Revisiting Groucho

Because of something she did just two nights ago, I think Groucho deserves to have the story of her life with me told in more detail.

It was going on nine years ago, now, when I walked into the backyard, to find an obviously pregnant, yet still very scrawny, mustached Calico cat out there. I said, immediately, “I'll feed you, but don't you dare have those kittens in my yard, you Groucho cat, you.” What she heard, obviously, was, “Welcome to my yard, Groucho. Have your kittens here, and I will feed everyone.”

When the time came, she and her five kittens loved living in my backyard, and she knew that my patio was her kittens' personal play area; she even taught them to come to the backdoor, when they were old enough to eat by themselves. I think catching mice is something Specs picked up from seeing her mother do it—Groucho is a good mouser—but the catch of the day is never a meal for Specs. She waits by the door for a dish, just as she was taught to do as a small kitten!

With all good things needing to come to an end, the day did come when I placed the kittens with a friend of Maureen's, who happened to volunteer at a local animal shelter. Let me rephrase that. I tried to place all five kittens, but I ended up taking Specs back, after she had been spayed and socialized (at least to the extent that she was no longer the wild spectacle she had been). There was something about her that I had loved as soon as I saw her biting down her first Iris in the flowerbed a few weeks earlier.

Interestingly enough, over time Specs has become less tame than her mother in some ways. While she lives comfortably in the house and dutifully patrols what I am sure she considers to be her property every night, she still freaks out if I try to pick her up (jumping into my lap when it's her choice, is another story). Also, she makes what I call “the wild animal noise” (a low, throaty growl that ascends to a full-fledged screech, before coming to an abrupt end) in the middle of the night. It makes a person's blood run cold.

Groucho, on the other hand, will sit in my lap on the front porch, let me comb tangles out of her hair, pet her—even kiss the top of her head—and seldom does more than purr or emit a soft meow. If she wanted to come in, she would make a great house cat; however, she loves living in her insulated igloo by the stairs, and always wants to go back outside after a short visit indoors.

She is also no stranger to the enclosed area under the porch. I have a bed with pillows and blankets there for her in severe, winter weather, and thanks to a well-positioned window in the foundation, I can access the area from the cellar to serve meals. When I heard about the heavy snowstorm predicted for last night, I went down to the cellar, and reached out through the window, which swings inward, to make sure she had extra blankets. I am nothing, if not a thoughtful, well-trained human.

I took breakfast to her yesterday morning, opened the window, and starred at the sight before me; obviously, she had done some engineering work overnight. The bed, with its blankets and pillows, was now standing on its side, while she cuddled into the blankets that I had spread beneath the bed in order to keep the ground's chill away from her. The bed, along with the bedding, was, apparently, serving as a thick wall to keep other breezes from hitting her. I put the food down for her, and went back upstairs, shaking my head in admiration! I could not have done that with just my teeth and “thumb-less” paws.