This Mom has flown (from Yesterday’s Kittens)

Mom at the front door on a rainy winter day

Life isn’t easy for a cat named Mom. She was built for elusiveness, predisposed to distrust humans. At the first suspicious noise, the she sprinted for cover and scampered up a fence. Any appearance of affection emerged across many months. That was Mom.

The first time I saw Mom – or didn’t see her – I stood within feet and saw nothing. New to the yard, Percy sat near the back fence, where a gap between lots leaves a perfect tunnel for cats. Two fences six inches apart create the kitty portal, as it became known. I assumed my surly cat just wanted to partake in the portal and growled at his inability to leap the fence.

As I approached Percy, I suddenly felt eyes upon me and realized he wasn’t alone. From the kitty portal, a cat with its face split between gold and gray halves stared at me before stealthily moving deeper into our neighbor’s forested lot. Frequently we’d spot in her roaming the yard, less frequently sparring with or fleeing Percy.

Mom … it’s a terrible name for anyone, absent of thought or character. She became such a fixture that we never bothered with a real name. I couldn’t contemplate another name; nothing fit. After a litter of six kittens in April 2015, she was just Mom, nursing her babies until they grew large enough to become rivals. If we ever moved, she’s the cat we had no thoughts of moving. Mom was too wild, too spirited for domestication. Mom could not be separated from Clover Hill.

Still motherly, June 2015

Mom’s fur pattern classified her as a dilute calico – instead of orange, black and white, Mom’s fur ran gold, charcoal gray and white. Pull the orange from her, and the neighbor’s cat, the sole survivor from a previous litter, was the only offspring who looked related to her. Every kitten in her final litter represented a different color from Mom.

I credit Nancy for every step Mom took toward comfort with people. Mom never came close to our neighbor Dan or myself, but gifts of wet food and salmon skin when she struggled to keep six kittens alive wore down Mom’s wariness of humans. Her comfort with Nancy never fully transferred to me. Once when the other cats distracted her, I petted her back. Immediately Mom jolted back as if my fingers carried electric current. Before she left us, she sometimes rubbed against me at feeding time.

I’m not naive about the cat’s instincts – she developed a taste for wet food and luxurious table scraps (salmon skin, which led her to bring her kittens onto the porch after hustling them from warren to warren around the neighborhood). The wet food saved Mom from hunting when the needs of newborns drained her energy and burnt every spare ounce off her sinewy frame.

Food also saved Mom from future litters. Nancy used that wet food to lure Mom into the cat carrier for a trip to the vet or spaying and shots. I drove her and all six kittens to the vet. Through the entire ride, Mom bucked in the carrier, ramming against her captivity.

Mom returns from the vet, her only trip off Clover Hill

When I picked her up, they brought her out in a trap – her feistiness made her impossible to return to the carrier. She lunged at the trap’s plastic door. At home, I pulled up the trap’s door and she sprinted into the shrubbery. If ever something might drive Mom away, I expected her spaying and recovery in a kennel might do the trick. A day later, she resumed her visits to the front porch – and kicked at any kittens still attempting to nurse. She developed a tense relationship with her offspring.

She let the kittens feast on back porch while loitering at the front door. She meowed through the glass until we closed the lights. When especially hungry, she thrust her paws up and danced across the glass. Her perseverance usually paid off. Of course we frequently let Mom dance a while before we caved in.

Mom would not let a closed door stop here. Late one night I heard a crash on the glass storm door. Opening the interior door, I found Mom and the freshly killed mole she hurled against the door to alert us to her hunger. All of us knew they only hunted moles for practice, not meals.

A rare moment alone, spring 2016

“That’s worth a can, Mom,” I told her.

 Then one day in October, Mom stopped coming back. She left the only place in the world where she was ever welcome. She had three litters atop this hill. None survived from the first. A lone male, who looks like Mom in only gray and white right down to her leg markings, became Dan’s cat (Meathead to Dan, Gray to Nancy and I).

Not that Mom stayed exclusive to either Dan’s yard or ours – she had an unseen refuge across the street, down a hill in the great tangle of shrubs and trees below the power transmission lines. Often she trotted down the hill past the houses, nestling who knows where. We joked that she was starting her shift on mornings when we caught her early-morning trot up the driveway toward breakfast.

In her last months with us, she let Nancy freely pet her when food was assured. She rubbed along my legs when I appeared with a can of wet food and a scoop of dry. Her kittens figured out the front porch routine, so Mom grudgingly joined them for morning and evening food. I touched her fur once or twice, usually when she busied herself with rubs from her kittens. They get social before feeding and tolerate closeness that would otherwise elicit swiping paws.

Even with me, she finally accepted gently petting when part of the clowder. For its bristly appearance, Mom's coat boasted some of the softest fur I ever touched. She had endured three litters and many years on this hilltop neighborhood.

Yet we knew nothing of her fate. Stray cats don’t leave forwarding information. Perhaps her food intake made her too slow to escape a fox or coyote. She always avoided cars and never approached people – we were the exception. By “we,” I mean Nancy. How many times did she dance across the glass door, desperate for another morsel? How many times did we find her sleeping, curled tightly against the front stoop? She was a fixture until she vanished.

Sometime in late October, Mom last appeared on our porch. She had come so far – a frightened, standoffish cat who hissed when the porch door opened or scrambled up the six-foot-tall fence in two moves.

Mom, front porch, October 2015

Slowly we accepted she was gone. Two weeks after she vanished, hope largely evaporated. I asked Dan if he had seen her, but hadn’t, also wondering what we had. Acceptance crept in – Mom wasn’t coming back. In her absence, Sleek – the all-black cat from her last litter – has become the front-porch dancer. Even Gray sometimes dances for attention. It must be hardwired into the family DNA.

We could wish for two outcomes. Perhaps she found another, better food source and moved on. If she fell victim to the threats that shorten outdoor cat lifespans, we only hoped that she didn’t suffer. The extended drought and heat of autumn 2016 might have pushed predators into her hidden territory.

 If she defied the outdoor cat odds and ever finds her way back, Mom still has a place on the porch. We won’t even demand a dance.