Squeaky the Cat

I swore I’d never get another cat as I drove back from the veterinarian in January 2015. I was forced to put to sleep May, a cat I had for eight years, after she got sick. A grief counselor I was mandated to see by my job after my wife passed away in 2006 suggested I get a cat to replicate the care I gave my wife during her illness. May got sick and on Jan. 28, 2015, I had to take her to the vet for a final time. I couldn’t handle more loss, so I vowed no more pets.

A year and a half later, I was driving through Effingham, Ill., late at night with two cats in carriers in the back seat of my car when I looked back for a glance. Both cats were yowling and both had tipped their water bowls and litter pans, making a pretty pungent paste. One cat was reaching through the bars of her cage in an apparent attempt to trip the latch on the other cat’s carrier. They were Bear and Weasel, Holly’s cats, who were moving to Arkansas.

In December of 2018, I held Bear as he had seizures and died on the way to the vet. The following spring, I found Weasel between some boxes and a shelf. She had passed away, too.

So, again, I swore I’d never have another cat. I deal with abandonment issues as it is, having lost pretty much anyone or anything close to me. Losing pets was heart-breaking; creating lasting bonds is tough.

But this past June, I found myself and Holly heading to our town’s Pet Smart to adopt another cat. We saw him a week earlier in the store’s kennel, a lanky black cat that appeared shy, reserved, quiet and lonely. Both of us are somewhat shy and reserved, so his personality seemed to match ours. Little did we know he was putting on an act, perhaps to better his chances at adoption.

He was shy, reserved and quiet for a few hours after we took him home. He slunk out of his carrier and skittered off under a bed to hide where we thought he’d stay for a while. But he came out at 3 a.m., jumped on the bed and, after we pet him and welcomed him to our little fold, he became the crazy cat that he is.

We renamed him Squeaky because of his odd, squeaking meow. He’s less than a year old, but long like a panther and quick like, well, a panther, too.  The world is his scratching post. He uses the leg of our wooden dining room table to sharpen his talons; the table now looks like we have a pet beaver in the home that enjoys frequent gnawing. He also runs up to me when I come home from work, stands on his hind legs, props his front legs on my knee as if he wants to be picked up and then sinks his claws into me.

I’ve had four cats since I moved to the town I’m in. Each had distinctive personalities. May was the first and she was an APBA cat. Replayers know what I am talking about. I mentioned this fact years ago on the APBA Facebook page and several shared photographs of their cats sitting by their game tables, looking at the dice and players’ cards.

I’d roll games in the baseball room and May would sit with me, either on the floor or another chair. I used to leave the room open and one day I found the two APBA game dice missing.  I always left them on the table, but I assume May began playing with them when I was away and ate them. I sifted through her little box for a few weeks, searching for the missing die (Gives a new meaning to rolling craps, doesn’t it?), but never found them.

The other two cats, Bear and Weasel, would stop in to see what I was doing when I played my various replays, but then would move on.

Squeaky watches as baked potatoes 

cook in a microwave

Squeaky hasn’t shown any interest in the game yet.

However, the other night, Holly and I were watching television in the living room when Squeaky trotted through the room. Jutting from his mouth was a long pretzel rod. I keep a bag of the pretzels on the APBA game table to chomp during games and accidently left the room door open. Squeaky jumped up on the table and, without disturbing the cards laid out for the next game, the dice, notebook and pens, he was able to pull a pretzel rod from the bag and jump back down. He proudly pranced through the living room, the pretzel clenched in his mouth like an old George Burns cigar.

There’s hope Squeaky may become an APBA cat after all.