Spot and Rover

We used to have this place in the back driveway where we dump all our bones and meat scraps.  Our cats would go and eat them and, naturally, a lot of stray cats did too.  Some of them were kind of wild and fought our cats, but most of the strays were nice.  We liked having them there, because when one of our cats died, we could just adopt the friendliest of the strays and have a new cat.


Our cats were always toms, because Mama and Daddy didn’t want any kittens.  We didn’t fix them, so they sprayed.  Our garage always had this strong smell of tomcat-urine.  You didn’t smell it much during the cold months, but in the summertime, it stank!  Our cats went off and got in fights with other tomcats.  They came back with big bloody places behind their ears.  Usually those healed up pretty fast, but sometimes they got infected.  The cats got  what are called abscesses back there, which can keep healing up and reopening practically forever.

When I was in Seventh Grade, one of our cats disappeared.  He was a tabby cat, and his name was Various.  He used to be one of the strays, but we adopted him when one of our other cats disappeared.  I’m the one that named him, because he was one of the strays for a long time before we took him in.  Linda and I developed our own names that we called him.  When Mama and Daddy said we could take him in, and they were asking what we should name him, I said Linda and I had already given him various and sundry names.  And naturally Mama and Daddy thought that was so funny that they had to name the cat Various, instead of something decent.

I named the next cats too.  These were two kittens from the same litter, that we got from Mrs. O’Connor, who was one of our 4H leaders.  I wanted to name them something really clever, so I thought I would give them dog’s names.  I talked it over with Linda, and we decided to call them Spot and Rover.  The big black one could be Rover, and the littler, black-and-white one could be Spot.

We got Spot and Rover really young, before they were even weaned, because their mother ran away.  Mama fed them with a doll’s baby bottle.  She gave them special kitten-formula that she made from a recipe she found in a book.  She wiped their bottoms with a washcloth, because really young baby kittens can’t poop on their own.  Spot and Rover thought Mama was their mother.  When she came into the kitchen in the morning, they would follow her around.  They’d climb onto her fuzzy slippers and take a ride.  It was very cute.

Also our big cat Big Grey thought they were prey.  Whenever we’ve gotten small animals, Big Grey’s always hunted them.  He stalked our hamsters when we have hamsters, and he stalked all the ducks we got, until finally we got smart and got an adult duck instead of a duckling.  I was really surprised to see him stalking kittens though.  I would have thought he’d know they were the same species as him.

Spot and Rover didn’t stay kittens for very long, and when they started to grow up, they also started acting really strange.  Mama said it was because they were raised by humans, instead of by another cat.  What Spot did that was weird, is he was really, really greedy.  That cat went at his food like he was starving.  Not catfood so much, but especially bones and meat scraps.  What used to be funny was when we got a big bone, like from a T-bone steak or something, we would put it on the ground and let Spot get a good hold of it.  You could pick up the bone and Spot would come right up off the ground with it.  And all the time while you were holding him in the air, he’d still be growling like he was afraid you were going to take his bone.

Rover’s thing was that that he really liked mint.  He liked it the way most cats like catnip.  You could put a piece of Doublemint Gum on the floor, and Rover would get down there and chew on it, and chew on it.  He’d purr, and he’d drool, and he’d roll around on the floor like an idiot.  He was the same way with toothpaste.  If you didn’t clean your toothbrush out, he would drag it onto the floor and you’d find it later all covered with cat-drool.  He was also that way if he could get hold of any Ben Gay.  One time Linda used some after she’d been playing tennis.  Rover got hold of the washcloth she’d used to wipe her hands, and we found him with it later, rolling around all over the bathroom floor and acting like a fool.

As he got older, Rover got really mean though.  He’d be all friendly at first, and he’d get up on your lap.  He’d cuddle and purr, but as soon as you relaxed and started petting him, he would turn right around and give you this vicious bite.  We stopped paying attention to him much after that.  We just let him go his own way and do his own stuff.  We still liked Spot though, because he mostly stayed pretty nice.  He’d go off and have fights at night like any tomcat, but other than that he was really gentle.  You could almost think he’d never stopped being a kitten at all, he was so gentle.

One day during my senior year of High School, Spot came home with a wound on the back of his head from a fight.  It healed up, but then it got infected.  Then the whole thing happened all over again.  Spot found this place for himself in the garage, in a box with some rags in it.  Days went by and all he did was lie in there and sleep.  I asked Mama if we shouldn’t worry about him, but she said no, cats could heal themselves.

Then one day I checked on Spot when I came home from school, and there were maggots growing in his infected spot.  I had some money that I’d saved from my after-school job, and I decided that I would take Spot to a vet and pay for it myself.  I couldn’t drive, and Mama and Daddy were at work, so I called Mrs. O’Connor and asked if she would drive me.  She came right over and I wrapped Spot in some rags and we went.

On the way to the vet he started making these horrible meows.  I’ve heard cats in the car, and they always sound like they’re in agony, but this was worse.  Each meow sounded like his whole inside was tearing apart to make it.  He writhed around in my arms, and he made these terrible meows, and I was scared.  I wanted to help him. -- Mostly I just wanted to know what was happening to him.

When I got Spot into his office, the vet said there was no way he could help.  Spot was already dying.  All he could do was to give him something to make him die without any more pain.  I started crying, but I knew it had to be done, so I took out my checkbook and paid the price for Spot’s injection.  Then I cried all the way home in Mrs. O’Connor’s car, and some more when Mama got home and I told her what had happened.

The year I went to college, my  family moved to Barstow.  Daddy bought a quarter of an acre outside of town, and he had a house built there.  Rover didn’t spend much time at the house.  He mostly wandered in the desert.  He’d come home sometimes to eat or to get some water, but days and days would go by and you wouldn’t see him.  Nobody much cared though, because he was so mean we didn’t want to spend time with him anyway.  One time while he was back, the entire end of his tail fell off.  Mama looked, and it turned out that someone had wrapped a rubber band around it.  That had cut off the circulation and made that part of the tail die.  Not very long after that, Rover disappeared again, and this time he never came back.

None of us were very sorry to see Rover go.  Mama and Daddy got new cats, and this time they got them fixed.  When the new cats got sick, they took them to the vet. You get a different feeling with a cat you think is going to last a while. My own cats are like babies to me, and I guess that's how my parents feel now about their cats.