Mindy and Jimmy are Lonely no Longer
Animal Stories from All-Creatures.org

by Erica Wildman

August 2009

Mindy came to us in June 2002.

Our neighbors, an elderly couple, kept cats in their backyard. Never spayed or neutered them, didn’t feed them, just let the cats run around the neighborhood. One day in the spring of 2002, one of them, a little grey and white tabby, found her way into our yard by climbing the fence from her yard, crossing our neighbors yard in the back, then finding a hole in our fence to crawl through, she arrived at our back door and let us know that somehow she found out that this was a good place to come to when one was hungry. (Photo - 01)  Mindy and Jimmy

From that day on she repeated this process two, sometimes three times daily to fill her little belly. When she didn’t come at her regular time we would go in the back yard and just call, "Mindy", and pretty soon there she came, climbing the fence, crossing the backyard, climbing through the hole, to our back door. By this time she knew all she had to do was go downstairs for her meal. Once she finished eating she repeated the process in reverse. I realized right from the beginning that she was nursing babies and didn’t want her to get pregnant again, so took her one day to the doctor to be spayed. (Photo - 02)  Mindy and Jimmy

The following day I let her go in the back yard so she could go back to her babies to feed them again. (The Doctor had assured me she would still produce milk.) Soon came the day when she came accompanied by her kittens who were very happy to be treated to regular meals. These kittens in turn were spayed/neutered and tattooed.

One Friday night I looked out the front door and there was Mindy accompanied by one of her kitties. The strange part was that she had never come to the front door before, so I figured she must have a reason for this and I decided enough was enough, took them in intending to keep them safe in our house. Mommy and kitty had a wonderful weekend - until there was a knock at the door Sunday night. The neighbor had sent his neighbor, a policeman, to no doubt intimidate us, and he requested we return his cats because the mother was still nursing two or three other kittens in his yard. We brought mommy and her kitty back (I tried to put the kitten into the wife’s arms and she refused to even touch the kitten) and told him he must feed those cats so they would not have to go around the neighborhood looking for food. (He never even realized that Mindy had been spayed. Instead he pointed at her nice round belly [which got that way because for the first time in her life she had had regular meals] and happily announced that she was pregnant again.) He promised we would not "see the cat again". Well, he seemed to be feeding the cats because they never showed up again - until about 2 months later when I came home from church and happened to look over into the bushes in front of our porch. There, helplessly hanging from a broken rung of the trellis was our Mindy. She just looked at me silently imploring me to help her. She never made a sound.

I got her down as quickly and painlessly as possible. Wrapped twice around her neck was a 2-1/2" man’s leather belt and attached to that was an electric cord which had become entangled around the bushes. Mindy has not left the house since except to go to the Vet. I took her in the next day and she was OK. Mindy, who used to climb the fence and make the trip across the yards when she heard us call has not turned her head to the sound of her name since. Like they say, you haven’t been ignored until you have been ignored by a cat. She does, however, have a great voice, which earned her the name Mrs. Quackenbusch! She loves to go to sleep in our laps or stretch across me when I am in bed.

The story is not quite over, however. About 2 months after she came "home" for good I received a call from a lady asking me if I wanted my cat back. It turned out this was a lady who lived on a farm across the canal (we live near the Welland canal in St. Catharines, Ontario) way south of town. Her husband had stopped one day at his regular gas station and the owner asked him if he wanted to take this kitten home that had been hanging around the gas station for a few weeks. His guard dog kept chasing it. So the husband took pity on the kitty and took her home. It turned out they go to the same vet as we who discovered via tattoo that we had the animal spayed. Of course, I was only too happy to tell her she was welcome to keep the kitty especially since they had come to love her very much. It was obvious that one of the neighbors had gotten tired of the parade of cats and decided to take matters into his own hands and dumped them across the canal. This strategy seemed to have worked because there have not been any stray cats coming from that neighbor’s yard since. How sad, what happened to Mindy’s babies!

Sadder still was the fact that not long after that, the Kitty got out of the house, ran into the road and got killed by a car where the husband found her that night when he got home! I never told Mindy about her kitties, so she is still a happy "Mrs. Quackenbusch". The path she trod as she crossed the backyard 5 years ago is still visible in the neighbors yard. Every now and then I go take a peak and I remember what Mindy and her kitties had endured.

 

Jimmy Came to us in November 1998. He had been spending all Spring and Summer on our porch, contentedly sunning himself on the bench between meals. When the cold weather arrived and I had to cover the furniture I couldn’t leave Jimmy out in the cold with no place to rest. So I just walked over to him not knowing how he would react since he was a big cat. It seemed, however, that he had been waiting for this moment because he let out a big sigh of relief (or so it seemed) as he sat in my arms. He has not been near the door since. A couple of the other females love to snuggle up to him, especially Mindy. (Photo - 03)  Robin and Jimmy

Love Erica

(Photo - 04)  Petie and Mindy love each other

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