Most every neighborhood has one — the house that is crawling with cats. A single occupant can be spotted carrying feeding bowls out to a porch or front step and if the legend or label fits, a “Crazy Cat Lady” appears. An endless stream of felines come out from hiding places under the porch or behind bushes and garden patches. According to our neighborhood pals, the number of felines that exceed an acceptable number of stray or indoor cats to earn a tongue-in-cheek honorific were usually more than a few.
Those houses we passed each day always belonged to women, who appeared to live alone. As a newspaper columnist in our region of Ohio, my mother’s penchant for finding homes for abandoned cats and kittens became well-known. People knew how much she loved cats and how sorry she felt each time she heard of ones who had to go to new homes. She began to be known for finding the best homes in emergencies. While there was no visible drop off box spot on our front porch, the number of folks who seemed to need to find a home for their well-loved pets or a full cardboard box of unexpected kittens made a beeline to our house. Soon we all were sent out in the community to spread the word that we had some of the nicest, most well-behaved animals and they were available immediately.
Moving to Meeker not long after college, it soon became obvious my fate regarding felines was set in place by those years of following in my family’s footsteps. A cross-country ski outing cemented it. I found myself scooping up a few abandoned kittens outside near an old, dilapidated cabin and nestling them in my knitted ski cap I had tied around my neck for the ski back to our car. Their mother or the cabin’s owners were nowhere to be found. I never lived that down with a few of my friends.
I always felt comfortable dodging that CCL label even as I walked by a local elderly woman’s house in my neighborhood and realized that the unofficial cat count exceeded the requisite number required to earn the dreaded yearly neighborhood title. I did two unofficial counts, on my way down to the post office, as well as back. The numbers both exceeded the one-digit numbers I had allowed my mother over the years after my siblings and I left home. After she retired, she seemed to let the outside cats move inside more often, and I began to view her as someone that needed to take care of strays to replace her chaotic household filled with children.
“Well, your mother talks to the dogs!” a neighborhood boy taunted one day.
It was one arrow that never landed in the family soft spot. This was old news to my children and it helped they hadn’t been raised in a houseful overrun with either dogs or cats. So I once again I was able to look at myself in the mirror and not see a Crazy Cat or Crazy Dog appear. That has always been good news.
By DOLLY VISCARDI – Special to the Herald Times
