An Emotional Support Stray

I am a dog person! I have always loved dogs even though I’m terrified of small dogs due to a traumatic event where I was bit on the neck by one as a 7-year-old child. Big dogs are my favorite. St. Bernards, Huskies, Wolf mixes, German Shepherds, etc. Growing up I had two dogs, a German Shepherd/Collie mix named Buddy and a big dog named Sampson that to this day I am unaware of what breed he was. As you can see, I love dogs. I never once thought about having a pet cat! I didn’t want a cat! That changed one day in 2006.

It was actually Halloween Day of 2005, at 17, that I moved to a house in Bellport, NY with family. By family, I mean two of my five brothers and my Mom. Bellport is a suburb in NY and the house we moved in was surrounded by forest on either side, or at least what passed for forest in the suburbs. Basically, there were so many trees our neighbors were down the block from us.

Six months after we moved in, one of my brothers and I were sitting in the backyard, around the firepit, with mutual friends of ours. My brother was eating a tuna fish sandwich when randomly a tabby cat jumped onto his lap and ate the tuna from his sandwich. Shocked, he grabbed this cat by the scruff of its neck and placed it on the ground. The cat was relentless and kept jumping onto my brother’s lap to get the tuna. Eventually he caved in and put the tuna on the ground so the cat could eat it. He named her Phoenix.

Three months later, Phoenix, who was our outdoor cat, had a litter of kittens. (In hindsight we probably should have had her spayed much sooner, but then this story wouldn’t exist.) We gave some of the kittens away but kept two of them, Garfield and Milkshake. My Mom named the kittens. Garfield was an orange tabby kitten, and little did I realize he would mean the world to me, no matter how long it took him to convince me of that.

When Garfield was old enough to play and his eyes were open, he would follow me like a lost puppy. I did my best to ignore him. I did not want a cat! I was angry we weren’t allowed to have a dog, The house we were in was being rented and the landlord made it clear that we weren’t allowed to have “big dogs,” the only dogs that at the time I liked. (I’ve grown fond of smaller dogs in recent years, but I still love the big dog breeds.) Anyway, Garfield was steadfast in his devotion to me. Whenever I woke up, he was curled up next to me in my bed. I always placed him on the floor gently and continued to ignore him. Sometimes he’d bring me his mice toys and nudged my hand persistently until I caved in and played with him. Sometimes I would even feed him small pieces of cheese which he loved. (To this day, he has a small belly pouch because I fed him cheese, and he has a fondness for whip cream and vanilla ice cream. He’s a weird cat!)

Eventually, I left my Mother’s household and moved to Florida. This current stint lasted only 2-3 weeks but during this period was an extremely traumatic experience for me. It’s not worth going into those details though. Suffice it to say, I had no choice but to go back to NY and move back in with my Mom. At this time, I was apathetic, extremely numb, that it wouldn’t even register in my mind, nor would I feel it if you punched me. I literally felt nothing, an automaton of a person if you will. Garfield still did not give up his zeal.

Every day, in my callous state, he would do what he did before. It was like I never left. This time, he would sit in my lap and purr. Sometimes I would pet him, sometimes I would not. He still followed me everywhere and at this point I did not bother putting him on the floor. Even when I was eating at the kitchen table or in my room, depending on the day, he would sit on the table and watch me eat, or sit on the arm of the chair I was sitting in. As I said it depended on the day. Slowly I was coming out of my funk and starting to write and draw again. One day I ripped up a piece of paper and formed it into a ball, which I threw across the room. Garfield jumped in the air, caught the paper ball in his mouth, and brought it back to me. I threw it a few more times and the same thing happened. After that I trained him to keep doing it and to sit on command. Not an easy feat for a cat owner, let me tell you. (And since he is an old cat now, he won’t do it anymore. Sigh.) Still, even though he was the sole one responsible for getting me out of that particular depressive phase, I did not want to call him mine. Obviously, I was in denial.

In 2008, age 20, more traumatic things happened to me. I was assaulted by a group of men just because I’m a lesbian. (Yes, it happens in New York too! Thankfully, as a society I’m hoping we have grown but who knows.) I contracted Mono from sharing a drink with a class mate and as a result developed Epstein Barr Virus and Chronic Fatigue syndrome simultaneously, and I was in an accident involving a car, a scooter, and a pothole (It’s a very long story and it’s actually quite funny now that I think about it…), where my left leg got severely damaged and as a result I had to undergo surgery and have a rod in my left leg for life. It took me a while to recover, and even longer to learn how to walk again. Garfield continued to stay by my side. Instead of curling up next to my side like he was prone to, this time around he curled up next to my injured leg, and sometimes put his paw on it and would purr. It was like he was guarding it.

It was at this point that I finally accepted him as mine. I love him dearly. And he was part of a litter from a stray cat that was relentless in her pursuit of stealing my brother’s tuna fish sandwich. I guess in that specific cat family, stubbornness is genetic! Garfield is my perfect furry companion and the most loyal one. I may have to clean up his shit every day and make sure he’s fed because now he’s too lazy to hunt for his food (totally joking on the hunting part), but he is my familiar and I doubt I will even have a cat like him again. He saved me emotionally, numerous times, and although there have been stints where I had to leave him with my Mom, he is with me now, and we will never part again, at least not until he expires, which I don’t want to think about. He’ll be 15 on April 20, 2021.