The cat-share program

Josephine, the Cat.

We will be traveling back to Montana, sometime September-December, looking at more houses with Vicky, our real-estate guru; maybe cross-country skiing; certainly seeing friends there. But it's clear that we're hunkering down in our old St. Louis neighborhood for much of fall and winter when...

...we have the chimney of our living room's little gray-enameled wood stove not just swept but scoured...

... and we have two big loads of firewood delivered...

... and we start up again an informal cat-share program with our neighbors' personality-packed little black cat.
 
Josephine was with us all of last winter while her family was in Cambridge, Mass. The dad did a visiting-professor gig at Harvard; the mom worked long-distance from their temporary home; the two little girls happily attended public schools.  We'd long admired their Josephine from afar.  She's more like a puppy-cat, following her young family around their front yard, scooting along with them up and down the block, guarding their front porch from a perch at the top of the steps.  She'd come visit us on our front stoop occasionally, and that was long before we began feeding her.  She'd roll around on the sidewalk and meow a bit and show off her fur coat. In the sun, it glistened like the finest pelt of little black bear.

We're cat lovers at heart. But we'd lost two great ones -- a 20+year-old calico and a 10-year-old white cat, in the space of a couple of years recently, and we weren't ready for another full-time feline. A loaner cat?? It seemed like a perfect way to ease back slowly into catdom.

A wary cat.

And then we fell in love.  Josephine fit right in, if a little warily at first because there were just the three of us rattling around this big old house.  Food -- even that disgusting, slightly greasy and too-aromatic dry stuff that she loves and that we once fed our own cats -- cemented our relationship.

There wasn't a laundry basket she didn't take as her own, or an empty grocery bag temporarily set down on the kitchen floor that she didn't dive into.

She'd sack out by the warmth of the wood stove, when our sofa was angled up next to it. She'd leave bits of her fine pelt everywhere. My vacuum cleaner did overtime all winter long on our prissy, white New Orleans-inspired (Alex is a NOLA native, I'm a convert) slipcovers...

Lest you think that all Josephine did was laze about, you should see one of the little gifts she'd leave for us on our front door mat...

Josephine is quite the mouser.

She also brought us a couple of equally dead sparrows, plus one of our beloved juncos. But mostly, mice. Our garage is nearly rodent-free!
 
And when spring came, she enjoyed the back deck as much as we did.

She especially liked the oat grass that I grew from a free sample I'd been sent of Renee's Garden  "Gourmet Cat Treats" seeds.

...Her new salad nestled on back steps between pots of squirrel-protected arugula and dwarf kale.

And then there was the planter of nasturtiums, also started from seed in our basement. Somehow, when they got into a planter outside, Josephine thought they'd make a bed! And also somehow, she didn't kill the plants.

Now Josephine's first family is home for good. We see her less often.

But whether her "owners" know it or not, we're still in the cat-share business. It started simply. We'd see Josephine outside and give her a rub.  That led to whistling for her (okay, we're dotty but we do have a bona fide way to whistle that worked on our white cat and now works on Josephine).  As I said, she is a puppy-cat; she comes when you call!

We hesitated about buying a new bag of cat food.  We thought her first family might not appreciate that. Recently, though, when Alex was making tuna salad, he poured the bit of tuna water into a small clean deli container. When Josephine came by a bit later, she slurped it up and licked the tiny plastic tub dry, moving it all over the pantry.

What made the difference about having real cat food in the house, however, was the recent week that the first family went on brief vacation and hired a neighbor kid to let Josephine in and out of their house. One midnight, as I was locking up in back, she was at our door, howling to come in.  I let her,  of course, got her some water and emailed the fam.  Later, I heard from them that they were on the trip.  Josephine seemed to want to stay here. I kept them apprised, we bought her catfood and fresh litter and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

Now we're back to seeing her a few times a week and when we do, dropping a pinch of cat food -- just a snack, really -- into a bowl each time. One recent weekday, her visit turned into a nap on the guest bed upstairs. Another day, she hung out in the backyard for a bit and helped us garden.  Here's how truly dotty I am: I bought her a Trader Joe's recycled-cardboard scratching pad with organic cat nip that you spread on top ($6 for it all). She spent about three minutes on it and that was it.

The scratch pad is still in a corner of our kitchen floor, and I still have hopes that she'll use it less dismissively. She is a great cat and greatly appreciated by her family. We miss her when she's not here, but we're so glad that they found her, cared for her, feed her, get her in at night and are truly back in her life full-time.  All bets are off, however, when the weather gets cold enough for firing up our wood stove. We'll have more than a part-time cat then, I'm betting. That radiant heat is way better than cat nip; it's like kitty-cat crack.