Frankencat Steps Out – or Pha Goes Feral

Part I

Some of you may remember my cat Pha (short for Alpha) as the endgame in the chess match I called “Squirrel Wars”, which winterwoman was kind enough to make a Guest Post on her beautiful blog.. In the second installment I called her Frankencat, because she was a monster toward the squirrels when tied on a long leash outside, which she begged to do whenever it wasn’t raining.

Well, last night this cute and cuddly creature decided to go wild and be Frankencat toward ME!

Some background on her might be of help. Now I’ve no notion of her breeding, except that she’s what some people call a lynx-point Siamese, really just an exotic name for a blue eyed, mostly light colored cat with dark ears and dark stripes on her haunches and tail. There’s no real standard I know of, and to call a cat a lynx-point Siamese is a derogatory term to real pure blooded Siamese fanciers, who believe they are just good Siamese genes ruined by indiscriminate breeding. They may be technically correct, but the two I’ve owned have been among the finest pets I could imagine, good-looking but not pretentious, loyal, playful and loving. What else could an ordinary guy like me want from a cat? Pha was two years old when I adopted her from the Humane Society, and all they could tell me about her was that she had just given birth to a healthy litter of kittens a month or two before. We’ve been together two years now, so she’s been a content, indoor cat for at least those two of her four years pre-Frankencat. Before that, who knows? Abused, neglected, Top Cat’s lady love in one of the neighborhoods? I have no clue.

She’s been a very undemanding housemate, content until this past month to sit on the window sills and stare at the birds and other critters (of which there are a variety) outside my small apartment. She’s a very, very finicky eater, but hey, to each its own.

Then along came Frankencat, which I admit I had a large role in creating. Now it’s “in and out, in and out” in all kinds of weather and all times of day or night. Something dormant has awoken within her, and she’s emulating some of nature’s most efficient predators, the larger wild cats. I think to myself sometimes “My God, what have I done?”

My health has been poor in the last year and I’ve had to take her to the kennel a lot while I’m in the hospital, but she’s always loved it there as Queen of the Cats, which is how they treat her. As Frankencat she was there for 5 days in early July, with no noticeable change in demeanor. She’s always glad to see me and happy to come home.

But ever since my parents’ beloved 14 year old Welsh Terrier had to be put down in early summer, I’ve been wanting to slowly introduce Pha to their house in the hopes that in time they’ll become close friends and maybe enjoy taking her for a few days now and then if necessary (did I mention good kennels are becoming expensive?).

Last night was to be her second visit to bond with Grandma and Grandpa. I packed up her litterbox after dinner and headed over in my car, a normally routine 15 minute drive for a cat that’s always been a good rider. Last night? Huh unh! I realized after one block that it was not Pha in the car, but Frankencat. She meowed, paced and shed like crazy, jumping from one window seat to another, giving me wild looks, and standing on my lap whenever I’d let her. Clearly she thought I was taking her back to the kennel, and I spoke to her soothingly, telling her she was a good kitty and we were just going “over the river and through the woods” to Grandmother’s house. After all, she’d been there once before and there were no problems. But she was wild with feline adrenaline and fear.

Finally we arrived, and I got her in the house with no problems; she even made note of where I put her litterbox in their sunroom. She started to sniff around the whole house and I breathed a sigh of relief: Frankencat had been temporarily tamed.

I went outside to check on my herb, pepper and tomato plants. Deciding some were dry and needed watering I filled a can with the hose and took care of that. I went to re-enter the house through the sliding screen door and never noticed an antsy Frankencat on the other side until the door was a few inches open. I’m here to tell you, mice have nothing on Frankencat when it comes to getting through incredibly small openings. I kept the door almost shut and started to bend down to tell her to back up when “Wham!”, she had squeezed through that little crack and past me like a greased pig.

In shock for a second, I stood there waiting to see what she would do. She sniffed lazily around a few nearby bushes and I thought “oh good, this isn’t too bad, I can get her”. I took ONE STEP in her direction and “See Ya!”, she sprinted to some nearby woods. This was around 7:15 pm.

I went back into shock, because I knew that after about 20 yards those woods opened up onto a sidewalk and a very busy highway where cars are routinely over the 50 mph speed limit. How street smart was she, I wondered? Before I got her, was she really schooled by Top Cat? She’d certainly been nowhere near a road or highway since I’d gotten her, and I could only imagine the worst. I tried to give it up to God for a few moments, but doing that with a loved one can be excruciatingly hard…