(LaPurr, Vortexia) – Being country folk, we’ve always had cats. Stella, one of our more recent ones, disappeared without a trace a year ago when, in a jealous rage, she boycotted our selection of a companion for her. She simply stalked off and never returned.
Important Stella history: The runt of the litter, she almost died when she was a kitten. Unfortunately, our heroic efforts to save Stella resulted in her suffering brain damage which manifested in a variety of psychoses, not the least of which was body dysmorphic disorder. Our pint-sized jet-black Stella seriously thought she was a panther. She stalked -- and killed -- snakes, rats and other animals larger than herself; animals a dog would run from. The offal she regularly deposited on our front porch was disgusting in the extreme. More than once, she climbed a100-foot-tall fir tree behind our house, refusing to come down for days. Indeed, she was so deranged, we actually breathed a collective sigh of relief when she disappeared.
Stella’s successor, Stu (the companion she loathed) is by far the best feline ever to grace our humble estate. He is handsome, clever, playful, winsome and lovable. In short, he is everything Stella was not. The only thing Stella and Stu shared in common – a cardinal quality any Neumann cat must have -- is that they were good mousers.
Which brings me to the present.
We began to worry when Stu suddenly no longer looked his dapper self. He began to roam at night. He acted distant. His tail looked creepy; as though he had stuck it in a light socket.
“Not to worry,” the vet assured us. “We call it ‘stud-tail.’ Time to get him neutered.”
Since ‘catting around’ is a cat’s unpardonable sin, and worse, his male drive was interfering with his ability to mouse properly, we made the dreaded appointment. Several days before Stu went under the knife, however, a black cat reappeared, spectre-like, on the edge of our field.
“It couldn’t be Stella,” we reasoned. But when she saw Stu she arched her back. When I reached for her, she hissed, bared her teeth at me, and stormed off into the woods as though she was the Queen of Sheba. It was Stella alright. A check with some neighbors revealed that Stella sightings have been occurring over the last few months at odd times, always ending with her running off before she can be repatriated.
So, Stu lost his manhood and is back home now. At least most of Stu is back (lol). Admittedly, there is some trepidation over the possibility that he could, like Stella, develop some post-surgery body image issues. He could turn into
Oh, the vagaries of cats!
Meanwhile, we watch and wait, on the lookout for a pair of green panther eyes shining at us wickedly from the woods at night. And we keep Stu close to home. Very close.
