The Cats Of Piran

We just came back from a trip to Slovenia, which included a couple of nights in Piran on the Adriatic coast. Seems like people aren't the only ones to appreciate life in this sunny, cobblestoned village.

Tales Of Twinkletoes

My recent post about the cat quilt has sparked some interesting memories from Daisy's mother, Robin, and two of her sisters -- Pam and Murphy (nee Crouch).

Most involve Twinkletoes, who it turned out had a pretty adventurous life. (I'm hoping for a real photo of Twinkletoes to emerge.)

There are some very serious asthma sufferers in this group, but their memories of their childhood cats are very loving and sweet:

Murphy: Hmmm, I wonder why Twinkletoes originally got that name. She was a beautiful graceful grey cat, with long legs. But in her adventurous life, she lost a leg to a jagged trap set by our across-the-street neighbor who thought the cats were killing the birds she loved.

Twinkletoes had her leg amputated and forever more moved on three legs as swiftly as she had on four. She was known to jump on the back of big dogs, brushing them back in fear (or pain maybe).

I don't think there were ever 25 cats at 1 S. Main Street [their address]; I believe that is a Crouch legend. What say the rest of you???

Pam: I will add that, although my sisters may dispute this, I always thought of Twinkletoes as being my cat, although I have no idea why that might have been true. I may have named her, but again have no idea why that name. And yes, she was a feisty cat on her three legs.

I agree that I do not think there were ever 25 cats at one time either in Pine Plains or on the farm.

Robin: I also remember Twinkletoes as being a feisty cat who lived a long life. I thought she had lost the leg due to a car mishap on Main Street. As for the cat population reaching 25, I'm pretty sure that it did. As I recall, three cats had kittens kind of around the same time. One litter was in the closet that was by the stairs, another was in a pile of stuff by the railing and the third batch was somewhere else. We already had several cats, of course. I wonder what Jennifer remembers.

Murphy: Yes, I was the one who found Twinkletoes in the trap, so it is a vivid image in my memory. In fact now I am having a hard time pushing it away. It was a big heavy nasty trap. I remember running to get Mom -- it was so confusing that it could be so. I didn't understand it. (Editor's note: Mrs. Holden apparently got an earful.)

Sputnik was a dear to me. Nice solid big head (he was black) you could really set your hand on. And attached by name to that blinking light we would go out in the night to spot in the sky. It's true that we all loved cats, and a shame that two of us can't live with them.

A Home Sweet Home For Chaz

Chaz hanging out at our place shortly before we took him to his new home.

I'm happy to report that Daisy and I found a good home for Chaz, the sort-of-stray cat we rescued last month.

A kind American woman had been looking for an adult cat, saw my ad on Prague.tv, and is surprising her son when he returns from the mountains on Friday.

As you may remember, we actually found Chaz's previous owners living in the nearby village of Statenice (his name was Sassy then -- not a good name for a male cat). They were just about to return home to Britain and seemed kinda happy to have their cat back, but inexplicably had done nothing in the way of ensuring that Chaz/Sassy would return home with them.

It's not that complicated, people.

Anyway, they promised to get in touch once they returned to the U.K., but predictably, I never heard a single word from either of them for more than two weeks. I had written them e-mails, messages on Facebook, and sent text messages. No reply.

Pretty irresponsible, in my opinion.

I figured I'd never hear anything from them, but the day after we found Chaz a new home, I finally got a message on Facebook from one of the owners, apologizing for not getting in touch, blah blah blah.

Too late.

I will give them credit for reimbursing us for the costs of the surgery on Chaz's ear, from an infection he acquired while he was out on his own, but that's the only credit I will give them.

If you count Oscar, Chaz is the fifth stray cat we've rescued in the past two years or so. I think we need to put up one of these signs outside our front gate:

A Visiting Mom, A Broken Hip And A Persian Cat

My mom, just a few hours after she arrived, chilling out on our back terrace.

Let me tell you a story about my mother, a Persian cat, and a broken bone.

My father died in February.

While I was in Cumberland, in western Maryland, for the funeral, I invited my mother to come to Prague for a month this summer. Take her mind off things. Escape from reality for a bit. We'd even take her with us on our annual two-week holiday in Brela, Croatia.

My mom's 76. I was pretty worried about her getting here safely. She's been to Prague before but had never flown solo. I got her a wheelchair in Baltimore and Atlanta, and she was whisked through security right to her gate.

I thought to myself that I will only be able to relax when I finally see her walk out of baggage claim at the airport, her suitcase rolling behind her.

She did just that on the morning of July 5.

On the afternoon of July 7, she fell outside my house and fractured her hip.

She was on the back porch when she missed a small step and went down, hard. I was in the house and heard her calling my name. I found her splayed out on the deck. My mom used to be a registered nurse, and she was hoping that her hip was only bruised, but suspected otherwise.


Hanging out with Emma, before the fall.

She was in a lot of pain. I got her into a chair and called an ambulance, which took her on a wild, jarring ride to Prague's Military Hospital. (I was shocked by the fact that most cars in Prague don't pay any attention to ambulances or sirens. We narrowly avoided at least two accidents on the way to the hospital because of idiotic drivers not slowing down for us.)

X-rays revealed a clean break in her hip bone. She was scheduled for emergency surgery at 9 p.m. that night.

The surgery went well. The surgeon put a metal plate and about four or five screws into her hip.

I made twice daily visits to the hospital, bringing her decent food and drink and newspapers and magazines and filling an iPod with audiobooks (Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes") and podcasts (she was especially partial to the ongoing series by Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington).

She was very, very brave through it all, especially considering she doesn't speak a word of Czech.

She was discharged on Friday, July 16. She's home now, walking around on crutches, learning how to walk up and down stairs, and giving herself a daily injection to prevent blood clots. She's working very hard, and I hope everything will be OK.

I am returning with her to the United States on August 19. She'll need someone to accompany her through the maze of travel.

Medicare doesn't cover the cost of any injuries suffered outside the United States. And she had no other insurance.

And, of course, the dream of taking my mother to Croatia for two weeks was shattered. In the end, Daisy went with Emma to Croatia for the first week, and I went to Brela for the second week (while Daisy returned to kindly take care of my mom).


Cooling off with Emma and me, the day before.

(In another scare, I phoned my mom once I arrived in Croatia to make sure she was OK. She would be alone in the house for five or six hours until Daisy arrived, which made me very nervous. I called, but she never answered. The phone just rang and rang and rang. I kept calling back, but still no answer. In the end, panicked out of my skull, I called a friend, Dan, who was kind enough to drop everything he was doing and drive to my house to check on my mom. I feared the worst. Fortunately, she was just fine. The portable phone I had left for her had, incredibly, just gone dead.)

Of course, there were many hours spent on the phone, rescheduling and canceling tickets, and getting the process started to sell my mom's house back in Cumberland, Maryland. Sadly, she won't be able to live there anymore, because of the steep steps in the house. We've got to auction off many of her possessions and find her a new apartment.

If all that hadn't been enough...

Just before my mom arrived, we found ourselves taking care of yet another cat. (You can read about our previous cat rescues here.)

A few weeks ago, I was giving some friends a lift to the bus stop. It was around 11 p.m., and at the end of our road, sitting in the middle of our road, just a few meters from busy Route 240, was a white cat.

"That cat's gonna get hit by a car," I said. He slowly moved into the bushes and let my car go past.

On the way back, the cat had moved back into the middle of the road. It was a beautiful cat, and obviously belonged to someone. What can you do in a situation like that? You can't just open the car door and take it with you.

Except a few days later, I saw it outside our house, sitting in the dirt between our two parked cars, as if he owned the place. From afar, I thought it might be Oscar, but a check with the binoculars showed that it was the Cat From The Middle of the Road. I went out to check on it, but it scampered away.

The next day, Daisy called me at work. I was working late. The next-door neighbor lady was feeding The Cat, she said. It was covered in ticks (Daisy removed 27 ticks, I believe she said) and one of its ears was swollen with blood. Both of its ears were filled the mites. Its fur was tangled with leaves and burrs.

Daisy took it to our local vet, who drained the ear and checked it over. It was thin and its ear would need surgery. Daisy named the cat Chaz. (It has one green eye and one blue eye, and from what we understand originally came to Prague from Iran.)

We put posters up all around the area. It was a long-haired Persian (not exactly your typical feral cat), and it had been neutered, so we figured it must belong to someone.

Sure enough, while I was in the hospital visiting my mom, the owners called. They lived in the neighboring village of Statenice and the cat had run away a few weeks before.

The problem is, the owners were moving back to Britain in a few weeks and couldn't (or so they thought) take the cat -- whose real name was Sassy -- with them. Would we like to keep the cat? Frankly, I had enough on my plate. I was stressing out big time.

So, the day after I took Chaz/Sassy to the vet for his ear surgery, I returned him to his owners, who thought they'd located a potential home for him. I told them that if they couldn't find a home for him, to give me a call and I'd see what I could do.

It was a very sweet and cuddly cat, and we wanted the best for him.

Well, guess what?

Chaz/Sassy is living with us now, at least temporarily. In the end, his owners, Dean and his partner, Roxanne, couldn't find a home for him, nor could they take him back to Britain on such short notice.

(The U.K.'s formerly draconian quarantine laws have changed, and it now takes about seven months to complete the process of shots and observation needed before a cat or dog can be allowed onto the island. As I pointed out to them, if they'd had some foresight, they could have gotten this process started quite some time ago. I must admit to being pretty frustrated at the whole deal.)


Sassy's owner, Dean, after he took her back while he was recovering from ear surgery (hence the plastic collar), but before Dean had to return to Britain.

Unfortunately, Chaz/Sassy isn't getting along too well with our house cat Chicho (they got into a brief but intense fight the other day), so he's quarantined to our basement.

I'm still waiting to hear from his owners about what they want to do.

In the meantime, if you're interested in adopting a lovely Persian permanently -- or would be willing to take care of him for seven months or so until he's claimed by his old owners -- please let me know at grantpodelco@yahoo.com.

Whew! To say it's been a stressful few weeks is to belabor understatement.

And I haven't even mentioned that my iPhone shut down after I tried to update to the latest software. After numerous phone calls to Apple (not exactly what I wanted to be doing amidst all this), it's now being replaced.

Or the speeding ticket I received in the mail the other day...


You have to admit, Chaz/Sassy is pretty adorable.


Oddly enough, in some sort of cosmic coincidence, when Daisy first took Chaz/Sassy to the vet, they wanted to know what his name was. In a panic, she said Bela. Which turns out is the name of Dean and Roxanne's other Persian cat, which was also lost and has yet to be found (although it's been spotted around their old flat, apparently).

Pussy Galore

Oscar basking in the warm grass.

Every time I bend down to give old Oscar a scratch behind the ears, I think I ought to give regular Gusto readers an update on all the cats that I've written about over the past couple of years.

You may remember that Oscar is the stray cat that adopted us shortly after we moved into our house out here in Černý Vůl, northwest of Prague. He's been through a lot, that Oscar -- most notably an almost fatal brush with pneumonia last winter. He was so sick that he allowed us to take him to the vet. He lived in our bathroom/toilet for a month while he took his medicine.

He recovered, and while we would have liked for him to have stayed inside permanently, he is a wild one, and he wanted back out, where he's lived ever since.

He survived the harsh winter of 2009-10 and, except for the occasional cough and myriad ticks (which he patiently lets Daisy remove), seems to be in excellent health and spirits.


Oscar likes to lounge in the sun on the covering to our woodpile.

Oscar can be found reliably on our doorstep every morning and every evening, waiting for his wet and dry food, and found sunning himself in various favorite locations around our garden during the day.

He's a tough old cat, but affectionate and loyal.

Most of the time, when we arrive home from work, he scampers in front of us on the sidewalk to our front door and plops himself down and rolls over on his back, hoping for a belly scratch. Of course, most of the time we're happy to. When we're through, we'll walk forward, and he'll jump up and scamper ahead and do the same thing all over again.

More like a dog than a cat, really.


Oscar is always waiting to greet us when we come home from work. Doesn't it look like he's wearing eyeliner?

We really love Oscar and always get a little worried if he doesn't show up right on time to get fed. As they say, we are his hoomans.

Remember Flake? She's the newborn kitten we found in our backyard just an hour or so before we were supposed to catch a plane for Croatia in 2008.

Our landlord was kind enough to take care of Flake, as he named her, for the two weeks we were gone. He and his wife nursed Flake back to health by feeding her milk through an eye-dropper, before passing her along to us once we returned from holiday.


The very lucky, and lovely, Flakey, a few weeks ago at Stewart's house.

As you may remember, my good friend Stewart and his family adopted Flake a month or so later, once she was eating solid food and on the road to recovery.

I’m happy to report that Flake (or Flakey, as she's now known) is doing great in Roztoky, except for a recurring eye infection of some sort. When we found Flake, her eyes were still closed, and I’m afraid we may have actually caused the infection in our efforts to care for her and clean her off.

Flakey was shortly joined in Stewart's household by Flukey, yet another (albeit older) kitten that showed up on our doorstep around the same time. Stewart's kids wanted a second cat, and Flukey fit the bill nicely.

Both are doing well.


A recent picture of Flukey. Says Stewart: "She's a lovely cat, my wee pal. She's also a bit nuts....had a bit of a tough start in life so I think she appreciates a happy homestead. She gets so relaxed she forgets herself and repeatedly falls off couches, beds etc. Very funny."

And then there's Luna.

Luna, as Emma named her, was a gorgeous 8-week-old kitten who showed up on our doorstep last fall. After a few weeks of living inside with us, Luna was adopted by another friend of ours, Venera, where she's been thriving ever since.


Luna in her new home recently.

There are few other cats we've seen eating recently from Oscar's food bowl -- Ghost Cat, Black Kitty, and Orange Cat -- but all seem either to be too skittish or too thuggish to be candidates for adoption.

I'm so glad we found good homes for all these stray kitties, but I'm also glad we haven't had to perform that task again for quite some time.

Perhaps getting Oscar fixed while he was at the vet did the trick!


Our housecat Chicho, gazingly longingly out our front door, no doubt at Oscar frolicking about. We lost our other housecat, the beloved Zhenya, at the end of December.


Chicho curled up inside Daisy's yoga bag.


Oscar likes nothing better than to roll over as we're trying to pass by on the sidewalk and beg for a scratch.

R.I.P. Nibble Richards

We've buried two cats in our backyard over the past couple of years -- Oscar Junior, a stray cat we'd grown mightily fond of, and our beloved Zhenya. (Read more about them here and here.)

Over the weekend, I discovered that there's at least one more family pet at eternal rest in our garden.

While doing some yard work, I noticed a small wooden sign stuck in the middle of a cinder block. I'd seen the sign before but had never noticed its faded writing. I think I must have assumed it was some sort of garden marker and hadn't paid it much attention.

On closer inspection, I discovered that the sign reads:

R.I.P.
Nibble Richards
2000-2003

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the dearly departed was likely a hamster or a gerbil and that Richards was the family name of our house's previous occupant.

What a fantastic name for a hamster.

Rest in peace, little guy.

Remembering Zhenya

She had the most amazing eyes I've ever seen.

Zhenya -- the cat that made a dog lover love cats, the coolest cat I've ever known, or will ever know -- passed away on December 26.

It all came about so suddenly. She was diagnosed with Chronic Renal Failure a few weeks ago. Daily eight-hour infusions and antibiotics and special food failed to improve her well-being. She briefly bounced back, but then just as quickly worsened.

The doctor said we could keep giving her daily infusions and keep her alive for a few more days -- weeks? -- that way. He didn't recommend it, and anyway, that wasn't living.



She wasn't the sociable cat we knew and loved in those last days. She was obviously miserable. She would drink a few drops of water, but she wouldn't eat. She sat hunched all day in a corner of the room, unmoving. She wouldn't purr when we petted her.

She had always been a talkative cat, but in the last few days, she stopped meowing altogether. Her back end wouldn't lift up when we ran a hand down her back, as it always did.

As hard as it was, we knew we had to put her down. It was a terrible, heartbreaking day. She was only 10.

Daisy's ex-husband, Gonzalo, and his wife, Bara, wanted to be with Zhenya at the end. All five of us -- Emma, too -- were in the room with Zhenya when she passed away so quietly.

A good friend and fellow cat-lover recommended that we honor her memory by remembering all the joyous things about her.

We'd start by simply saying she was a true family cat. She was shy around visitors, but around her day-to-day humans, she was cuddly, sociable, and insistent on being part of the action.



When we came home from work or school, she would meet us at the door, and tell us, meowing for minutes at a time, about her day.

When Emma would get ready for a bath she would run into the bathroom to listen to the running water and the bedtime stories that followed.

At night, she'd insinuate herself on our chests as we were lying in bed, her beautiful face blocking the pages of whatever we were reading. And then she'd want us to lift the covers so she could burrow down to the foot of the bed and sleep in the closed-in dark.



Other things we remember are her funny habit of licking cellophane or plastic when we returned from the store and set the groceries on the kitchen table. Or the way she'd let Emma place her in a baby carriage and push her around our old flat.

If our other cat, Chicho, is a traditional sleeper and eater, she was a player -- she loved to run and jump, to chase after scraps of paper and catnip mice.

She was also a fighter, as we discovered last summer, when she accidentally got outside and spent a hard month on the street before we found her, nicked and scraped and happy to be home.

And in addition to those eyes, she had the softest, most luxurious caramel-colored fur. It was one of the things that stood out as she squirmed amid a box full of kittens at a pet market in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in 1999, where Daisy and Gonzalo found her.


Daisy and Zhenya in St. Petersburg.

We'd run our hands through that fur as we went up the stairs to bed. She'd often be sleeping on a toy sofa that used to belong to a fancy doll but that she claimed as her own.

We put the little sofa on top of the radiator next to the stairs, and she'd snooze for hours there, warm and snug.



We buried Zhenya in the back garden, beneath the fruit trees.

As Gonzalo and I dug, Daisy went inside and got the little couch. We placed it in the grave and gently lay Zhenya in her favorite spot.

Sleep tight, sweet cat.

The Černý Vůl Cat House

Luna asleep on a comfy chair.

No sooner had we miraculously found our missing cat Zhenya after she'd gone missing for 25 days (read more about that adventure here and here) than a snow-white kitten -- about 8 weeks old -- suddenly appeared, literally, on our doorstep.

It's almost like we have a VACANCY sign blinking on the front of our house, fashioned from special neon that's visible only to cats.

You may remember our memorable meetings with Flake and with Flukey.

There was also the tragedy of Oskar Junior.

And Oskar, our wild outdoor cat (Oscar Wild), for those who are following along, is doing just fine, after his scary bout with pneumonia earlier this year (when he lived in our bathroom for a month).

He's back outside now, comes every morning and every night for his packet of wet Whiskas and dry food, and even comes into our house a few steps and looks around before deciding that he likes it better outside. (We're hoping he decides to come inside permanently once winter sets in, but it's unlikely.)

But back to the kitten.

We suddenly found ourselves caring for the cutest white kitten you ever did see. And one with the most perfect personality -- affectionate, didn't scratch, and loved to play. And she wasn't deaf, unlike a lot of pure white kittens.

Don't know where she came from, but she decided she liked us, and got along with Oskar, so we found ourselves feeding her, too.

We took her to the vet and had her checked out. Aside from some sort of infection on the outside of her ears, she checked out fine, so we brought her inside and introduced her to Zhenya and our other cat, Chicho. Zhenya and Chicho tolerated the kitten, whom Emma named Luna.

We just couldn't see having four cats, however, and put the word out that we had a beautiful kitten for the taking.


Luna posing under a pine tree in our front yard.

She lived with us for a week or so before we found a very good home for her, much to our relief.

She did have a funny way of climbing into bed in the middle of the night and rubbing her face on my mouth and beard, over and over. Cute, at first. And then not so much.

Can someone please turn the VACANCY sign off now?


Oskar's getting so used to us that he now turns over almost automatically when he sees us so we can scratch his tummy.


Our regular cats Chicho and Zhenya sleep-surfing on the popular comfy chair.


Zhenya.


Chicho.

Zhenya!

Zhenya, just a few minutes after we brought her back home.

We found her.

Yes, we’ve got Zhenya back, believe it or not -– 25 days after she first went missing. She escaped unnoticed at night on July 23 when the good folks who were watching her for us (while we were in Croatia) came home one night and she slipped out the door before they could turn on the light. Then someone in their apartment building stupidly let her outside. And then she disappeared.

She’s very thin, and tired, and has a few nicks and one big tick (since removed), but we just came back from the vet, and she’s been given a clean bill of health, and we couldn’t be more excited.

We’d been hanging up hundreds of posters in the Prague 6 neighborhood from whence she escaped on July 23. We’d also put hundreds of the posters directly into mailboxes in the neighborhood, since the rain had a nasty way of erasing the printing on the posters we hung. We’d also been calling the animal shelters, and had put notices on expats.cz and prague.tv.

We’d been getting a call a day or so from folks who’d thought they seen her, but none of the leads ever panned out.

Until August 16.

That’s when a nice couple who live in the same building from which Zhenya escaped -- on Radimova in Prague 6 -- came knocking at the door, saying they thought they’d seen Zhenya just a few minutes before a few blocks away, near another apartment building.

In fact, the guy’s wife was waiting back at the spot at that very moment.

An urgent search revealed no Zhenya, however.

We came back the next evening, and we spotted her –- or a cat that certainly looked a lot like her -- hiding in some thick bushes near the foundation of the same apartment building, near Anastazova.

Our hearts leapt.

But she wouldn’t come out easily.

We lost sight of her quite a few times, almost hopelessly so.

We put out food for her, called to her, rattled the food bin, shined a flashlight into the dark undergrowth and into basement windows, and crawled under brambles.

She wouldn’t show herself.

Another couple walked by. Hearing us calling for Zhenya, they said, “Oh, that’s not your cat. That’s Matisek. He lives around here.”

Daisy’s heart sank. I, thankfully, wasn’t around to hear that little anecdote.

We kept searching, until Daisy thought she heard Zhenya’s meow. I crawled through the bushes and saw her crouching on a small ledge in the darkness.

I crawled closer, expecting her to scamper away, but she sat up and kind of turned toward me, as if she knew her nightmare was over, and I grabbed her by the scruff and pulled her up and out.

I felt like crying. I couldn't believe I had her.


Zhenya, just a few minutes ago.

Just to make sure, we looked for the little black spot on her lip that we knew would mean it couldn’t be any other cat than Zhenya.

The black spot was right where we hoped it would be.

We’d found her.

I felt the adrenaline, or whatever it was, making my hands and feet tingle. I can’t remember when I’ve been so happy, or so relieved.

We'd offered a reward of 5,000 Czech crowns, or about $275, for information leading to Zhenya's return. We were happy to give the money to the couple who pointed us in the right direction. We wouldn't have found her without their help.

She's been meowing like crazy since she's been home, no doubt telling us stories of her incredible adventures over the past three weeks.

Thanks so much to everyone who told us stories or left messages on this blog, or on Facebook or Twitter or expats.cz, about their own happy-ending experiences with lost cats.

They really kept our spirits up, and our hopes alive.