Do You Know Me?

Punkin had a previous owner whom he adored.

Most cats who come to live here are pretty tight-lipped about their past. I get no feel for what their prior lives were like. No so with Punkin. He speaks volumes. The language difference provides a bit of a challenge, so I’m not certain that my interpretations always are correct. But he’s pretty direct, and with the body language, tone, and facial expression, some of his story appears to come across pretty clearly.

What I know of Punkin is just what I was told when I adopted him from the humane society in Pueblo, Colorado. I had been searching for a similar-looking cat who had shown up at my home, taken a brood of kittens under his fatherly wing for six months, and then disappeared. The kittens and I all quickly had grown to love Peachy deeply, and we all felt the loss of his serene presence. We all wanted him to come home, and I carried on searching for him for months: in the neighborhood, online, and in humane society offices.

I had come across a similar looking cat in an online search of the Humane Society’s website. Knowing the capricious nature of photographs in producing an accurate rendering of either human or feline appearance, I went to see each long-haired orange cat in person.

Punkin had been brought to the Humane Society as a stray, and thus it was that our paths met. Something in his personality reached me through the plexiglass, and I asked to visit him face to face. Punkin and I were introduced to one another in a little glass-walled room. I could tell right away that he was different from other cats. He was extremely alert to everyone who walked by.

The Pueblo humane society is not especially busy (or wasn’t when I was there), and unlike the one in Colorado Springs, does not have a continual stream of people walking around. Punkin (my version of the “Spumpkin” they had assigned to the little fellow) explored every wall and corner and item in the room, and when someone walked by, he stood, head up, eyes bright, ears pricked, examining every passer-by. I didn’t realize it at the time, but thinking of it now that I know him better, I suspect he was looking to see if his previous person might be coming to take him home.

Thinking that the loss of such a spiritual soul as Peachy should result in some benefit to someone, I decided to adopt Punkin. When the young lady at the desk told me that Punkin had been brought in by someone as a stray, she also mentioned that sometimes people bring in their own pets as “strays” so they don’t have to pay the surrender fee.

The humane society requires adopted cats to be spayed or neutered, so I had to come back another day, after Punkin was neutered, to bring him home. Punkin had a bit of a sneeze, so for a time my den became his personal room. He and the other house cats could sniff and become acquainted with one another gradually, if they chose to visit under the door. I hoped that he and Fitty, the first and most territorial of my current housecats, would become accustomed to one another, and not fight when introduced face to face.

Punkin was very well-behaved. He didn’t climb the book shelves, didn’t tear down the drapes, didn’t knock anything over, didn’t scratch the furniture, didn’t yowl. He scratched his claws on the scratching post, played with his toys, and sometimes I’d find both his toys and mine where he placed them, in his little cat bed.  When we played, if he reached for my hand, he didn’t extend his claws.

Punkin always has been a perfect gentleman. I couldn’t imagine a more well-behaved guest. Use of the term “guest” is a bit curious. Yes, he is one of the family. But another home, another person, still tugs at his heart. A couple years later now, Punkin has integrated more with the family (both human and cat), while still maintaining his unique, enthusiastic personality.

When I first let Punkin out of his quarantine room to visit with the other cats, they all, including Fitty, took to him right away. He even gets Fitty to play more often, as he did in his youth. Scotch and Mimi, however, are more readily inclined to gallop up and down the hall, play in mock battles, and share their toys. Mimi has been full grown since I’ve known her, but still is as playful as a kitten.

Punkin stops playing only when he’s napping. He reminds me of the Energizer bunny in that he keeps going and going and going. He greets everything with great exuberance, excitement, and alertness. He even plays in the litter box, attacking things he must be imagining, since the litter has been freshly scooped and topped off. He finds joy in everything, and brings joy with him wherever he goes.

Once he was given the run of the house, Punkin followed me everywhere. If I went into a room in which cats weren’t allowed due to the breakable figurines therein, he waited for me outside the closed door. He told me he accompanied me everywhere because he was accustomed to following his previous person everywhere. I soon learned that Punkin left figurines on the shelves alone, and he has special access to accompany me into my office as I write.

The house cats eat their canned food meals in the kitchen.  By the time I finish dishing it out, it’s nearly all eaten. Additionally, there is dry food available in bowls. Punkin had been eating Science Diet dry food at the shelter, and was provided with a small bag of it when I brought him home. He got so much enjoyment from eating it, I have continued to leave his bowl of it available in his private room, the den. Often when we walk past the den doorway, he wants to duck in for a bite. He’ll start into the room, looking back at me as though to say he’s taking a detour for a snack, and I am to wait for him. So I try to be kind and patient, and cease my bustling about, long enough for him to eat a few bites. It appears I am expected to wait for Punkin while he eats. From his starts and stops interspersed with jumping into my lap and trilling, I wonder if he expects a special treat when he is finished.

Punkin also has been very tolerant of being held and carried around, becoming very relaxed while doing so, which I also believe must be a prior habit. Had he been some kind of companion animal? Curiously, though, he doesn’t snuggle up with me if I sit on the sofa to watch TV. He’ll sit on my lap and doze as I write in the office, and throw himself close against me when I go to bed, but never joins me in front of the television.

Initially, Punkin was more inclined to accompany me everywhere, even to the exclusion of spending time with the other cats. This made me think he had been the sole cat in his previous household. Or if there had been other cats, they kept to themselves. Although, with Punkin’s outgoing personality, it would be difficult for any other cat to remain aloof. If they didn’t play willingly, Punkin would have ambushed them when they walked by, or run at them and taken them down by grabbing a hind leg, as though they were prey. Over time, he is becoming more inclined to spend a bit of time away from me to play or to nap with the other cats. But mostly he’s still right with me. So, I think the additional house cats are a novelty to him, and he is just beginning to appreciate feline companionship as well as human.

It didn’t take long before I noticed that when I took food from a crinkly-sounding wrapping, Punkin got a bit excited. If I unwrapped a granola bar, or opened a potato chip bag, he was right there, alert and obviously expecting a treat. Okay, Punkin was used to eating treats from a crinkly-sounding package. On my next trips for groceries and to Petco, I looked for small bags of treats that looked less chemical and more inclined to include some kind of real food. Punkin then had his bags of treats, and appeared to be satisfied with the results.

One evening as we all, the cats and I, sat in the family room watching television, some kind of music came on, and I began to whistle along with the tune. Punkin, who had been cat-napping, sat up in a supremely alert stance, looking down the hall and around the room with great expectation and excitement. It was heartbreaking. Punkin had loved someone who had taught him to come for treats when they whistled, and he was searching for his previous person.

For a week or two afterward, I tried to consciously refrain from whistling, so as not to put little Punkin through a repeat of what must have been a hope-dashing disappointment. But the whistling is a habit, it just occurs, and was not to be suppressed for long. Over a few weeks, I believe Punkin became accustomed to it. But yes, if he is playing elsewhere, and I let out a single-note whistle, Punkin comes running for his treat. I wonder how many more tricks he could teach me, if I were able to listen and comprehend?

On a trip to town for one of his veterinary visits, we passed an ice cream truck with its tinkly-sounding music. Punkin again became immediately alert, looking out the window for the source of the sound. A similar reaction occurred if I played a music box at home. A couple times I noticed that under certain circumstances, he’d go lie down up against the front door. All this made me wonder if Punkin had lived with someone who drove an ice cream truck, and Punkin would go to the door to meet the driver when he returned home.

I felt there had been a great love between Punkin and his previous person, and that certain sounds caused him to sit up and look around with heartfelt expectation. If there had been such a strong bond between Punkin and his previous person, why didn’t that person go to the shelter and reclaim him? That didn’t make sense to me. Was it a student, gone away to college? A military person deployed? Had they had to surrender Punkin for some reason, and said he was a stray? If so, it must have been heartbreaking for them, as well. Had the person become incarcerated or died, and Punkin was taken to the shelter by a family member or friend?

Maybe Punkin had snuck out the door and really was picked up as a stray. But again, if that were the case, if he had been loved enough for him to exhibit such a love himself, why hadn’t he been reclaimed?

After a couple of months seeing the other cats sometimes go out the patio door to enjoy the outdoors, Punkin began to show an interest in going out, as well. With his designation as a stray, I kept a close watch on him when I let him out. The first several times he went outdoors, he didn’t get even a foot away from the house. He just went back and forth from one side of the patio to the other, up alongside the house wall, staying beneath the overhanging bushes and the porch swing. This was his typical behavior outdoors.

After several excursions outdoors, Punkin’s territory expanded to the entire ten-by-twelve foot patio. It gradually expanded a bit more, to the bushes on either side of the patio, among which he might venture two to three feet. And this cat was brought in as a stray? I’m not certain he had been in the habit of going outdoors, nor that he ever had been loose outdoors at all.

Besides staying close to the house wall, when a few birds flew overhead, he crouched and looked up at them, as though startled. It wasn’t until he was caught up in the heat of the moment, chasing and playing with Bobbi-Cat, one of the laundry room indoor-outdoor cats, one sunny spring day, that he expanded his outdoor territory to play around the vehicles parked in the driveway, and finally around the corner of the house to another part of the yard.

When I couldn’t find him near the patio, I let out a whistle, and when he came running, I gave him a few of his treats.

Punkin, I believe, is very intelligent and trainable. He recently has taught me another trick. We have had two little bags of cat treats in the house, one of which has been sitting beside a laptop on the kitchen table. Sometimes I sit on a stool at the table, working on the laptop. When I’m not sitting on the stool, the house cats each enjoy jumping up onto it and sitting there for a time.

Punkin learned to ask for treats by jumping up onto the stool, and leaning over across the table to look and sniff at the package of treats. I would take about three out, and set them on the stool next to him. Whether his pushing them down onto the floor was intentional or accidental, I couldn’t tell. But I then began to place them on a specific spot on the floor, not far from the stool. So now, Punkin jumps up onto the stool to ask for a treat, and rather than waiting on the stool when I pick up the bag, he jumps back down onto the floor, and sits down beside the particular spot where I place the treats, waiting for me to do so. He has learned a sequence. He has taught me a sequence. I suspect Punkin could learn a sequence much longer than two or three steps; maybe he already knows some. Maybe I’m the one who needs to learn.

Punkin is quite the character. He goes about the business of living with enthusiasm, excitement, and energy. He plays with exuberance, and is full of joy.

He’s a playful fellow, and plays with a group of now grown sibling “kittens” by each of them pushing their paws underneath the two doors from the laundry room, where the indoor/outdoor, not-well-enough-behaved-to-be-house-cats dwell. One day when I was watching this play, Punkin went back out to the hall to pick up a fairly flat toy he had been playing with. He carried it in his mouth into the bathroom, set it down beside the door to the laundry room, and push it under the door with his paw. Whereupon the “kittens” began to play with it, and I saw it variously at times on either side of the door.

When Green-Eyes comes into the house to play with Punkin, they have a game in which Green-Eyes jumps into the bathtub, Punkin positions himself outside the tub, and they bat at each other through the material from opposite sides of the shower curtain.

The refrigerator in our house has the freezer on the bottom, with separate doors for freezer and refrigerator. When I open the refrigerator door, the bottom of the refrigerator compartment provides a ledge about three feet above the floor, onto which Punkin jumps, and stands poking his nose around the various food items. Maybe he used to be fed some kind of refrigerated fresh meat? I bought some for him, but he didn’t eat it. He doesn’t say why or what he’s looking for in the refrigerator, and this is one of his secrets I haven’t yet figured out.

Punkin has a fascination with disembodied gloves he finds lying around the house. I haven’t figured out that, either.