Our Cats: Ouija

When I was a kid living at home, Dad would never let us have a cat. He was a gamekeeper on a private game plantation, the Horseshoe Plantation outside Tallahassee, where one of the popular hunted species was quail. Quail are ground nesting birds and cats do hunt them, too. I loved to play with our "neighbors'," the Bradley's kittens. They had outdoor cats who always had kittens I would lure out and play with and pet.

We did get to keep a stray kitten named Blackie when we lived in Williston, Florida when I was in 5th and 6th grade. He was a great cat! Very friendly and when we got our Toy Rat Terrier, he let her pull him around by the ears and never scratched or bit her. He DID box her ears sometimes with claws retracted, though. She had it coming. Unfortunately he was hit by a car before he was two years old. He was a great cat, though.Danny & I both cried over his loss. Pat came along much later and didn't know Blackie.

Of course when I was in college and the opportunity to get a kitten came up, I did get a black kitten when the landlord of my garage apartment in Nacogdoches had a cat, Angel (a Tortie) who had kittens. Ouija was born in 1971 to Angel. Ouija had short shoulder and head hair but longer body and tail hair. She was beautiful! She was all black, no white hair at all.

She was sort of obnoxious about some things. If she didn't want to use her litter box, she would just go where she pleased. She was not, however, much of a furniture scratcher and she was very affectionate. And being a black cat, she loved to lie on light-colored clothes or furniture.

When I moved to a mobile home on the NW side of town with Sue, my roommate and co-worker at Safeway, Ouija loved it. It was well-insulated and much cozier than the garage apartment. But I had a scare with her there. She came down with something really bad. Poor little Ouija had the runs something terrible and almost died. It was a wonder she lived but she was a tough kitty.

Once when we lived in the mobile home, which had mice, she wiped out a nest of baby mice and put them all in my shoe! The vet said she was sharing her catch with me. Umm, thanks but no thanks!

While there, I also took in a dirty, skinny white cat with some apricot markings. Sue didn't like him so I took him to Tyler and paid his vet bill to be checked out. He became the only cat that Daddy took a liking to. He was named Mao because that is what his voice sounded like when he spoke to you, "Maaoooooo."

When I moved to Dallas, well actually to Arlington, Ouija would wait in the window of my efficiency apartment every afternoon for me to come home. If I stopped downstairs to talk to anyone, she would meow to get my attention. She liked to sit out on the balcony, too, and never tried to get down. I sometimes took her out on the grass in front of the office and she was very good about staying right there. She loved to sit on my lap & I loved to have her there.

When Phyllis, my best friend and roommate at that time, divorced her husband, James, she & I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment in the complex. Then Ouija had Cuddles, Phiddy's cat and her dog Ming to play with. She didn't go out any more as we lived downstairs and right on the parking lot. She was content with the move.

Later, when Phiddy & I moved to some apartments just off Montfort in North Dallas, the three of them continued to live well together. About a year or so later, Phiddy married her boyfriend, Bill and she, Cuddles and Ming moved out. Ouija and I moved in with another friend, Sandy, who also had a cat, whose name was Muffin. Sandy decided to marry her boyfriend, Joe, (does anyone see a pattern here?) so Ouija and I moved to some apartments on Meadow Road by the railroad track. The upside was that there was a second floor balcony again, that Ouija could sit out on.

At Meadow Road, Ouija was an only cat again for a while, till Tache the miniature Poodle moved in from Mom & Dad's in Tyler. Ouija never minded Tache, because he sat beside me and she got my lap. She always liked to be ON me. Even when driving with her in the car, she would get behind my neck to ride. She was very affectionate...to me. Everyone else could kiss off as far as she was concerned. That cat could still hunt, though. I let her out on the balcony when I was home and one day, to my surprise, she caught a bird! I'm sure it had to be either very old or very dumb to have let her get that close to it.

My brother, Danny, decided to quit college at UT and move to Dallas. We decided to get an apartment together to save money, so we moved over to Whitman just off North LBJ Freeway, and just off Audelia where it comes out to LBJ Freeway. She & Tache got all the petting and Ouija even warmed up to Danny a little, but she was very much still a Mama's Cat. When Danny and his Fiancee, Becky, married in 1981, he moved out of course, and I moved in with my boyfriend, Lou, to an apartment in what they used to call "Folsom-ville," the part of the City of Dallas that sticks up like a panhandle between Richardson and Farmers Branch.

Ouija continued to be mama's cat, and strangely obedient. Once she was out on the fenceless patio when a rabbit ran by about 3 feet out from the patio. She got a run across the patio when I SCREAMED NO! at her. Amazingly, she STOPPED! To this very day, I still can't believe she actually let that rabbit go and stopped.

Lou quit his job at Precision Motors in the Spring of 1982 and was unemployed for months. He even interviewed for a job in Colorado. That was the same time the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike and Reagan fired the ones who wouldn't come back to work. Lou had been an air traffic controller in the Air Force in Japan and applied for one of the open positions. After an interminable time, while he had to go back to traffic school, we finally found out we would be stationed in Austin at Robert Mueller (pronounced "Miller") International.

In Austin, first we lived in a two story duplex on Cinnamon Path in the corner area between South Lamar and Oltorf. This was the only time Ouija ever disappeared and stayed gone for a while. She usually stayed right by the duplex, but one day, she didn't come in. I walked and called her, called her, called her. (I have always taught my cats to come to their names and not to "kitty, kitty" because no once else can call them and catch them.) I cried every night. Lou was not overly fond of Ouija because she wouldn't come to him, so was not concerned that she was gone, except that I was so upset about it. After she had been missing two weeks and I had all but given up hope, I came home from work and THERE SHE WAS! Lou said she just showed up at the door wanting in. She had lost weight and we figured she must have gotten shut in someone's garage for 2 weeks as it was the holidays and a lot of people were gone.I was so glad to have her back! I could tell she was glad to BE back, too.

While living on Cinnamon Path we acquired our second cat, Tigger. One morning early I was out walking Tache and heard a kitten crying pitifully (and very loudly.) I found a little silver tabby kitten up in the fork of a dead tree. I got her down and carried her back home with me, intending to find out if she belonged to anyone. I put her in the garage and went to the store to get something for breakfast and a Sunday paper. By the time I got back, Lou had her out of the garage and was holding her and calling her Tigger. Yep, she was there for good!

In1986 we bought a mobile home in Pflugerville on what was then East Dessau Road and is now the easternmost part of Howard Lane. Up till now, Ouija had pretty much ignored Lou like he didn't exist. One day, Ouija had gotten under the house and got filthy. I gave her a bath. She was unhappy, to say the least! While I was toweling her dry, she got away from me and ran to Lou in the living room and, still sopping wet, sat on his knee. He was so happy about it that he wouldn't even let me pick her up and dry her off some more.

While on Dessau Road, we acquired Spot, who had kittens Willie, Missy and Peepers. We also were adopted by Bubba/Fuzzy Butt while we lived there. Ouija, while not exactly happy to have them, tolerated them in her twilight years. We lost my Poodle, Tache there to his old age of 16. He is buried in the pet cemetery in Pflugerville, if it is still there. We also got a little brown puppy named Tsin'tia the last few months we were there, (see Ridgeback Tales.)

In 1988, we bought the house on Saratoga Drive, off Cuernavaca in the Westlake area. We had with us at that time puppy Tsin'tia and cats Ouija Tigger, Fuzzy Butt, Spot, Missy and Willie. In 1990, the first day of the annual KLRU Auction, Ouija left us at age 19. I was broken-hearted, even through I knew most cats never have such a long life. I hope she was happy with us. I still miss her.