Dewey's Grave, --- 100 Years Ago, He Was Only a Cat..

Use Straw, Not Hay in Your Outdoor Cat House...

..And, use the straw that you can get at a feed store or farmer's straw, not the short stemmed straw that's sold for decoration around Halloween time. Short stemmed straw doesn't hold heat and is not fluffy like feed store or farmer's straw is.

The 9 Lives...

How To Be a Good Cat...

Cats Are Healers...

The Cat With No Back Legs...

Trassima cats >>>

· A cat with no back legs was left in a shopping cart at Target with a sign that said "doesn't work right." A Target employee in Fort Worth, Texas, was collecting carts from the parking lot at closing when she found a cat in one of the carts. A small tabby sitting in the basket section of a red Target shopping cart in the far corner of the lot. No carrier. No box. Just a cat in a cart. There was a piece of cardboard leaning against the cart handle. Written in black marker: "Doesn't work right." The cat had no back legs. Both were missing from the hip. Not recently. The stumps were fully healed, covered in smooth fur. She'd been this way for a long time. She was sitting upright in the cart using her front legs for balance, her back end resting flat against the plastic. She was clean. She wasn't thin. Someone had been taking care of her. Someone had been taking care of her and then put her in a shopping cart with a sign that said she doesn't work right. The employee's name was Keisha. She was nineteen. She'd been on cart duty for three hours. She said she almost didn't walk to the far corner of the lot because it was ten minutes to close and those carts could wait until morning. She picked up the cat. The cat grabbed onto her vest with both front paws and held on. Keisha said that was the part she keeps thinking about. Not the sign. Not the cart. The grip. The cat grabbed her like she knew what a person leaving felt like and she wasn't going to let the next one go. Keisha put her in the break room. Her manager said she couldn't keep a cat in the store. Keisha said she's not in the store, she's in the break room. Her manager looked at the sign and the cart and said fine. Keisha took her home after her shift. Her apartment doesn't allow pets. She didn't care. She put the cat on her bed and the cat dragged herself across the comforter using her front legs and settled on the pillow and fell asleep in about thirty seconds. The vet said she was about four years old. Healthy. Well-fed. The leg loss was old — probably from birth or very early injury. No chip. Whoever had her had kept her alive and healthy for four years and then decided she doesn't work right. Keisha named her Cart. Cart moves around the apartment by pulling herself with her front legs. She's fast. Keisha said she was shocked how fast. She said Cart launches herself off the couch and slides across the kitchen floor and it looks like she's been doing it her whole life. Because she has. Keisha looked into a wheelchair — the two-wheeled carts that support a cat's back end. She found one online for a hundred and twenty dollars. She couldn't afford it. She posted on a local Facebook group asking if anyone had a used one. Fourteen people offered to buy her a new one. She got seven Venmo payments in two hours. She told everyone to stop. She said she only needed one. Cart got the wheelchair. She figured it out in one day. She runs now. Front legs pulling, back wheels rolling. She goes from the bedroom to the kitchen in about three seconds. Keisha posted one photo. Cart in the Target shopping cart. The sign leaning against the handle. "Doesn't work right." Next to it she posted a video. Cart in her wheelchair, sprinting across the apartment floor, sliding around the corner into the kitchen at full speed. The caption said: "Someone left her in a Target cart with this sign. She works fine. She works better than fine." Someone in the comments said: "She doesn't work right? She works different. Different isn't broken." That was the line. The cardboard sign is on Keisha's wall. She framed it. Black marker on brown cardboard. "Doesn't work right." Under the frame she wrote one word. Wrong.

It's International Cat Day!!!...

Captain & the Kitten....

Bringer of Rain · >>> · In a small neighborhood park, there’s a massive Maine Coon everyone calls Capitán. For five years, he’s ruled that little patch of green like a quiet king. Not aggressive. Not loud. Just steady. Watching from his favorite bench like a gentle guardian of the block. Then one day, a tiny white kitten appeared. He was beautiful. Fragile. And something wasn’t right. He kept bumping into benches. Planters. Curbs. He didn’t flinch at sudden movements. He didn’t track sound the way kittens do. It didn’t take long for the neighbors to realize the truth. The kitten was blind. Out there alone, he wouldn’t have lasted long. But he wasn’t alone for long. Because Capitán noticed. From that day on, the big Maine Coon never left his side. He started walking slightly ahead, slowing his long, powerful strides so the kitten could brush against his thick fur and follow. Like a living guide rope. When neighbors set out food, Capitán gently nudged him toward the bowls. When they crossed the sidewalk, he adjusted his pace. When they rested on their favorite bench, Capitán curled his massive body around the kitten like a shield. And when it rained? He made sure the kitten was safely tucked under the planter first. Only then would he settle in beside him. A local veterinarian later confirmed it. The little one was born blind. She said without Capitán, he wouldn’t have survived even a week outdoors. He wouldn’t have found food. He wouldn’t have avoided danger. Some neighbors offered to adopt the kitten. But every time they tried separating them, both cats cried endlessly. So the community made a decision. They kept them together. Now their bowls sit side by side. The neighborhood looks out for them daily. And Capitán still walks just ahead, with a tiny white shadow brushing against his fur. Because sometimes family isn’t about where you come from. Sometimes it’s about who slows down for you. Who shields you. Who chooses to guide you when you cannot see the way. And sometimes… the strongest hearts wear fur

Lucky...

The Tourist Nest >>> · · I'm a school janitor. Last Friday I found a cat locked in a locker. School's been closed for summer for three weeks. She'd been in there since the last day of school. Locker 142. Bottom row. Someone shut their cat in a school locker and went on summer vacation. She was alive. Barely. She weighed four pounds. She'd been drinking condensation dripping down the inside of the metal. She'd been eating paper. There were chewed-up notebook pages all over the bottom of the locker. Three weeks in a metal box in a dark hallway in July. She was looking at me when I opened it. She didn't meow. She just looked at me. I've mopped that hallway a hundred times this summer. The locker was ten feet from where I mop every night. She was ten feet from me every single night for three weeks and I didn't know. I'm a night janitor at a middle school in a suburb outside of Memphis. I've been here eleven years. During the summer I clean the building three nights a week. Floors, bathrooms, trash. The building is empty. Just me and the echo. Last Friday I was mopping the seventh-grade hallway. Same hallway I've mopped every shift since school ended June 6th. I walked past the lockers like I always do. I heard a sound. So faint I almost missed it. A small tap. Metal on metal. Coming from inside a locker. I stopped. I listened. Nothing. I started mopping again. I heard it again. A light scratch. I put my mop down and got close to the lockers. Bottom row. Locker 142. I pressed my ear against the metal. Something was alive inside. I got the master key from the office. I came back. I opened locker 142. A cat. Small. Grey. Lying on her side on a pile of shredded notebook paper at the bottom of the locker. She lifted her head and looked at me. She didn't meow. She didn't have the energy. She was skeletal. I could see every rib. Her eyes were sunken. Her fur was falling out in patches. She was lying in her own waste. The inside of the locker was covered in scratch marks — deep grooves in the metal paint from weeks of clawing. Her claws were worn to nothing. The locker smelled like something I don't want to describe. I pulled her out. She weighed almost nothing. I held her in one hand. I called the emergency vet twenty minutes away. They said bring her now. The vet said she weighed just over four pounds. A healthy cat her size should weigh nine or ten. She was severely dehydrated but not dead from it. The vet was confused about how she'd survived three weeks without water. Then I told her about the condensation. The building's AC runs on a reduced cycle during summer. It keeps the building around 78 degrees but the metal lockers in the interior hallway get cooler at night. Condensation forms on the inside of the metal doors. Small droplets. Barely anything. She'd been licking the inside of the locker door. The vet went quiet for a second. Then she said "That's how she's alive." The paper. The shredded notebook pages in the bottom of the locker. The vet said she'd been eating them. Not for nutrition. Cats can't digest paper. But chewing and swallowing gave her stomach something to work on. Kept the hunger signals at bay just enough. She said she'd seen feral cats eat grass and cardboard in desperation but never paper in a sealed space for this long. Three weeks. Twenty-one days. In a metal box eighteen inches wide in a dark hallway with no light, no food, no water except what formed on the metal walls. I keep thinking about the math. School ended June 6th. I started my summer cleaning shifts June 9th. I've mopped that hallway nine times since then. Nine times I walked past locker 142 with a mop and headphones and didn't hear a thing. She was ten feet from me. Every shift. For three weeks. The vet stabilized her on fluids. She's eating soft food now. She's gained a pound in five days. She's going to make it. The vet says she'll fully recover. She says it's one of the worst cases of confinement she's seen and one of the best outcomes. I don't know who did it. Nobody's come forward. The school is reviewing security footage from the last day but the cameras in that hallway haven't worked since April. The locker was assigned to a seventh grader. The school contacted the family. They said they don't own a cat. Someone brought a cat to school on the last day, put it in a locker, closed it, and left for the summer. I'm not going to say what I think about that person because my daughter reads my posts and I'm trying to set an example. I took the cat home. The vet bills so far are $340. I make $16 an hour. My wife looked at the bill and looked at the cat and said "She lived in a locker for three weeks. She's earned the $340." I named her Locker. My daughter says that's a terrible name. She wants to call her Lucky. I said there's nothing lucky about what happened to this cat. She said "She's lucky you finally heard her." She's right. I almost didn't. Nine shifts. Nine times I mopped past her. Whatever sound she made on that ninth night that I finally heard — a paw against the metal, a shift of weight, whatever was left in her — it was enough. One sound. After three weeks of silence. She's on my daughter's bed right now. Eating and sleeping and eating again. Getting fat. Getting safe. Locker 142 is open now. I leave it open on every shift. I can't close it. I know that's irrational. I know it's just a locker. But I mop past it three times a week and I leave it open and nobody's asked me why because I think they already know.

The Girl of His Dreams...