Animal, Old Tom Turkey and Cheyenne

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March 24, 2006

I love cats and one of the first things I asked our landlords was if it was ok to have a cat here. They said, “Konyechna!” or, “of course!” I told a couple people that I wanted to get a kitten and asked what would be the best way to do that. Someone suggested going to the market and choosing from the dozens of animals for sale there each day. Another person told me that a woman by the name of Constantinovna had a cat that had a new litter of kittens. The next time I saw Constantinovna I asked her about it. Yes, her cat had three new kittens and all but one was available for adoption.

I really wanted a tabby cat, gray or orange. I wanted a male cat that I could have neutered. Our first cat had been a beautiful orange and white tom cat, with thick medium length hair. He was gentle and loving and I was even able to train him on a leash and take him for walks. His name was Shalmaneezer and I called him Shalmy. I loved that cat very much. However, we needed to move from Alaska to Kansas for Mel to return to school and we didn’t think we would be able to take him with us. I put an ad in the Fairbanks Newsminer paper and not long after received a phone call. We set up a time and a young man with a repaired harelip came to the door and picked him up. I worried about that cat for several weeks afterward. Did he have a good home? Was he being loved? My mother finally convinced me that the man who picked him up had good intentions (not some kind of animal cruelty in mind) and Shalmy probably became his loving companion. Although that was thirty years ago, I still hope she was right. We moved back to Alaska a year later and if I had it all to do over again, I would never have given Shalmy away.

We had several other cats after that. Some were a pain and a nuisance while others were just nice cats. Animal was one of the nuisance cats. He was a pure black short hair cat with green eyes. Beautiful. But Animal discovered that he could knock Kara’s bottle over, chew the end off the nipple and then drink the milk as it poured out. Sometime later we moved out to a cabin in a blueberry bog outside of Fairbanks. One morning I heard a gunshot and wondered what our neighbor was shooting at. His house was not all that far away from our cabin and the thought of a bullet crashing through our wall was disconcerting, to say the least.

Our neighbor was raising several small animals and was attempting to do some sort of farming on what reminded us of a hippy-back-to-nature kind of compound. He had a big guard dog chained at the entrance of his property and no one dared go down there to visit. However, his big tom turkey did come up to visit us on occasion. That big tom scared me – he was as tall or taller than Kara was and I was afraid he would peck her eyes out or hurt her in some way. We didn’t have a fenced yard and it was their responsibility to keep their livestock in their pens. One late fall day Mel and his twin brother, Ralph, were working on our car, trying to get the starter changed. Ralph was under the car doing something and Mel was standing in front looking under the hood. Suddenly Mel realized that he had company. Old Tom Turkey was also trying to look under the hood! He was standing there beside Mel, looking for all the world like he was going to give advice on the mechanical workings of Ford Pintos. Mel told Ralph they had a visitor and then told him what he was going to do. He has long arms so he stepped over a little to the side, reached around in the open window and honked the horn. Old Tom Turkey started gobbling at the top of his voice, wattle swinging back and forth and turning from bright red to kind of a bluish white. But he continued to stand there, pacing a little back and forth on fat turkey legs. I came out of the cabin to see why Mel was honking the horn and he said, “Watch this!” and honked it again. Wow! I hadn’t known that turkey wattles change color when they get angry or scared. You learn something new every day. I was still scared of that old tom and was very thankful when he finally decided to wander on home back down the road.

Well, the morning I heard the gunshot, Animal went missing. I wondered if he had been shot for being on the guy’s property. I was starting to get upset. I wondered how I could go down there past the dog and find out if he had shot my cat, when suddenly through the window I saw Animal in the yard. I went to the door, opened it and he came in. I didn’t see any blood and he seemed to be fine, acting like his normal self. A couple hours later he jumped up in the windowsill and just sat there looking at me. I reached over, picked him up and started petting him. He was purring loudly, something he had never done before. I examined him again - no blood, no obvious wounds, just very loud purring. I reached under his chin to scratch his neck and suddenly stopped. He had a large lump on his breastbone! I parted the fur and looked. Sure enough, he had a hole in his chest. Mel was out in the yard somewhere and I quickly called him in. I was boiling angry. We had very little money and we didn’t know any vets in Fairbanks – what were we going to do? We bundled Kara and baby Peter into their car seats, put Animal in a shoebox with a lid and started off to town. We didn’t have a phone out at the cabin, but stopped at Mel’s parent’s house to look in a phone book for a name and address of a veterinarian.

A couple of hours later we were on our way home, several dollars poorer. Animal was back in his shoebox, ready to go home and get back to living a normal life. In my purse I carried a .22 caliber bullet. The vet told us it had been lying just under the skin and all he had done was make an incision and the bullet popped out. I carried that bullet in my coin purse for several years. I think I still have it in a jewelry box in storage back in Colorado.

Later that winter, we got ready to leave for church. As we were getting into the car, I looked down the road toward our neighbors place. He had strung a wire across the road, about ten feet in the air. The dog’s chain was hooked to the wire, thus giving the dog the ability to guard the whole road and both sides. On that cold winter morning, in the pale sunlight of winter, there that poor dog was, hanging about a foot above the road. I gasped in horror. He was obviously dead, frozen stiff in the below zero temperature. I turned to Mel, pointed at the dog and asked him what could have happened?! We speculated that the dog’s breath had frozen the chain, the ice had built up and as he moved it twisted the chain ever tighter around his neck. As he struggled it only got worse. What a terrible way to die – even though I hadn’t liked the dog – no animal should die that way. The owner did not get another dog by the time we left the next summer, at least not one he chained up at the top of the road.

When we left Alaska a year later, Animal went to live with Mel’s brother. He started out a nuisance, but turned out to be a pretty nice cat.

I did get a kitten from Constantinovna. She ended up being almost completely white. I named her Cheyenne Little Bug and she lives up to her name (the Cheyenne Indians were very fierce warriors). While Animal started out a nuisance and ended up being a pretty nice cat, Cheyenne started out “the kitten from hell” and just turned into “the cat from hell.” Those are Mel’s words, not mine. But I love her and I’m glad she’s here to keep me company when Mel is gone.