Callie & The Kids

They say the best way to relieve yourself of the pressures that destroy you is to sit down and write down the things that bother you. I’m going to put that to an unusual test.

It’s been 14 years ago this summer that a beautiful calico cat wandered up into my yard. There was no doubt someone had dropped her off. She was beautiful, very friendly and house broken. She was also very appreciative of everything we did for her, which is the sign of an abandoned pet. I had two new cats in the house, but my landlord wanted me to keep her as a yard cat. I don’t remember if it was her or my girlfriend, but one of them named the cat Callie. Later that summer, Callie had four kittens; I named Midnight and Misty, my girlfriend named Sunshine and Sassy. The following spring, she had Patches in a litter of one. When we moved downtown, we took them all with us.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about taking care of animals at the time, and I wasn’t good at it. I never had children and these cats had suddenly become like my kids. I was terrified that they would get run over, but I couldn’t keep them in the house all the time. I did want to keep them safe though. In the house I lived in then, I was able to let them spend most of their time inside, but they wanted to go outside too. I built a fence with a fence roof for them and it had a dog house inside.. They seemed to like it okay, but in hindsight it was a mistake. All this was just for the female cats; Callie, Misty and Sassy. It wasn’t that I was doing all this because I was afraid they’d get run over (although I was). Bottom line was I couldn’t get them spayed. I had never heard of SNAP and paying a Vet wasn’t even an option for me.

As for the tom cats: Sunshine was a very insecure cat. He seemed to be lacking mental capabilities. He was very afraid of everything except us. We had to keep him inside. He lived a long healthy life until he got a rare disease which took his life in November, 2014. Midnight roamed the neighborhood for seven years. Everyone within three blocks of me knew him, and he visited every house. Sometimes, I’d go a week without seeing him. He left for one of his adventures on my birthday in 2012 and I never saw him again.

The male cats lived long, happy lives. At this point, I’ll take them out of the story.

On October 30, 2010, my life changed forever. That’s the day I passed out in my front yard and woke up eight days later. After I woke up, it would be another month before I’d see my pets again. Even then, I wasn’t able to move back into my house, but I was able to come by every day and feed the animals. Someone broke into the house, so I had to put a padlock on the front door. That was later used against me. On December 30, I walked three miles round-trip (with the help of a cane) to feed them. That was the last time I saw the three calico’s. When I came back the next morning, they were gone, as was the dog. Taken while they were eating, half their food was still in the bowl. A drug dealer neighbor who didn’t like pets had called animal control and told them I had moved away and left the animals behind.

Since I had spent the past two months in hospitals, the fenced in area (which I admit should never have been built) was in dire need of cleaning. People who I depended on to help me had let me down. I couldn’t get it open, so I fed and watered them and left, knowing I would be back early in the morning, at which time I could dismantle the fence. All this happened after 4 pm. When I called the next morning as soon as they opened, the cats had already been adopted out. Of course, that was a lie, but they were still gone.

Later that day, I talked to a woman who proudly admitted that she was the one who had taken the animals, and she promised to be back that day with the police to kick my front door in so she could get the house cats. In her words, the padlock was proof that I no longer lived there. The police knew better and refused to come with her. And I’ll tell anyone this, including the police: if she had showed up, I would have shot her. It may be wrong, but I hope to God that she reads this. I want her to know what she did to me.

There so happened to be an elderly man who I barely knew who loved to come visit the dog and play with him. With his help, I was able to get Rusty back. I moved out of that house the following month, into the house where I live now. My landlord is an animal lover, and I think that’s going to be a requirement for anywhere I live from now on. The two tomcats, along with my two older house cats, moved with me and lived many happy years in our new home.

A lot of people will laugh at this, and I don’t care. I don’t have a family; I have cats. They are my family. They are the ones who sit and take care of me when I’m sick. My parents do everything they can, but they’re too old to care for a man with COPD. There is no one else…just pets. Despite any mistakes I made, I never did harm to my cats and they were never short on love. When those three cats were stolen, I cried. And I cried many times. Eight years later, I still get upset thinking about them.

Vengeance is not mine to give, and I hope God forgives me for feeling this way, but I hope the bitch who stole my cats suffers for what she did to me. I don’t even know what happened to them. Did someone take care of them? Were they put in a gas chamber? Yea, I screwed up to a certain degree, and if I knew they were placed in a better home, I’d be happy with that. I just want to know. I don’t even have a picture of them.

Today, there’s another abandoned cat in my neighborhood, and she has three small kittens. I’ll have to call Animal Control to arrange to get her spayed, and I absolutely dread it. I’m told things have changed at the shelter, and I hope that’s true. I know bad people work everywhere, but there should have been a precaution for something like this. Heck, I never even got an apology. Maybe their rules justified taking the cats, but it doesn’t excuse the lie. And I guess it’s unfair to the people who work there now that I’m still angry, but I am.

They were wrong; I don’t feel better writing it all down. I still cry. I would give anything just to know what happened to my cats.