Kieffer's Finding Day

On this day in 1997...

I was 23. He was about five months. It was love at first meow.

I had just settled into my first single girl apartment after a year and a half being on the road organizing unions. I had a one bedroom that I loved in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, right off of I-95 and not far from the entrance to the PA Turnpike. This was important since I drove everywhere all the time organizing hospitals for the Health Professionals and Allied Employees. I had just started the job on October 8 and was enjoying what was then Columbus Day weekend.

I decided I needed a phone (landlines!) to go in my bedroom or in the living room or something. There was a K-Mart right next to the apartment complex, and it was an easy walk through the parking lot and over a fence that had a spot where somehow the fence was bent down low enough that you could climb over it.

I heard meowing as I neared the fence. I know the sound of a cat in distress. I started saying in my cat voice, “What is it baby? Where are you?”

Kieffer quite literally jumped over the fence and into my arms.

He was very skinny, very meowy, and obviously wanted to come home with me.

So I scooped him up and took him back to my apartment. Then I ran to the K-Mart as fast as I could to buy cat litter, a litter box, and of course, cat food.

I asked the K-Mart cashier if she knew anything about a gray tabby kitten in the parking lot. She said, “That cat has been hanging around for days but he won’t let anyone near him.” He was clearly waiting for me.

He had on a red collar with a bell, but no identification at all.

I did what a girl does in this sort of situation: I called my mom, also a long term cat mommy. I asked her if she thought I should put up posters about a found cat. She said, “Do you want to give him back to anyone who let him get in this condition?”

And it was quite true: there were no signs for a missing cat in the neighborhood, and he was in bad shape.

He ate his cat food, lots of it, used the litter box like a pro, and then went back to the pile of blankets I was using as a bed (I hadn’t even ordered a bed yet, and would be too broke to buy an actual bed for years so I slept on a futon mattress on the floor the entire time I lived in Bensalem!). He plopped down among the blankets and looked at me like, okay, Mom, I’m ready for bed.

Then I noticed something strange. I called my mom back.

“Look at your cat’s paws. How many toes do they have?”

Four. Like normal cats. But Kieffer had five. He was polydactyl, like Hemingway’s cats. He had giant thumbs, which I was about to learn, he could use. Really, really well. Like human thumbs. The evolution of the cat.

He was extremely playful as a kitten. We played for hours. He loved to chase a toy with a bell in it. There was no laser pointer then, but he loved any kind of chasing toy.

He was very much a single girl’s cat. I let him do anything he wanted, including sit on the table while I ate. I was vegan for quite a few of the years I had him, though of course I fed him proper cat food. I would never torture a cat by trying to make them vegan! But he loved my food. He loved for me to get a canned chickpea out and throw it across the room for him to chase and eat. He was also fond of canned whole peeled tomatoes, which I used frequently in stews. He would sit next to my bowl as I ate and take his giant paw right to my spoon, batting off a tomato and then chasing it and eating it. Yes, I allowed this.

We were extremely close, and he loved to be carried like a baby, even as he grew. Eventually he got to be nineteen pounds, most of it muscle, but that didn’t stop him from demanding to be held. I was tortured as I went to the Yale-Harvard game that year because I couldn’t stand to leave him, even with a cat sitter.

I got a great professional cat sitter, whom I ended up dating for awhile. This experience taught me that the topic of cats, for serious cat people, can last for precisely five dates. At that point, if you don’t have much else in common, you might have to move on. He was a great cat sitter though and remained Kieffer’s beloved sitter until we moved in 2000.

I discovered the power of the thumbs shortly before the holidays. I had baked some sugar cookies to bring up to our office in north Jersey for a staff meeting. I baked them the night before and placed them in a sealed Tupperware container on the counter. What could go wrong?

The next morning I woke up to find the Tupperware open, the cookies all over the floor, and one cat-sized bite taken out of each.

My reaction: “Those are your cookies. Mommy will make more cookies.”

He loved pumpernickel bread, and would climb to the top of the fridge to get it, rip open the package with his powerful paws, and eat much of a loaf.

By January he wanted company. He would sit at the window and cry a sound that means he wants another cat. So my mother and I went to the shelter at PetsSmart to find him a wife.

A litter of kittens had just been rescued from a Taco Bell dumpster at the Oxford Valley Mall. They had named the kittens, who were black and tuxedo, after Taco Bell food items: Nacho, Burrito, Enchilada, etc. I think we adopted Burrito but I’m not sure. She was a very shy tuxie, but she cuddled right into my mother’s arms. My mom said, “This one.”

I had cleared out a closet for her to have a safe space while she adjusted. Litter, food and her carrier were in there. Kieffer was the purrfect gentleman. He waited outside the closet, never attempting to bother her, for a couple of days. Within less than a week they were snuggling and grooming each other. Arranged marriages work out pretty well.

He absolutely loved her. I named her Katherine Christiana (all my cats have middle names. Loviefluffy is Loviefluffy Candace. Kieffer was Kieffer Andrew. Yes, his middle name was after Andrew K., my longest standing college boyfriend.) They worked together to create mischief, such as somehow getting down a vase with a dozen roses that a boyfriend had given me, even though I had placed it in a very high window. I woke to a giant crash and ran into the living room to find them calmly chewing on rose petals on the floor. Clever kitties.

Katherine died unexpectedly at age 7 of diabetes, and he grieved terribly. I was working from home at the time, and he stayed in a big basket under my desk for a month. He did not want to remarry, and by that time I had Philomena, a rescue calico whom he hated. He attempted to murder her, and the vet advised me to keep them separate, so for years I had upstairs cat and downstairs cat.

Before my long term partner MR moved in, I kept assuring him that I had “good kitties.” This made him nervous. Why did I keep telling him how good they were if they were in fact so good that it would be self-evident.

MR did not think that Kieffer was a good kitty. He objected to me feeding Kieffer at any hour of the night when he meowed. He also trained Kieffer to not get on the kitchen table or counters. Kieffer loved and respected MR. I think he though MR was the alpha cat. MR did not love Kieffer, but he took very good care of him. I worked so much and traveled so much as a Director of Organizing, while MR worked from home, that I think at one point MR complained about being a full time cat sitter. To which my response was probably something like, “Yeah, and?”

Kieffer died in January of 2012 after a long illness that was probably cancer. He lost weight until he was 5 pounds at the time of death. I spent tons of time and money at the vet over the years. Every time I had a union election or a strike, Kieffer would develop some kind of health problem. The vet once called him “Kieffer the most constipated cat I’ve ever known.” When I took up yoga in 2009, though, Kieffer’s health improved. He was so attuned to my moods that yoga helped him just as much as it helped me.

I was bereft when he died, but I was also in the process of leaving a job I’d had for a decade and there was a lot going on. I was still running a very tough campaign, and after we had to have him put to sleep (I am so grateful that I have been with every one of my cats at the time of their crossing of the Rainbow Bridge) I had to go to a giant meeting for the workers I was organizing. I was used to holding back tears then. I’m not as good at it anymore.

MR didn’t want any more cats after the ones I had died, so I was catless for a few years. I realized after that an essential fact about myself: having a cat is absolutely non-negotiable for my mental health. I adore cats, and I need one in my life who is my very own. I also need other cats, and volunteering at Project MEOW is one of the highlights of my week. Being in community with other cat people, near and far, is almost as important to me as being in community with people who share harm reduction values or my Zen practice.

There are some things about being a cat person that are different from being a dog person or a non-animal person. That deserves its own entry, so I won’t elaborate much, but I find that truly loving and caring for a cat or cats is a mark of good character. It’s not that dog people aren’t good - in fact they tend to be most excellent. But cats are beings you can’t control. They don’t bend to your will. You work around theirs. You build relationship, not obedience. Cats don’t obey. Neither do I.

Many of my friends are excellent cat women and men. I wonder if an unusual proportion of my male friends are serious cat people, as compared to the total population. At least four subscribers are excellent cat fathers. Cat women get attacked and stereotyped a lot, but you just don’t hear that much about cat men. I think that some of my fellow cat shelter volunteers are married to cat men, and one of our super volunteers is a kind of cat whisperer who gets called in any emergency. I trained with him once, and he’s a strange fellow, but I have a bit of a crush on him because he’s just so amazing with cats and devoted to them. We were talking about how we find cats who are microchipped and call the person they are registered to, and how upsetting it is when the person denies ever having had a cat. I remember him saying, “If someone called and said they found my cat, I would make them stay on the phone until my cat was back in my arms.” That, my friends, is a real man.

We miss our babies every day once they are gone, and I miss Kieffer. I know he would approve of Loviefluffy, even though she is so different from him. She is a very easy cat, and while she loves me very much and we are bonded like a witch and her familiar, she retains some of the nature of a feral cat. Kieffer was convinced he was my human child, I think. It’s different, but all cats are different.

I do believe in an afterlife, and that I will be reunited with Kieffer over the Rainbow Bridge. I can imagine my friend Marilyn (who died in March at age 24) petting him. She left behind two kittens she dearly loved who looked a lot like Kieffer.

Rest in a pile of chickpeas and canned tomatoes and pumpernickel bread, Kieffer, with Marilyn petting you until I get there. It will be a long time but I will see you then.

Love always,

Mommy.

Happy cat pose. Terrible carpet.

Me with Kieffer before he got sick. He loved to sit in my lap at the table. You can see his thumb! Also a product placement for Morton Lite Salt, which is really quite good.