The Fight For Binky

This is Binky, also know as Bink, BinkBonk, Mr. Bonkerman, and Binkity Bonk. He's a nine year old American Ringtail who looks black, but a good ray of sun reveals brown tabby stripes. He's a menace with zero teeth, but claws that he uses to walk up furniture and your leg since jumping is just too hard a concept to grasp it seems. All he wants are kisses and to burrow under blankets with you. And this is the story of how we came to have this angel.

We didn't adopt Binky on purpose. We agreed to watch him for my husband's coworker, who had been kicked out of her apartment along with her boyfriend and needed somewhere safe for him to stay. We were already watching 7-8 cats, so what was one more? And who can say no to this face? But it turned out to not be nearly so simple as just watching him.

When he arrived, he was only 7 lbs with bald patches. He was desperate to get affection, but was also skittish enough that he needed to hide in the cabinet under the sink most of the time. If he couldn't get in there, he was shoving himself under various pieces of furniture. We'd often get home from work and find him stuck.

The other cats were definitely not his biggest fan. Since he was the oldest by 3 years, we assumed he would be calm and not bother them too much, but he proved to be more of a kitten than an adult. He was constantly annoying the others, namely Nugget, a ferocious beast of a sweet girl who isn't afraid to sink her claws into you (but is very afraid of you most of the time). He got his butt kicked many, many times as he tried to groom them, cuddle up with them, or, worst of all, make bread on and nuzzle like a kitten against them. Couple that with the fact that he was constantly screaming, and you have a nightmare.

I honestly didn't like Binky that much at first. He was just too annoying; or I was too used to how laid back my other two cats are. However, it's impossible to not love this cat. He kept growing on me every time he came to curl up on me or asked for kisses. You could tell he was so grateful to be taken care of. And once I saw him cuddling with a grudging Nugget, I knew he'd found his home with us.

But I mentioned we were only cat-sitting, right? Yeah, that's the most interesting part of this story. You see, we knew that my husband's coworker's boyfriend (let's call him Boyf, and her Coworker - creative, right?) had a drug addiction. It wasn't until I saw him that I realized how bad it was. My first reaction was, "Shit, this guy needs to be checked into a hospital, stat." This is relevant because we eventually found out that he smoked around Bink constantly, resulting in brain damage. He still has spams, even months later.

We then started hearing more and more about the abusive nature of Coworker and Boyf's relationship. The reason they were kicked out wasn't just because he was constantly smoking in the apartment, but also because they would fight loudly and she would put her fists through the walls. And he would put his fists through, well, her. At one point, my husband and I went with a few other coworkers to try and rescue her after a really bad night. We managed to get her checked into a hospital, but sadly, that didn't last.

The toll it had taken on Binky showed more over time. He's still extremely jumpy and doesn't like loud noises. And yet, when I was arguing with Coworker, she had the audacity to tell me that he was never afraid of her. And she wondered why he would always run away from her or escape the apartment.

I eventually gave her an ultimatum, after we'd had Bink a month longer than we had agreed to keep him: she had to pick him up within a week or we would find a new home for him. Since she never responded, the day after the deadline we posted on Facebook that we were looking for a home for the sweet boy. She immediately became enraged and accusing us of stealing her cat. She threatened to call the police, to stalk us to find out where we lived, endless threats. At this point she had been fired from where my husband worked, and we worried she would show up to fight him in the parking lot.

Not wanting to give Binky up that easy, I told her I wouldn't let him go back to any home where Boyf was. That, incredibly, pissed her off further.

The kicker in all of this is that her mom got involved. Now, that SOUNDS normal, but Coworker had told the managers a few months prior that her mother had died. Yet there she was, calling us through Facebook and spamming us to give her daughter her cat back. She kept threatening to take us to court, but either never got around to it, orrr the evidence of animal negligence I'd collected against Coworker convinced her not to. That didn't stop her harassment by a long shot, unfortunately.

I sent all my evidence over to the ASPCA in the hopes that they would be able to grant us ownership of Bink without us having to actually go to court. The detective I worked with told me to microchip him in our name for then, and if we were really taken to court they would back us up. Not long after that was when he cuddled up against the murderous Nugget and my heart adopted him. And just like that, we had three cats.

It took months before Coworker and her mother gave up. We had to block them on every app with a profile on it. The mother subscribed to my Youtube channel, but thankfully I didn't have any videos for her to comment on. Eventually, her mother told us to just keep the cat and God would deal with us in time. Then, with a healthy serving of slurs and insults against us, she was gone. And now we get to live peacefully with our little bundles of joy.