Every new cat I’ve acquired has changed the family dynamic. In case you wondered, yes — it is possible to have too many cats. I crossed that line a couple of cats ago. Let me tell you why.
My oldest cat is Agatha, a timid, long-haired, gray beauty who has litterbox issues. I had another cat at the time, an old Persian named Penelope. Penelope was tired and didn’t want to play, so I got Agatha a kitten, a little tabby named Hoover.
It spiraled from there. Once you start getting cats for your cats, you’re bound to wind up as a crazy cat lady or lord. Kittens began appearing in my driveway — perhaps the word was out. I moved 300 miles away, and kittens still showed up. Winnifred was left on my porch one night shortly before Christmas. She was little and orange, and it was love at first meow.
Had I stopped with Winnie, my house would be more or less peaceful. I would still have the enmity that exists between Agatha and the Muffin Man, but they’ve learned to avoid each other. The others get along just fine. Ebenezer and Agatha have formed a bond over their mutual fear of rain. Everybody loves Hoover. Winnie is a bit of a loner, but no one hates her.
Unfortunately, a couple of years after I found Winnie, a friend posted on Facebook that she had found a litter of kittens near her apartment complex. At the time, my goat barn and chicken coop were being overrun with mice, little fat rodents who feared neither God nor man. I’d walk into the chicken coop, and a mouse would be lounging in their feeder. I’d have to give the feeder a good shake to get rid of him. He’d roll his eyes at me and saunter off. And so, I read the post and made a decision. “I’ll take them all,” I said.
She dropped them off at my house: four gray fluffs and one black fluff. I gave one of the gray cats to my bestie, which left me with four barn cats. It was fine — they lived outside. It wasn’t like I had them all in my tiny cabin.
They were the meanest kittens I have ever met, all claws and teeth. Monster cats, so I named them Banshee, Zombie 1, Zombie 2, and Dracula. I couldn’t tell the zombies apart. Banshee looked like them, a ball of gray, but she only had one eye. Dracula was black.
Eventually, Banshee disappeared, and Drac was hit by a car. Out of worry, I started making the zombies sleep in my cabin. By then, I could tell the zombies apart: Sweet Zombie and Fat Zombie. They still went outside during the day. They were barn cats, after all.
The thing with being a true cat lover is that it’s hard to have barn cats. One day, Sweet Zombie disappeared. I looked all over, called his name, and finally accepted that he was gone. Except he wasn’t. I found him in my bathroom, hiding. He was very sick. That night, he had seizures. I thought he would be dead by morning. I put a thick blanket in my bathtub and lay in there with him for a while, holding him and saying goodbye.
He recovered. I never let him go outside again. He is the love of my life.
Fat Zombie still goes outside; he has singlehandedly rid our property of mice. He never wanders far, and he has an 8 p.m. curfew. He lounges on top of my car or on my deck. Occasionally, he goes to my sister’s house next door. He and her Dalmatian seem to be in love.
The problem is that the zombies are still monsters, especially to the other cats. They’re aggressive. And Fat Zombie is huge. The family dynamic has been thrown off. Everyone hates them, except for Hoover. Hoover learned the secret of having peace long ago: if a zombie starts to chew on him, he turns it into a grooming session. Everybody loves Hoover.
I’m constantly breaking up fights, although it’s gradually getting better as the zombies get older. They’ve started to mellow a little, so long as no one is sitting in whatever spot they have currently claimed as their own. Sweet Zombie is sometimes nice to Agatha, especially if it’s raining. He’ll lick her forehead, as if to let her know it’s okay. He tries to play with Winnie, but she hates him. She’s a very angry cat. She spends a lot of time hiding on top of my bathroom door.
I don’t intend to get any more cats for a very long time. It isn’t fair to the cats I have now. Of course, nobody believes me. Recently, I found a kitten — everyone thought I would keep her. But I didn’t. I fostered her for a while, then found her a home. The zombies loved her.
Four of my cats are senior cats, and I don’t plan to replace them when they cross the rainbow bridge. Eventually, it’ll just be Winnie and the zombies. I hope she’ll learn to put her anger aside and make peace. They have a lot of years left together, and I don’t want to spend all those years breaking up cat skirmishes.
