Take Me to Your Litter : At the Height of One Memorable Season We Were Feeding 12 Or 13 Cats a Day

My wife has tamed a wild cat, at last.

When Mona the incorrigible calico had one of her numerous litters beside our front porch, my wife tried to isolate and tame one of the five kittens, but it never worked out.

The one she favored was a charcoal-brown female she called Sable. That was more than two years ago. Sable still comes to the door every night and morning for her feeding, but if she ventures across the threshold and the door is shut behind her, she goes crazy. She darts about the house, climbs the curtains and leaps at the windows. She cannot be picked up.

That litter got us into cats. We were feeding not only the five kittens every day but also their surviving siblings from previous litters. At the height of that memorable season we were feeding 12 or 13 cats a day.

I had put aside my prejudice against cats and was trying to understand them. I bought several books on cats, one of which was complete enough to make me an expert on their origin, evolution, history, character and behavior.

I gave it all up one evening when a burly male adult bit me on the thumb with his canine teeth while I was trying to pet him as he fed from a bowl I had charitably filled.

Except for Sable, that litter and their older siblings have all vanished. The attrition of cats on Mt. Washington is atrocious. One by one, cats are picked off by coyotes, shot, trapped and exterminated, hit by cars, or they die, I suppose, of disease.

Then Mona threw another litter. (We have tried to catch her and have her spayed, but she’s too wily.) One of the kittens began coming to our porch with Sable and her mother. She was an orange tabby. Like all kittens, she was wobbly, playful and cute. My wife fell for her, and despite the disappointment of her experience with Sable, she set out to tame the new kitten.

From the outset it was evident that Mona hadn’t made this one as wild as her others. Before long it was possible to pet the orange kitten while she was feeding. In time she ventured into the house. The day came when she didn’t mind being shut in. I knew that the battle was won when she rubbed up against my ankles one evening.

“Why me?” I said. “ I’m not trying to tame her.”

“She likes you,” my wife said.

Over the months the cat became almost tame. She could even be picked up. I was astonished one day when my wife asked if I could stop by Hal’s pet shop and pick up a litter box. I had never had a litter box in my house in my life. The very idea seemed disgusting if not obscene.

I bought a litter box and, much to my surprise, the cat began using it.

“What shall we call her?” my wife asked one night. She was obviously extremely pleased by the way the cat had come around.

“What about Voltaire?” I suggested, having always thought Voltaire was a good name for a cat.

She decided to call her Marmalade. Well, it was her cat.

Marmalade began staying in all night. She began sleeping on my bed. I don’t think she liked me; like all cats, she was just being perverse.

Finally, my wife said she thought it was time we had Marmalade spayed. I said she’d better not try to take her to the vet’s in the car. It was too dangerous. The cat might go wild and cause an accident.

She borrowed a cat box from a neighbor. “Now,” I said, “how do you get the cat in the box?” We had never been able to get Mona in a box.

“I don’t know,” she said.

I walked over to the cat, picked her up, walked over to the box and shoved her in.

“I can’t believe it,” my wife said.

She called the vet’s. It was their lunch hour. They wouldn’t be open until 2 o’clock. I had put the cat in the box; I wasn’t going to take her out. She complained for a while but finally settled down to bored incarceration. At 2 p.m. my wife drove her to the vet’s.

“Well,” she said when she came home, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Marmalade’s a male.”

I was astonished. I supposed that she had examined the cat to determine its sex. She said she had only looked at the cat casually, and hadn’t seen anything, uh, definitive .

“She was a doll,” my wife said. “She purred when he gave her a shot.”

“He,” I said. “ He purred.”

I hope she can adjust to the sex change.

I wish now we’d named him Voltaire.