Quatro and Pojaoque, Our Kitty Boys

The last time I wrote here, my Dulce had died. Months passed, and the sadness of her loss was ever present. One Sunday in November, I was filled with a deep emptiness and I was missing her sweet presence. She had been in my life for such a long time, and now there was emptiness.

The next day I came home from work much earlier than usual, and just as I drove up, there he was, the smallest, sweetest little black kitty. I picked him up and that minute I became his mother. I knew where my black kitten had come from, his mother was a stray in the neighborhood. She is a lovely Siamese street-wise feral cat, obviously someone had left her in the neighborhood.

I knew she had a gray kitten. I had seen it, but she would’t let me near it. I had no idea there was a black one was well. It almost seemed like she was giving me her black kitten because she was near by watching. I put the little black kitten down, and he followed me rather than running to her. She sat there watching. She watched as I fed him. She watched as I cuddled him. I put him back down, and she didn’t move one inch to retrieve him. He just kept following me. It was almost like she had made a choice to give up one of her kittens because two were just to much. We call her Sophie because giving us her little black kitten was "Sophie's choice."

My husband would be home soon, and I wanted him to fall in love with the little black kitten, so I went inside. Pojaoque, (Po-wha-kay) the name we later gave him, was at the screen door crying for me. Again, mama cat sat at the end of the walkway and watched, not moving an inch closer. Finally Jim was home. He was so exhausted from work he missed seeing the little black kitten, so I made him go back outside. Within a flash, Jim was in love too.


Little Black Kitty

Pojaoque’s nickname if Pokie. He really helped to take away the emptiness left by Dulce’s death. I still think about her, cry for her and miss her, but it is amazing what one little stray black kitten can do to bring joy into our lives. He brought new life in to our old cats and us old people. He slowly won everyone over, including Quatro and Cassie. I have more on Pokie’s story on my Web Page plus lots of photos.


Pojaoque & Cassie


That was November. Pokie brought life and kitten excitement back into my home. Spring came, and my Quatro hadn’t been feeling well. He did things he never would have done before, like start sitting in Jim’s and my lap. For over fifteen or sixteen years, Quatro had let everyone know he wasn’t to be touched or messed with. He was a cat that someone had tossed aside, and he lived as a feral cat for long enough to know he didn’t like to be touched and he didn’t trust. He always had a bit of wildness in him, but he became down right affectionate to Jim and I. Maybe it was he needed comfort in his old age. Maybe it was the addition of Pojaoque in the household. He had become a grandfather-like figure in Pokie’s life and Pokie followed him everywhere. Pokie would cuddle with Cassie and learned to be a patient man from Quatro.

Quatro’s last weekend with us was a perfect Quatro weekend. It had finally warmed up outside and Jim was outside watering. One of Quatro’s many unique attributes was his love of water. If I had the humidifier on, he’d be right in front of it. He’d sit on the side of the bathtub when I took a bath and when we took showers, Quatro would hop in the tub with either Jim or I. We’d let him out in the front yard whenever Jim had the sprinkler on to water the lawn so Quatro could run in and out of the sprinkler like a kid on a hot summer day. He loved it. At the end of the weekend, he made a long moaning sound and laid down semi-conscious. I held him, but he wanted to be back in the bathroom near the bathtub.


Quatro

I don’t now how I would have ever made it through the death of yet another one of my cats if I did have Pokie and thankfully Cassy is still with us. Four of the pride of five cats made up of Jim’s two pampered girls and the three cats that adopted me died one right after another, every six months or so. It has been devastating.

Jim and I hadn’t expected to feel Quatro’s loss as deeply as we did. He had always been distant, like the semi-feral cat that just didn’t trust anyone enough to get close, but in a very subtle way, we had gotten closer to Quatro than we realized. My last memory of Quatro will always be looking out at the back yard through the glass door and seeing my two men, Jim and Quatro, side by side. They stood there like buddies on a street corner as they watched the sprinkler watering the bushes and compost pile in the backyard, both in deep Zen meditation, the water as their koan.

More about Pojaoque, his feral outdoor relatives we care for and my newest little sweet girl, Luguna tomorrow.