pyewacketsworld

Part 2:

Okay here I am to continue my story…FINALLY.

One has to read the first part to be able to follow this part, but in brief summary, my mother, who had hoarder tendencies created an overpopulation of cat problem that was to begin in 1992, and in 1993, the first litter of kittens were born…and more litters kept coming until it got so out of control. By 1996 there must have been at least 40 cats total due to all the litters of kittens. Since both my mother and I were on fixed incomes, she on Social Security and pension benefits, and me on SSI disability, now it was the cost factor of trying to get the cats fixed on time…and as you can guess, it became a losing battle. As for putting the extra cats up for adoption that also wasn’t possible, since no animal shelter will take pets for free. So the population kept rising.

By 1996, I had to completely stop all my photography work. Despite my own disability of panic disorder and agoraphobia, I was a successfully published photographer, mailing out portfolios of my images to magazines and calendar companies. I also developed my own black and white film and prints at home. That all completely stopped since now I was spending all my time cleaning the apartment to keep it as odor free as possible…a losing battle. It also didn’t help that my mother must have been in some kind of denial that one, we had too many cats, and two, she never seemed to smell cat odor, but then looking back I’m really realizing how much she was wrapped up in her own world and living in some kind of twilight zone.

By 2001…uh, don’t ask how many cats there were, suffice to say way, way too many. It was in March of 2001 my mother and I were hit with our first eviction issue with our landlord. Now technically speaking one can actually have as many pets as they want, at least according to the various pet laws here in NYC…HOWEVER…as long as they don’t provide “nuisance” problems, such as maybe a dog constantly barking, or as you can guess odor problems. But in our case, despite the so-called pet laws, it’s one thing to have say ten cats, yet another as many as we had. We managed to get a good lawyer, and we also had a number of pet advocates helping us out…it was one pet advocate who had contacts with the media and got our story out there in the hopes of people becoming interested in adopting the cats. We had teams of TV newscasters interviewing us, channels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 47, and even Jeanne Moos of CNN came and did a feature of us…also newspapers covered our story. This did indeed spark interest and many people did come to adopt many of the cats. Even an ASPCA mobile unit came and in one day, managed to spay/neuter many of the cats.

Our lawyer gave us very specific instructions of how to deodorize the apartment, but after awhile she became exasperated and fed up with us..why? Once more due to my mother. Our lawyer became feed up and dumped us, no longer representing us—She had expected that the two of us, my mother and myself to do a round the clock, virtual 24-hour a day cleaning thing to fumigate our apt. out. My mother continued to do nothing as she had done all along. She never helped out once to help clean when the cat population started to grow, and she sure wasn’t helping now when the clock was ticking against us and possible eviction. So it was up to me, to not only clean every waking moment of the day and night, and at the advice of our lawyer, to get rid of just about everything we owned, anything that might be retaining pet odor–So I was getting rid of books, videos, furniture, etc–plus painting up the apt. from top to bottom. Getting rid of the furniture was no great hardship, save for my filing cabinets–for some reason these were the favorite target spots for the cats to have accidents on–yes, I did clean them out periodically, but to no avail–so not only did I have to get rid of them, but the contents within them—hundreds and hundreds of black and white photos I had printed up over the years since 1976, when I first started printing up photos, plus all the magazines, newspapers, calendars—all my prized published work. Nice huh? I felt a part of my soul being ripped out. And once again my mother was in the twilight zone, and would watch me bundle up all my prized possessions, my books, photos and all she would say was “Oh, what a shame.” A shame? My photo work, my life’s work…throwing it all like trash a shame?

Well anyway, yes, many people did come to our apartment to adopt a lot of cats…but not enough. On one court appearance my mother made on June 11, 2001, she signed a stipulation agreement that would allow us to stay in the apartment, but only if we had two cats…Uh, well, as you can guess we had a lot more than two cats despite all the ones that were adopted out. For the next five years I was to live in chronic fear that we would be found out that we had more than just two cats…My fear was reached in March of 2006, when once again we were hit with an eviction notice.

I’ll continue my story next time of what happened. Once again you may wonder how “great” things fell in place for me. Well, believe it or not it did…as you’ll see in my next entries of this “saga” of mine

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 1

This is what my one friend from California says to me just about every time I talk to her on the phone, to the point I want to strangle her. But then when I sit back and think about, I think to myself, you know, she’s right?

I think everyone goes through a “winner” year. You know the kind, where it seems to be one thing after another after another, and not necessarily positive either, in fact, most of the time that snowball effect of events is downright negative. Well, 2006 was my winner year, and believe me if I could survive that, I think I can survive anything else life will toss in my direction.

It actually began earlier, since in 2005 my mother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. It wasn’t only her physical health that was deteriorating but her mental health as well. Now my mother had created a “problem” in our lives, to put it mildly. Among her many mental issues she had hoarder tendencies. When her financial situation changed instead of hoarding things, she turned to pets. We had always had cats but at a reasonable number…that was to change beginning around 1992, when we had nine cats including an unfixed female. I kept after my mother to take the cat to the vet to get spayed but she didn’t as she claimed that we weren’t going to get anymore cats. Uh, right. Now I wasn’t able to take the cat myself to the vet, as he was a distance away, and I was suffering from my own problem of panic disorder with agoraphobia…there was absolutely nothing preventing my mother from taking the cat to be fixed.

Some months passed and the doorbell rings. It was one of our neighbors holding a fully grown black male cat and asking us to take him. I kept saying “No, we can’t have anymore cats.” Well both my mother and this neighbor are staring me down, and saying, “Oh, it’s only one more cat.” So I gave in. It didn’t take long to realize that this male cat wasn’t fixed either..so great we have a unfixed male and female cat…like duh? And yes kept urging my mother to get the cats fixed. She didn’t and you can imagine what happened…kittens. Now if it had stopped at that first litter of kittens it still could have been manageable, but it didn’t…kittens kept being born. My mother would only occasionally take a cat to be fixed but not fast enough. By 1996 we already had a really large population of cats. It was truly getting out of hand…why didn’t we take them to a shelter? People are under the impression one can take pets to put up for adoption for free, nope, no can do. All shelters expect money, at least $50.00 per pet that they take in. With my mother’s Social Security and Pension plus my SSI benefits it was just too expensive to take the cats to adopt them out.

The bottom line is by the time 2001 rolled around the number of cats we had was staggering, and it wasn’t as if I wasn’t trying to find homes for the kittens that kept being born.

Well, I think I’ll end this Part 1 and continue my “epic” tomorrow…from what I’ve written so far, you just might be wondering…how in earth did things fall into place for me. Well I plan to reveal that…all in good time, but one needs some background information and that’s going to take awhile.

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

It might seem silly to post this, but I just had to. You see, today, in a way was a sad day, not only for me, but for my two cats, Pyewacket and Kissy. No, nothing dire happened, but since it was January 12th, nearly a full month since I got my real Christmas tree, I decided it was high time to take the tree down. Speaking for myself, I hate, hate, hate taking the tree down. What can I say? I’m like a little kid who looks forward to Christmas and look forward every year to getting that real tree. I actually have a neighbor next door that gives me a lecture about getting a real tree too. She argues with me, “How can you sanction getting a real tree, you, the environmentalist/conservationist?” Then she goes into a long tirade of why I shouldn’t get a real tree. I just stand there listening to her yakking away and not offer any comment, I mean you just can’t argue with a “know-it-all” that she comes across as…so I let her lecture to me go in one ear and out the other. You see my philosophy about the whole thing is this: number one, the vast majority of trees that are for our Christmas trees are purposely grown for the Christmas tree market, so it’s not like thousands of trees are being hacked down from natural forests. Two, since the trees are grown on tree farms, what trees are cut down, new ones are planted. Also, my way of thinking is that since they do cut down so many trees by my buying one, I’m “saving it” and giving it a nice home and will cheer up my apartment.

Now before I go on with this story, first I must tell you about one cat I used to have, that I began calling the “Christmas tree Cat”

Willie: The Christmas Tree Cat:

September 24, 1984 ~ March 24, 1997

I got Willie, September 24, 1984. I was coming home from doing some errands, and I noticed this cat in the yard area of an apartment building called Elmhurst Towers, which is a few blocks from where I lived. He seemed to be quite content playing and catching the leaves that were starting to fall in their already splendid orange and red colors. Yes, I could have ignored him, as there were quite a number of stray cats that would make the yard area as their home, but for some reason I couldn’t ignore him. I went into the yard area, as at that time it wasn’t fenced up like it is now. He noticed me and came running over, as if he was greeting a long lost friend. And yes, as you can imagineI took him home. Now to give you the “roll call” as it were of the cats I had at that time: Snoopy, the white cat I’ve already mentioned, Mickey and Tommy, Cindy, Jennie, E.T. and Tippy, of whom I’ve also mentioned here in my blog. So with Willie, he was to become the eighth cat in our apartment. The funny thing is, we never were to call him Willie, but plume, as his tail was thick and bushy, almost like a Maine Coon Cat’s, yet he wasn’t of that breed. Willie was one of those real affectionate cats, and he had one very distinct, distinction. He seemed to love Christmas…especially the tree. He must have somehow shared my love for that real Christmas tree, and when I would bring it in, he would have to come over and inspect it, and if to judge whether it was worthy or not.

The thing that was really poignant however, was what would happen when the day came to take the tree down. On my scout’s honor and word, he would watch the whole process of my stripping the tree bare of it’s ornaments and lights, then began the process of hauling the tree out from my second floor apartment to take it downstairs to the outside garbage area. As I slowly dragged the tree out of the apartment, he would literally follow me and the tree, then sit himself down at the door, watching, watching, watching that tree leave. A few minutes after I would come back from downstairs, sans tree. I’d open the apartment door, and Willie would still be sitting exactly where I had left him, and I swear he would have the saddest, most forlorn expression on his feline face. Willie is long gone now, as he went to Rainbow Bridge on March 24, 1997, yet as a remembrance of him, I’ve place a framed photo of him on the wall and near the spot in the living room where I usually have the Christmas tree. And okay, this might sound a bit wacky, but I swear the expression of Willie in the photo looks downright sad whenever I take the tree down.

Which now brings me to today. My two present cats, Pyewacket and Kissy never have seemed impressed with any holidays, yet they do love the Christmas tree if anything, to snooze under it as if it were their own little private forest. What a sorry sight though, the tree had gotten, maybe cause I got it relatively late, on December 16th and maybe it was as fresh. What a difference from my tree last year when it stayed fresh for so long, that I didn’t dispose of it until near mid-February. But the tree looked so forlorn and droopy, so yesterday I took the ornaments and lights off, thinking to myself, that I’ll dispose of it today. The cats must have sensed something, as they once again snoozed under the tree, something they hadn’t done in awhile. Well today I first had to go out and do some errands, but almost the moment I came into the apartment, began the trek of taking the tree down. This time, Pyewacket watched everything I was doing and watched as I took the tree out. When I came back up, Pyewacket was sitting at the spot where the tree had been, and once again it seemed I had a cat, that had a sad forlorn look on his feline face.

Do animals feel sadness over a Christmas tree being disposed of? Who knows, all I can say, I’m just relating something that I’ve experienced in my life, especially that of Willie “Plume” and now Pyewacket. I still have to take the rest of my decorations down…bit hesitant. All the Christmas decorations make my apartment look so festive and lively, once they are down, the apartment looks absolutely bare and naked. And just think, Christmas 2009 is a mere 346 days away….can’t wait!

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

As I write this it is now the 10th day of January 2009. I just came across a remark in a discussion group forum where they didn’t see the New Year’s Eve or Day as anything special and treated it as any other day. I have to admit I was a bit aghast at this. So many of my on-line friends have had, well, lets put it this way, a horrendous year in 2008. Many were caught up in the economic crunch, some lost jobs, had money problems, health problems, friends and family passing one. One of my on-line friends had one of those “disaster” years in 2008, when it seemed one thing was happening right after another, after another, like a snowball effect. Is it any wonder she was glad to see the year go. I know where she was coming from, as 2006, was my winner year, and breathed a sigh of relief when it came to an end.

To me the New Year is special. On January 1st of any year, one wakes up to 365 brand new days, days where one can start one’s life again…a brand new era of one’s life, a new journal of possibilities…to further set one’s goals that one wants to accomplish and perhaps make them more ironclad then the previous year. Despite the hardships many of my on-line friends may have had last year, and the hardships people in general may have had, 2008 was a relatively calm year for me, but then if I could survive what I went through in 2006, any year would seem mild and tame. I really do look forward to each New Year filled with bright new promise of moving my life in the direction I’m longing to follow. I look at each new year to accomplish the goals I may not have done in the previous year. Oh, yes, I look at each new year in a wonderfully positive way. Is New Year’s Day special? I most definitely think so.

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Tippy’s Story
May 13, 1983 ~ August 31, 1999

It’s funny but even though I’ve had a number of cats throughout my life, some just stand in memory more than others, and this is certainly true when it comes to Tippy.

I was home at the time on May 13, 1983, when I heard a commotion going outside and the loud voices of children supposedly playing, but playing innocently they weren’t. Upon looking out one of my windows of my apartment, I saw a circle of kids and at first I thought they were tossing a ball around to each other, but then I noticed, nope it most certainly wasn’t a ball, but a panicky, frightened kitten. In a huff, I raced outside and went directly to the kids. I didn’t say much to them, for if I had my language would have been anything but ladylike…as I can have the mouth of a truck driver. As calmly as I could, I asked the kids to hand the kitten over to me, and surprisingly the one boy who had the kitten did. And that’s how Tippy came into our household. She was a small, cute bundle of fur, a grey tiger-striped cat with a little orange tip on her tail thus the reason for calling her Tippy.

Tippy was to become another one of my velcro cats, bonding to me immediately and from day one, or should I say, night one that she came into the apartment, would cuddle up and sleep with me. She was perhaps also, one of the few cats I ever had, that while I was stretched out in bed reading before going to sleep that had the habit of massaging my back. Since she was seemingly always by my side, she would even “help” me while I would set my living room up like a photographer’s studio, where I often did seasonal set-ups on holiday themes, such as Halloween and Thanksgiving. She often became part of the photos I would take, and she seemed to be a real ham, loving to be photographed.

Like I said, she was one of my velcro cats, hardly ever leaving my side, until something happened. At the time, I had another cat (among quite a few), named Bobbie, a light orange-colored tabby, who for some reason out of all the other cats we had, decided to “pick” on Tippy and quite literally bullied her. He became mean and nasty, perhaps jealousy? Have no idea as he didn’t bother the other cats the way he did to Tippy. And to think that animals don’t get jealous! Sort of the same thing as sibling rivalry.

Poor Tippy became so timid and frightened of Bobbie’s bullying, that she took refuge in the kitchen cabinet over the refrigerator and never came out, save to be fed on top of the refrigerator. It also meant either my mother or I would have to bring the litter pan to her on a routine basis. She just wouldn’t leave that refuge sanctuary that she had made for herself there. This went on for years, how many I can’t even remember now, but a good long time.

Then by a miracle, or so it seemed, one day I was in the living room and couldn’t believe my eyes as Tippy not only had left her sanctuary of the kitchen cabinet, but was proudly prancing around the living room, as if nothing had happened all these past years. And by another miracle, Bobbie didn’t bother her. Of course, looking back, maybe this seeming miracle should have sent warning signals of some kind, the mere fact that Tippy was out again, and that Bobbie wasn’t bothering her…as if maybe he sensed something, but I was just so happy to see Tippy out again. She even took to climbing on my bed at night to keep me company, and resumed her messaging of my back while I was stretched out in bed reading. This little happy miracle didn’t last long, perhaps only a week or so.

One day, on August 31, 1999, I woke up and noticed Tippy lying on the floor near the foot of my bed. I thought she was sound asleep, but when I went over to her, and petted her, she didn’t move. Yes, she had sometime in the early mornings hours had passed onto the Land of Bast, or as many call it Rainbow Bridge. What made it all the more poignant was the mere fact that she was near my bed, as if her last wish was to somehow be near me.

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Snoopy: November 7, 1970 ~ August 10, 1991

Probably one of my other more memorable cats I’ve had over the years was Snoopy, and it was a bit strange and odd how he happened to come into my life. I was on my way home from high school on November 7, 1970 and stopped in my local magazine shop. I was busy browsing the magazine racks looking for any new magazines that may have come out and that I might want to buy, when in came this magnificently, all pure white young cat. He was by no means a kitten exactly, but what intrigued me was his brilliant white fur. I had never in my life seen an all white cat before, and you might say he was “calling to me”. He sauntered over to me as if I were a long lost friend, and began rubbing his feline body against his legs. Considering that he was a stray cat, he was very clean looking as if at one time he may have belonged to someone. I quick dashed out the magazine store to find a public phone, and called my mother’s place of work about finding this gorgeous white cat, and would it be all right to bring him home, and she said yes. I dashed back into the store, where the white cat hadn’t moved a muscle from where I had left him, as if he were waiting for me. I scooped him up and wrapped him under my black velvet coat that I was wearing at the time, as it was a very chilly day that day. He made himself at home right away, as if he had lived there all his life, and the other cats that I had at the time, consisting of Babette, Friskey, Biddy and Patchouli seemed to welcome him as well, like he was a member of the feline family. Rather unusual as usually whenever a pet owner introduces a new pet into the family where a pet or pets already exists, there is often an “adjustment” period where they get to know each other and get along.

I don’t know why, but when it came to name this cat, I picked out the name Snoopy, after that famous Charlie Brown beagle created by Charles Shultz. Now here is where an oddity occurred and has always struck my mind even to this day, so many years later. My great-grandmother had died only a few months before on August 30, 1970 at the age of 98. Both my mother and grandmother informed me, that my great-grandmother while throughout her life always had pets, she always, but always wanted a pure white cat, but never had one. It almost became the family joke that Snoopy was “Grandma’s” cat, not only because he was a pure white cat, but he appeared in our lives only a little while after her death. And odder still, the fact, that Snoopy was the only cat in our home to live as long as he did. He died on August 10, 1991, some twenty years after finding him and as I said, he hadn’t been a kitten, so therefore probably even older. To this day, I can’t help thinking, that in more ways than one, Snoopy really was in every sense of the word, was “Grandma’s” cat.

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Friskey: May 19, 1968 ~ July 5, 1975

A continuation of my story about Friskey

This is a continuation of my story about Friskey, the cat who changed my mind that all cats weren’t as aloof or unfriendly as my first cat Babette had been. Friskey was to become one of my “velcro” cats, always sticking nearby me, following me around like a dog, he definitely wasn’t the definition of a independent cat. During the years that I had taken Friskey home we were to have a few more cats come into our lives. But Friskey was to remain one of my first favorites. Then heartbreak came.
It was early July 1975 and I was away for a few days visiting with a friend of mine. When I came back home the first thing I noticed of course, was that there was no Friskey. My grandmother was to tell me what had happened. One day she noticed that Friskey could barely walk and his back legs were giving him trouble, so she took him to our nearby vet, the vet we had gone to since our very first cat Babette came into our lives and we had trusted him during all these years. I asked her did the vet give any indication of what was wrong and she said no.

Friskey was to remain at the vet’s for about a week. We constantly called for updates but weren’t told a thing. We even asked if we could visit him and the vet said no as it might upset him. Now remember, we had trusted this vet for some thirteen years so we weren’t suspicious of anything. Finally, we asked if we could take him home and the vet agreed. When we picked him up however, no real explanation of what was wrong with him was given to us, no medications were given to us, and we were surprised to see his one back leg was all bandaged up…still no explanation of what was wrong.

My grandmother, mother and I were just happy to have Friskey home again. But he didn’t improve and only became worse. We decided to take him to another veterinary place, a rather expensive one in Manhattan. The news wasn’t good. We were informed that Friskey had a severe case of gangrene in that leg of his. We wondered, how did he get that way? He certainly didn’t have gangrene of the leg when we had taken him to our “trusted” vet. The options weren’t great either. The first was that the leg could be amputated and then very extensive therapy given to Friskey to get him used to walking and coping with only three legs, but at an astronomical cost, way above our means. The second option was as you might guess, the unfortunate one we had to take…to put him down. Neither my grandmother nor mother could cope with the decision or wanted to make it, and turned to me to make the decision….as if I wanted to. No, I most certainly did not but we just didn’t have the money to go for the other option. Tears were flowing on all our faces as I grimly told the vet to put my beloved Friskey down. Arrangements had also been made, since we had burial plots at the Wantaguh, Long Island, Bide-A-Wee to have Friskey buried there. Friskey was to be my first heartbreak, but he certainly wasn’t to be the last. Even after all these years, some thirty-four years later, I still miss my “velcro” cat.

As a note: We were to later find out, that the vet we had trusted for some thirteen years had a bad reputation. He seemed only interested in treating cats that were purebreeds only and not mere “domestic short-haired cats”. Many other pet owners of both cats and dogs also had major complaints against this vet, yet nothing was formerly done, and he still remained in practice many years to come until he retired. Nowadays of course, a person probably would have and could have sued, but then something like this never occurred for pet owners to do. If it had, believe me, we would have sued the daylights out of this vet.

©2008~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket