The Man Cat

 

We have two cats.  One is a large Maine Coon who loves everyone as soon as she lays eyes on them.  If you walk into our house then you are automatically and instantly her new best friend.  The other cat is what's called a Man Cat.  Let me explain.

The Man Cat is a female calico shorthair and she likes men more than women.  We don't really know why, but we have a theory, which I'll explain after providing a little background information.  When a woman comes to our house for a visit, the Man Cat is largely indifferent to the whole event.  She may walk through the room, but she mostly just ignores the interloper entirely and just goes about her important cat business.  

When a man visits, the Man Cat takes notice of him right away.  At first she'll watch him from a distance.  Over time she'll get closer and closer and eventually, for a selected few, the Man Cat will end up rubbing against the lucky visitor's leg and/or sitting nearby and watching him intently.  We're not sure what causes this, but we have a theory.

The day we got the Man Cat, Tanya and I had been out on a Saturday afternoon running some errands.  She had wanted an orange tabby cat for some time, so we stopped by a large chain pet store to look for one.  No luck.  They had plenty of cats, but no orange ones.  We had given up our search for that day and were heading home when we decided to stop at one more place and see if they had any orange tabbys.  

They had only two cats for adoption.  One was an older gray and black one and the other was a calico shorthair kitten that was small enough to easily fit in the palm of your hand.  Tanya asked the attendant if she could hold the little multi-colored morsel.  When the door to the cage was opened, the calico immediately walked right up Tanya's arm and perched on her shoulder.  It was at that moment that I knew we would not be leaving the store without that cat.  We filled out the required paperwork, paid $40, and promised that we would take good care of her.  They packed her up in a box for us.  After spending another $100 on the necessary cat accessories we took her home.

We already had two cats at home so we knew we needed to introduce them to the new member of our family.  Now, if you search the internet for instructions on introducing a new kitten to your adult cats, then you will find tons of information and a lot of advice from cat experts.  We didn't know about any of this so when we got home we just opened the box and released her into the living room.  The Maine Coon was curious, but kept her distance until she could figure out what to do about the whole situation.  Our other cat slinked away quickly and hid for a long, long time.  Her eye color changed from vivid green to a dull gray color.

Ok, we had gotten that over with.  Eventually the other cats realized that this small, multi-colored ball of fury was not going anywhere and they warmed up to her a little bit.  She had a huge amount of energy and could be heard running through the house at full speed for most of the night.  Every night.  She had been born feral so it took some time for her to become accustomed to now being an inside only cat and living with humans.  She learned to tolerate us as her caregivers and she was sometimes affectionate, but not very often.

As time went by she got somewhat larger, but she was still a very small cat.  When she got a little older we realized that she was not your average cat.  I decided to do some research and quickly found that calicos are different.  Very different.  They are feisty, mischievous, high energy, and you really have to keep your eye on them so they don't do bad things.  The Man Cat showed no signs of outgrowing any of those things and today, some 11 years later, she still hasn't outgrown them.  She's slowed down a little bit, but she's still 100% calico crazy.

So how did she become a Man Cat?  We think she became one when she got very sick at about 9 months old.  She started having to rush to the litter box frequently to pee.  This got progressively worse.  We thought she had a urinary tract infection.  Now, if you have cats then you probably know that this can be very serious for cats.  Humans take antibiotics for a few days and they're usually fine.  You can't just get some antibiotics for a cat and administer them.  Giving a cat a pill and getting the cat to swallow it is almost as hard as climbing Mt. Everest with one leg in a cast and blindfolded.  

We took Man Cat to the vet and, as expected, they prescribed antibiotic pills and a very expensive prescription cat food.  Neither helped.  We had many trips to the vet but she kept getting worse.  She started peeing wherever she was when the urge hit her and she was losing weight rapidly, would not eat, and rarely drank any water.  We knew she was not long for the world unless we got some help so we took her to a different vet.

When all this was going down I was working for a company headquartered in Redwood City, California and I worked remotely from our home in Omaha, Nebraska.  Since I was home almost all the time and Tanya worked at a nearby restaurant I was the one who took Man Cat to her many vet visits.  She was too tired and sick to put up much of a fight so it wasn't very hard to get her into a small kennel for the trip each way.

The new vet examined her and did some x-rays.  He immediately found a bladder stone that was the size of a penny and way too large for her to ever pass on her own.  He told us that our only options were euthanasia and surgery.  We had become very attached to the Man Cat by this time and opted for the expensive surgery.

I dropped her off at the vet early on her surgery day and called several times to check on her during the day.  After work I picked her up and drove her home.  When I opened the kennel she quickly went into my home office and hid for several hours.  In the days after surgery she regained her energy, started eating again, and quickly returned to her normal activities.  The surgery was a complete success.  No complications at all.

I call her a Man Cat, but she wasn't quite a Man Cat yet.  We think that she remembers me bringing her home from her many vet visits and eventually the surgery and she equates that with me saving her from a very frightening and uncomfortable situation.  Many days I would spread out my work on the dining room table and she started laying next to my work papers on the table.  Then she started laying on my papers.  Then she started laying across my keyboard.  We had many long and meaningful conversations during our days together.  She was a good listener and we became very close.  She started following me around the house and eventually it got to a point where she was never more than a few feet away from me at any time.  When I left the house she would sit in the window and wait for hours until I came home.  There was always a lot of meowing and eventually I learned what some of the different meows meant.  Unfortunately, she started distancing herself from Tanya.  This was very disappointing to Tanya but there wasn't much we could do about it.  

Tanya actually made up the term "Man Cat."  One day Tanya was trying to get her to sit on the sofa and watch a movie together, but the Man Cat wasn't having it and kept trying to return to me.  After several unsuccessful tries, Tanya said something like "Ok, then.  You just go ahead and go.  You're a Man Cat!"

Over the next 9 months she completely transitioned into a Man Cat and she remains one to this day.  As I write this she's sleeping on a chair less than three feet away from me.  Sometimes she just drives me crazy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.