I wound up buying a more-expensive one. There was no size marking on the package so I assumed that it was the same length as the cheaper one.

Well, it was an inch or two shorter. In fact, it was too short to fit around Stripes' neck easily, but I was so angry with Hartz that I kept trying. At one point, Stripes started to choke. I finally came to my senses and stopped, but Stripes immediately walked away and headed down the stairs. At every step, he stopped, shrugged his shoulders, and wimpered. I had never seen him do this before and I hope that I never see it again. If he were human, I would say that he was crying. It was as if he was saying to me "How could you do this to me?" He trusted me and I had violated that trust. It took a couple of days before he would come to bed with me again.

I've also come to understand that we can communicate with cats telepathically, and I believe that they communicate with us in the same way. My ex-wife had this ability. When I was getting new windows the next day, as Stripes sat next to me on the bed that night, I explained to him that people were coming tomorrow to replace the windows and that he should hide in one of his usual places if he got scared. I also drew mental pictures of the men changing the windows.

As I was doing this, I told myself that this was silly and wondered if there was any way that Stripes understood what I was saying. I felt stupid.

That night, instead of sleeping on the bed with me, he went under the bed (and probably into the box spring as well). This is one of his hiding places. The next morning, at dawn, he came out and went over to the floor-length window in my bedroom to see what was going on outside. I realized that he had understood everything that I had said except for the fact that it was going to happen in the future rather than immediately. (Cats don't understand the concept of future.)

I once worked with an animal communicator who told me to think of Stripes not as a one-year-old child, which I had been doing, but rather, as a twelve-year-old child. He understood a lot of things within his own frame of reference, she told me.

At that point, I started working even harder at understanding him. I try to understand his vocabulary. There are words that he says that indicate he is asking me a question. I ask myself what a twelve-year-old might be asking me. Generally it comes down to "What are you going to do now?" or "What are you going to do next?" I tell him and also pet him if I can. This seems to satisfy him.

Then there's his "I'm scared. Where are you?" cry. Generally I hear this when he is waking from a deep sleep or when I have gone to bed and he hasn't followed me up the stairs. I tell him where I am and draw a mental picture of something in the room. Usually he shows up a minute or two later.

Four years ago, following my triple coronary artery bypass, I was retaining fluid at a dangerous level. I had to go back into the hospital for several days and I didn't take the time to tell Stripes and Tubbu that I was going to be away. The night that I got back, I was in the bathroom. The door was open. Stripes came to the doorway and gave me a dressing-down that went on for a good two or three minutes. He used every word in his vocabulary plus a few that I didn't even know he had. His message came through to me loud and clear: How could I go off like that and leave them alone without telling him first?

Was I being unrealistic and reading too much into it? Perhaps, but I don't think so. I've come to the conclusion that if that's what came through to me, that's probably what he was saying.

After Tubbu died, Stripes and I grew even closer than before. We grieved together for several days, and he began to fill in the void that Tubbu had left in my life. Tubbu was a huge alpha cat who used to intimidate Stripes, and Stripes was very happy to be an only child. In the intervening years, Stripes and I have become so close that I can't imagine life without him.

Finally, I'd like to explain why I think of Stripes as my son. To begin with, I don't like the term "pet owner." A pet isn't something that you can put out with the trash when you don't want it anymore. Cats and dogs--and no doubt other animals as well--are living beings with intelligence and often a tremendous capacity for giving love. In fairness, because it's just me and Stripes, I have a lot more time to spend with him than people with families to raise, but the rewards of having a pet can be very rich if you are willing to work at it.

I don't even like the term "pet guardian." I think of myself as a pet adopter, or if you will, an adoptive parent. Having adopted a human child, I understand what that means. When you adopt a pet, you take on many of the same obligations that you do when you adopt a human child. (At least you don't have to put a cat through college!) If your adopted child is, shall we say, less than perfect, you don't send them back to the adoption agency. Instead, you do whatever you can to address the problem and help the child, just as you would with a biological child. If they get sick, you take care of them.

That's the way that it is with me and Stripes. He has a bad habit that I won't go into but that has cost me a fair amount of aggravation and money. When it first became a problem about seven years ago, some of my close friends and even one of my sons advised me to get rid of him. "You'll get another cat," they told me, "and it will be just as affectionate as Stripes." What they didn't undestand was that it wouldn't be Stripes.

Nevertheless I thought about it--perhaps giving him to someone with a farmette, where he could be an outdoor cat and his habit wouldn't matter--but because Stripes was also diabetic and required injections twice a day, I realized that this was not an option and that he would probably have to be euthanized.

Every morning he sits next to me on my bed while I put on my shoes and we adore each other. I couldn't look him in the eye and tell him that this was his last day on earth. Finally, I also realized one day that the thought of losing him was tearing me up 10 times as badly as his bad habit. That day, I decided to just accept and live with the problem.

Here we are, seven years later, and as I'm writing this, Stripes is stretched out in a chair next to me. He's been with me almost all day.

We've been thrugh some tough times together. This time last year, he sprained his hip and became ill at the same time. He couldn't hold down any food no matter what we tried. I was just about broke. There were two likely diagnoses--inflammatory bowel syndrome, which is treatable, and stomach cancer, which is ultimately fatal. I don't think that I could have afforded cancer treatments, but I managed to find the money to pay for an ultrasound test. Fortumately, it turned out to be inflammtory bowel syndrome, and by treating him for it, he's been able to have a good life.

I believed that I owed Stripes a chance to have whatever good years were still in store for him. You have no idea how glad I am that I made that decision. Just thinking about losing him makes me cry, and I'm crying right now as I write this.

In the musical Cats, there is a scene where the ancient cat goes to the other side of the heavyside mountain. I know that one day I will have to let Stripes go there, but please God, let that day be a long way off. I can't bear the thought of losing any of my sons.

Copyright 2010 Robert E. Simanski. All Rights Reserved.