Well the yuletide is upon us and like Santa Claus, I’m trying to meet my deadline by completing this blahg the day before Christmas. 
I’ve had this blahg in mind for a couple of weeks but finding time to write it has not been an easy task. We all put so much into this time of year and stressing about what’s to be done that we forget the little things. This blahg will hopefully prove to be a reflection for those of you who forget to find the joy that we all so desperately need.
I confess I wasn’t always a cat person. When I was growing up, we always had dogs. That must mean my parents were dog people. Oh, I remember once we had an old barn cat, despite the fact we lived in the city, which my father had obtained to get rid of a rat that plagued our house. The cat did finally kill the rat but it also gave birth to a litter of kittens and then my memory gets vague on this because the cat and kittens were sent packing. The dog stayed.
When Jeanette and I were married we had hamsters. They were fun but when we moved back to Belleville with our two year old daughter, Emily, we gave the hamsters away and upgraded to cats. 
First we acquired Elmo and then two weeks later we adopted Tully. 
Both were black and white and males. They were very friendly and received their names from Sesame Street characters. We lived in an apartment for two years with them until moving into our first rental house in the country. They soon transformed from indoor cats to outdoor felines. That of course came at a cost. Tully got into something poisonous and eventually died. Elmo was struck by a car. Both were devastating times.
Sometime between the death of Tully and the death of Elmo, we adopted Panama. 
She was a short haired grey and black striped tabby. My children spotted her at a yard sale where she languished in a cage with her siblings with a sign denoting the free kittens. By this time, our family had extended to include our son Noah and a third child, Abbie, on the way. Panama’s unique name came from a favorite book that I enjoyed reading to the children, “The Trip to Panama” by Janosch. In this book, a bear and a tiger set out to find Panama, the land of their dreams. 
There’s a great line in the book “oh how lovely is Panama” so it influenced the naming of our new cat. This cat we decided would definitely be an indoor cat. We couldn’t break Elmo of his desire to be out of the house be we would ensure Panama would stay safely inside.
After we lost Elmo, we quickly adopted Carrot to fill the loss. We were always a two cat family because we thought that a solitary cat would be too lonely without a playmate. Carrot was a barn cat that came from a friend of ours. Whenever we visited his farm, the children loved climbing on the hay bales and admiring the barn kittens that ran freely. 
Carrot was a long haired cat named for her beautiful coat of orange fur. She was my favorite from the start. She took to me immediately and I couldn’t go anywhere in the house without her tagging behind or pouncing into my lap the moment I sat down. She, too, we kept indoors.
Soon our house became too small because it was a two bedroom house and we had three children and two cats. We moved to a five bedroom house complete with a barn but fortunately, at that time, no additional barn cats. I thought we were complete. Jump to a hay ride after church one fall when we end up at the farm where we had obtained carrot. My wife spies a lovely calico type kitten and falls in love with her. Before going on the hay ride, I had prepped the children that we were not in the market for another cat and not to ask about a new kitten. I had forgotten to prep my wife. 
So that’s how Patches came into our life. Despite being my wife’s choice, Patches chose me. She and Carrot vied for my attention constantly and Panama just watched and then went to whomever she pleased.
We only rented the house we were living in at the time and the owner didn’t mind the cats we had. He was a cat fan too. Eventually some cats adopted the barn on our property and cats and kittens came and went. I won’t go into those right now. They were not ours; they were free spirits. Eventually the owner of the house decided to sell the house and property and because it was 800+ acres, we didn’t have the means to meet his asking price and he didn’t want to sever the house from the land. So we moved again but only after purchasing our first home. Five bedrooms, three children, and three cats and still going strong.
Shortly after moving into our new home, we acquired our fourth female cat. Emily, by then 15, and I were volunteering with a youth group and one outing found us at an animal shelter scooping and cleaning cat litter boxes. Emily spotted our new cat at this shelter. She was a lovely long haired grey and white cat with the friendliest disposition. I wanted to say no to adopting this cat until I heard her story. The cat, named June by the volunteers at the shelter had been found abandoned in the countryside. 
She was only one year old and had had kittens at some point. When she was rescued, she was pregnant again but the kitten she carried was stillborn. Fortunately, there were some kittens brought into the shelter without a mother so June nursed them. I thought that any cat with that kind of history deserved a home. So we became a four cat household…all females and all indoor felines. Noah and I were the minority males.
I was quite content with our four cats but somewhere in the retelling of this adventure I have forgotten to mention our two dogs. Our first, Daisy, was a puppy that we adopted while we were in our first rental home and still had Elmo and Tully. That dog hated me. She started to turn vicious and she always took it out on me. She got loose one day when she was less than a year old and was struck and killed by a car. We were all saddened by this but it did not lead us to go and adopt another dog. On, the contrary, the next dog found us.
Probably a year after Daisy passed, I was shopping in Belleville, prior to Christmas, with my two young children when I spotted a young pig running under some parked cars in a supermarket parking lot. I finally caught up to the animal and discovered it was not a pig but rather a young pup whose fur was so white and so short that his pink skin shone through and made him look like a piglet. I inquired in a few stores about the dog but no one claimed him. I was going to take him to the shelter but they were not open until later in the day so I had no choice but to take him home. I called the shelter later to inform them of the dog in case anyone reported him missing and I posted a notice of a lost dog with the newspaper and the radio. No one claimed him and he became a fixture in our house. There were two pig movies around this time, “Babe” & “Gordy”, so we chose Gordy because his coloring had made me believe he was something other than a dog.
Gordy was with us for ten years. He was very very friendly but he could not be trained. He would run wild in the house or outside so we had to keep him leashed constantly. Once, he broke his leash and took off down the road. He was struck head on by a car but miraculously he walked away with no injuries. He only spent one night at the vet for observation. After this incident, however, he became very protective of us and whenever a stranger came near the house he would turn vicious. Once, he tried to bite the seat of the pants of my best friend. Even friends were not safe from him.
Gordy moved with us from house to house but when we finally purchased our new house there were neighbor children that he would constantly bark at. One wandered in our yard to play with my son and underestimated the length of Gordy’s leash. The boy received a few stitches from a nasty bite from Gordy. We had to have Gordy put down to keep peace in the village. We were back to four female cats again.
Panama was the oldest of our cats and she loved our youngest daughter Abbie. Panama always slept in Abbie’s room and it made Abbie feel special because this cat chose to be with her. This started when Abbie was in a crib and we had to keep Panama out of her room. When Abbie eventually moved to a bed we then allowed Panama back in her room. Carrot, Patches, and June usually just slept on the sofa or a comfortable chair.
Three years after we moved into our current home, we noticed a lump on Panama’s underbelly. After checking with the vet, we were told it was cancerous and that any surgery would be dangerous to the cat. We were all devastated. We made the decision not to put Panama through the surgery but because she was still in good spirits, we decided to let her live out the rest of her life with us. We found some naturopathic feline medicine over the internet and this seemed to help Panama. It provided her with more energy and she seemed to flourish for a little while. Our biggest concern, besides Panama’s health, was Abbie’s state of mind. Abbie was ten and she had a lot of love invested in Panama and they were truly good for each other.
Now this narrative will take a unique turn. A few days before Christmas that year, another cat came into our lives. We had had a large dowsing of snow and while my wife was shoveling our driveway, a large orange and white cat came out of nowhere and began to meow at her. He was very friendly but it looked like it had come across country. His fur was wet and matted and he had a few burs along his back. 
We took pity on the cat because it was so close to Christmas but on further inspection we discovered this was a male cat. We couldn’t allow him in the house because only two of our female cats were spayed. We put an old blanket in our garage and left some food out for him, hoping that he would eventually return to whence he came. He didn’t.
It began to get very cold and was snowing again so we made the decision to bring the cat into the house but to segregate him from the females. Our house is laid out so that when you come in through the back porch you go through the kitchen to get the rest of the house. We had a bi-fold door that we had used in the past when Gordy slept in the kitchen during the winter. This is a door that is hinged in the middle and folds up along a track. We put a blanket down in the kitchen and the door kept the male cat from entering the rest of the house. It worked well for two nights.
The third night was Christmas Eve. The cat had slept well in the kitchen those first two nights and showed no interest in the rest of the house. He went out during the day and female cats were allowed access to the kitchen while he was out. That Christmas Eve my wife and I were up late wrapping presents. I don’t think we got to bed until much after one in the morning. Everything was still, not a creature was stirring…well not quite. Shortly after going to bed, I heard a loud thump in the kitchen and had to get out of bed to see what caused the noise. I discovered the bi-fold door was open and the male cat was trotting through the dining room. I scooped him up, placed him the kitchen, closed the bi-fold door and went back to bed. I wasn’t sure how he had gotten out but thought he was secure in the kitchen again. Again the noise occurred and again I found the door open and the cat in the dining room. I wasn’t going to take any other chances so I took him into our bedroom and closed our door. He slept on our bed that night and went out in the morning.
As the next day was Christmas, we allowed the male cat to be in the kitchen in the afternoon with the door closed. The children and I were playing with something in the dining room when we noticed a small orange paw poke its way under the bi-fold door. The cat hooked his paw under the bottom of the door and pulled along the middle and the door popped open. Mystery solved. After that, we felt that if he was that resourceful, he was welcome to the run of the house during his stay.
We went through all the motions to try and find out if this cat belonged to anyone. We put up posters and contacted the local shelter and media outlets but there were no claimants. We also discovered, much to our delight, he was neutered. We didn’t need to worry about the female cats. He cleaned up rather nicely and has such beautiful long fur. We named him Frank. I had told the children not to name him because he probably wouldn’t be staying with us. He was still sleeping in my bedroom so one day I just started calling him Frank when asking him to move off my side of the bed. The name stuck and Frank became a permanent fixture.
The children immediately fell in love with Frank and Abbie put a great deal of time and love into him. I think she was gradually moving some of her affections away from Panama so that when Panama’s time came it wouldn’t be so hard. Three months later Panama did take a turn for the worse and we had to have her put down. We were happy for the ten years we had had with her. Abbie was very said but she bounced back because she had Frank. Later that year, we lost Carrot too. She developed a serious kidney infection and she died in my arms one night. It was a tough time but we still had June and Patches and Frank. Frank most of all, got us all through that tough time. He was truly one of the best Christmas presents we had all received.
Today, we celebrate three years of having Frank with us. The bi-fold door has long been removed as Frank is now King of the Castle. 
Patches and June pretty much steer clear of Frank but they know that they too are loved.
I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May you all find your own Frank or something just as wonderful that brings you joy.
