HIMALAYAN PERSIAN & MIXED BREED LOVE: SOME CATS LOVE FOR LIFE

I'm no vet, but I am a serious animal watcher. As the only human living with three felines and four dogs, I observe their behavior closely, and am sometimes amazed at what I see. I grew up in the fifties, and was always told that animals mainly acted on instinct with little thought about what they were doing. I have not found that to be true. Animals not only have preferences, but they also have long memories.

Shortly after my parents died, I purchased a Golden Retriever dog, later named Ginger, and a Himalayan Persian cat I named Ms. Frances. I thought it would be fun to breed the animals, and hoped to make a little bit of money from doing so. I had inherited Mom and Dad's old home, but wasn't quite ready to move into it alone. I hoped the animals would provide me with company, but actually knew very little about animals at the time.

My niece and her husband allowed me to live with them for about nine months after my parent's deaths, and they were accustomed to dogs, but he had a cat allergy, and did not want Ms. Frances inside their home. I decided to put her in Mom and Dad's house, though I was not yet living there, and found two younger mixed breed males to keep her company. I named the brothers Fluffy and Pete, but since they would never be breed cats, planned to have them neutered before they turned six months old. Initially, Ms. Frances mistook the brothers for mice, and I had to separate them from her to keep her from playing cat and mouse games with them, but as they grew, the three cats became inseparable.

YOUNG LOVE

Ms. Frances got along okay with Pete, but Fluffy was her obvious favorite. I also noticed that Fluffy seemed to be the dominant cat between the two, and he always seemed to take the lead. As the three got older, I decided it was time to have the brothers neutered in order to avoid a mating situation between either of them, and Ms. Frances. Actually, I didn't do it a day too soon, because several days after Fluffy was neutered, I saw him mount a suddenly in season Ms. Frances. Thankfully, no kittens would come from the union.

PLANNED MARRIAGE WITHIN HER SOCIAL CLASS

The next time Ms. Frances went in season, I found a local breeder who agreed to breed Ms. Frances with her stud cat, Sir Cedrick, but Ms. Frances would have nothing to do with hiim, and the breeder feared she would "claw his eyes out." I took Ms. Frances home a few times, and brought her back to breed with Sir Cedrick, but each time she would go out of heat the minute she got there. The breeder later gave me about five cats, along with Sir Cedrick, and I brought them home. Ms. Frances finally mated with Sir Cedrick, and later had three kittens, but she never stopped trying to get Fluffy's attention.

In the meantime, Fluffy and Pete figured out how to get out of my house, and I was unable to keep them inside. They were determined to be outside cats, and would not be contained in my home, so I allowed it, though I worried about them when they would roam off, sometimes for a few days. I had been told that neutered cats do not stray that far away, but they did wander, and hunt, pretty far from my yard. I kept the pedigree cats on a screened back porch, but Ms. Frances and Fluffy continued to touch noses through the screens.

Ms. Frances had a number of litters by Sir Cedrick, but she continued to prefer the neutered Fluffy, whenever he was around. After I discovered the breeder had given me the cats because they had ringworm, I began the lengthy process of treating them, with little success. I did manage to cure most of them, one at a time, and send them off to new homes, separately, to keep them from being infected again. The infected cats spent many winter months outside, as someone had told me the winter cold would freeze and kill the ringworm fungus.  The pills were harsh, and one cat actually died due to the ringworm treatment. I began to wish I had never tried breeding, and gave most of the cats away, but I knew Ms. Frances would stay with me, because she was my first cat, and my pet a long time before she became a breed cat. Sir Cedrick went missing while the cats were outside. Fluffy and Pete remained outside cats who came inside from time to time.

When spring approached, I brought Ms. Frances inside to prevent her from mating with a neighborhood stray, but she managed to escape and stay gone a few weeks. Two months later she gave birth to two kittens, but one did not live very long. Michael survived, and had the black coat and copper eyes of a bompay, with the long hair of a Persian. Only Ms. Frances knows who his daddy was, if she in fact, knows. She had finally managed to take a walk on the wild side with a cat of her own choosing. She never seemed particularly excited about the tame pedigreed Sir Cedrick, and always seemed to yearn for the excitement of an outside hunter like fluffy, or perhaps the wildness of a neighborhood ally cat type.

Pete died outside last summer, and was discovered by my neighbor. Since his death, Fluffy does not seem to like the great outdoors as much, and tends to be more of a homebody. He hunts some during the day, but likes to be inside at night. Ms. Frances was spayed after Michael's birth, and I, of course, gave him a home. He was a somewhat Ferrel kitten, and had to be trapped in a small crate by use of food, and brought inside; however, he has became quite tame with time. He was neutered on the same day Ms. Frances was spayed, so unlike his father, he will not have a "love child" of his own.

Fluffy happened to be resting in my den this morning, and I couldn't help but notice that Ms. Frances approached him as if they were still an item. Perhaps they are, because she immediately began grooming him, and their noses touched in what looked like a kiss. At six years old, they can finally be together after years of separation. I guess true love does not see class differences, nor should it.