The Humanity of Non-Humans

I’ve been working with animals all my life, for the most part. Even when it wasn’t my job, people would call me for advice about their animals, or simply ask for my opinion. When I was twelve or so, I found a litter of baby Cottontails in the yard of a neighbor who had long since moved away, leaving the yard overgrown with weeds. The six bunnies were screaming for hours before I found them, and I took them home and bottle-fed them, raising four of the six to adulthood before setting them free, despite the adults around me telling me that baby bunnies could not survive losing their mother.

My mother used to tell people I was going to be a veterinarian when I grew up. It wasn’t what I wanted, though. It was just what I did. I think I always related better to animals than I did to other humans. Animals were forgiving, accepting. When the situation was right, they were even loving.

At eighteen, I found myself, through some strange circumstances, gifted with a three day-old African Lion, and being told I needed to raise him. It was a challenge that I was a bit daunted by, but I accepted it, and as he grew, “Tiger” developed a loyalty to me that very few friends had shown.

A year or so later, I had mastered the art of bottle-feeding animals, when Wiley (what else would one name a Coyote pup?) came into my life.  I was working more than full time and feeding him on a two-hour schedule. My husband was supposed to feed him while I worked, but each day, when I arrived home, Wiley was screaming to be fed. Frustrated, I would tell my husband exactly how to hold the bottle and the pup, and he would swear to me that he did it just that way.

Finally, after two weeks of being met at the end of my work day by a howling baby coyote, I insisted that my husband show me how he was trying to feed Wiley, so I could show him what he was doing wrong.

He did it perfectly, and Wiley would have none of it. Terrified that something was wrong with my baby, I took him in my arms and offered him the bottle. He took it eagerly, from me. And so I became his mother, as well.

Somewhere along the way, my brothers blessed me with a feral cat. I don’t know what they thought I should do with a feral cat, but they said they found him and thought of me. “Bill,” as I called him, was mean as a snake, and got trapped in my front porch. He couldn’t get out unless he showed himself, so he spent weeks… perhaps months… in my porch, where he would attack me as I entered the house, shredding my jeans or my kneecaps with his claws. I patiently fed him daily, and changed his litter.

One day, I guess he decided I was all right, after all. He accepted me. He wanted to come inside the house, and from there, he took over the household and my heart.

That was the start of something wonderful, that being my lifelong love for felines. After Bill, came Scapegoat, Wendy, Mark, Bambi, Effie, Scamper-Cat… and later, S.T., Fido, Chopper, Chimer, Frank and Levi.

I began working with animals full-time in 1987, and always loved it. I loved cats most of all, and time after time, I would have cat “owners” tell me that their cat was better with me than with anyone else. We always seemed to understand each other, I guess.

I adopted Eve in 1989, and Byron in 1991. Peggy Sue found her way to me in 1993. Eve and Byron both died in 2001, and after that, it was just Peggy, until Josh wiggled and snorted her way into my heart in 2002.

They have never been buddies, but they mostly tolerate each other. Peggy is stoic and independent, but has become a lap cat in her later years. Josh is jealous, and often refuses to allow my lap to be shared until she tires of it. So I sit with Josh between Peggy and I. In the morning, I sip my coffee and the two occupy their spaces as if they were assigned.

One Sunday last year, I went to feed them in the morning, and noticed that little of their canned food from the previous night had been touched. I wondered why, but both seemed all right, if just a bit standoffish, and I didn’t think about it much. I assumed there was something wrong with the can of food, because I could not imagine Josh walking away from it under any circumstances. She is robust. Peggy has always been tall and lean. Even her tail is extra long. But she has never weighed more than nine pounds.

Josh, on the other hand, is probably supposed to be about the same weight, but I’d wager that she weighs in at about twelve pounds, maybe as much as thirteen. She has a hefty appetite, and even snacks on the dog’s food between meals.

But that Sunday, not only did they not touch the Saturday night meal, but they never touched the Sunday dry food, either. I happily gave them a new can of food on Sunday night, but it, too, went untouched.

Monday, it was the same story. Tuesday, a bit of the dry food disappeared, but I had begun noticing that Peggy was not herself. At age fifteen and a half, that should not have caught me off guard, but it did. In her entire life, she had never been sick.

After a week or so of lab tests and medication, she began eating again. In fact, she did very well for the next year. Then, a few weeks ago, Peggy (now seventeen years old) began losing weight. I could feel the difference when she jumped into my lap, and when I felt her body, could tell that she was losing muscle.

I began watching her behavior, watching her eat, and I realized that she had stopped eating her dry food. Each morning, she would jump onto their feeding table and cry for food, and when I poured it into the bowl, she sniffed it, but she never took a bite. She lost one of her canine teeth last fall, so perhaps she was having more problems with her teeth. I bought some small cans of food and decided to feed her one in the morning and see whether she would eat it. She did. Normally a nibbler, she ate the entire can before settling into my lap and purring contentedly.

After two weeks of this, I can feel the difference in her weight, her fur, her overall body condition.

Still, the most interesting thing I’ve noticed over the past two years, is this:

Josh, long-presumed to be a ravenous eater, began eating only half-portions while Peggy was sick. I fed a whole can of their Friskies, and she ate half, but I just assumed that was because Peggy got there first. When Peggy was not eating, I cut the amount I fed in half. Josh ate half of that, leaving the rest for her sister.

Since I began feeding Peggy a can of food in the morning, Josh sits and watches her eat, but never makes a move toward the dish. Sometimes, when Peggy finishes, Josh will move in and lick the bottom of the bowl, but she seems to somehow understand that Peggy’s needs must come first.

They sleep side by side, in my chair.

Josh has given up being selfish. Today, she sat patiently beside my chair, staring up at me until Peggy jumped down from my lap. Then she jumped up and nestled in, and when Peggy came back to tell me she wanted more of my time, Josh jumped down and resumed her spot beside my chair.

I am moved by this, and am not sure what to think. But, being a sister myself, I surely understand. I wish I could tell Josh that her sister will be all right. I could not, even if I spoke the language she does. Peggy may still be with us for a few more years; the oldest cat I have ever known in my work was twenty-six.

I wish I could be certain…but I suspect that instead, it will be Josh, after Peggy is gone, who will be telling me in no uncertain terms that her sister is indeed all right, and waiting patiently for us.