Sam’s Story

Years ago, a neighbor of mine came over to my home with a tiny gray kitten. Before I could say a word she said that someone brought her the kitten, but she could not keep it. She was moving to a new place that did not allow pets. Someone ran over her grown cat accidentally. The car driver brought her the kitten from the local shelter to make amends.

I had a cat in the house, a grumpy, black tortoiseshell. She was named Leftover because she was the last kitten left in the litter. She was my husband’s cat, my ex-husband actually, so I was not responsible for her name or attitude. She was a cat who would not tolerate competition for affection, meaning my husband’s affection. She allowed me to live with them, but I had a feeling that I was on permanent probation. I told my neighbor that I could not possibly take the kitten.

The neighbor had a response ready. She said something like this, “I remember you told me your parents have a dairy farm and that they have several barn cats already. The kitten needs a home fast. Please, please take it to them soon because I cannot take care of it while I am preparing to move.” The animal lover in me sighed a long sigh. We are suckers for the babies and this one was so small and unwanted in its current circumstances. It fit in my hand.

I called and got my mother. I explained about the cat and asked her to be sympathetic to its plight. To my surprise, she did not argue, much. I was in the car with the kitten within an hour. The kitten was listless and I did not want to try to feed it before putting it in the car and risking carsickness too. I needed to get there before the kitten’s condition worsened. It was an hour’s drive.

I did not box or crate the kitten, I did not think to do so. It lay on the floorboard of the passenger side at first and then moved out of sight. I pulled over once to look for it and it was curled under the passenger seat. I got back in and drove a little faster. What kitten sleeps in a totally new, noisy, scary place? I thought that it might not live long enough to see the farm.

When I reached my parents’ home I fished the kitten out from under the seat. It was so frail but alive, so I took it in my hand and walked into the house. Mom took a quick peek and said, “Get it out of here!!!!. And get a basin of warm water, an old rag, and bath soap.” The kitten was flea infested, so it had to endure a bath before food was provided.

My sister and I took the kitten and bath supplies into the sideyard. We dipped it to its neck in the warm soapy water and then almost dropped it. The kitten mewed in protest, of course, but that is not what startled us. Fleas hopped and leaped everywhere to get out of the water. They hopped on us, hopped on the kitten’s head, making it black Flea bodies seemed to darken the water and the water turned red with flea poop. I have not seen a worse case of fleas in the years since.

The wet kitten looked even more pitiful than it did dry with fleas. Perhaps the fleas added some weight and girth. This kitten was practically skeletal. Too weak to protest much, so it was too weak to compete for food. I doubt if it would have survived another day in the shelter. We quickly and gently toweled it dry. We warmed it by setting it on the kitchen table in a box on a wrapped heating pad set to as low a temperature as possible. The hook was set, and the kitten had a home.

My sister offered the kitten milk warmed to room temperature and she had canned cat food as a backup. We guessed that the kitten was about a month old, too young to be completely weaned and on solid food. It lapped a little at the milk and then launched itself into the canned food. It ate until we thought it would burst. Providing milk would not be a problem, hunger overcame the weaning process.

Clean, warm, and full, the kitten fell asleep. The kitchen table talk started between my mom, my younger sister, and me. One of us said and maybe it was me, “I have never seen an ugly kitten, but this is.” Another one said, “The ugliest kitten, ever”. We all agreed.

The kitten would fit into the palm of your hand. Its tiny size was the only thing that was cute about it. It was skin and bones. The fur was gray, that much we could see, but the hair was thin and the skin was rough. The kitten’s ears laid low, pointing more to the sides, not up like most cat ears. Its yellow eyes bugged out from its head.

Like Yoda, it looked! We decided that it looked just like Yoda, the little alien Jedi Master in the Star Wars movies. That name might have stuck, but Mom was not convinced. She was right like she usually was.

“Boy or girl, can you tell?” We could not. The kitten was so young that determining its sex was impossible, even for experienced cat owners. Names were going to need to be unisex. Someone suggested Sam after some kidding around. That seemed to fit.. Sam was home.

I spent the night at the farm, anxious that the kitten I brought was going to be okay. The bath and meal wore Sam completely out. I wanted to see if Sam would be better or worse if other conditions appeared that were masked by fleas and hunger. In the morning, Sam was still the ugliest kitten, but it was more alert and playful. Sam continued to eat like a starved animal, and it was.

Sam thrived at the farm, and my mom let me know with regular updates. Its appetite continued to be strong so it gained enough weight to look more normal over a month. By then, Mom determined that the kitten was a female, so Sam was short for Samantha. She would always be called Sam.

I came to check on Sam after about three weeks. Seeing her again was a shock, in a good way. Her ears were upright and her face was fuller so her eyes bugged out much less. Her coat was thicker and her potential to be a great cat was beginning to show. She was tiny and fearless, unafraid of the other cats or the dog. She fit in nicely.

Sam had to be spayed as soon as possible, her small size made pregnancy riskier according to the vet. He also said that her hips and pelvis had evidence of past trauma. This made accidental pregnancy potentially life-threatening. We could only think that the first month of her life was terribly hard. Lack of food might have contributed to her petite stature. We did not want to guess what caused the damage to her pelvis and hips. We noticed that she did not jump like other cats. We never worried about her jumping on the counters or the table.

As the months passed Sam grew from the ugliest kitten ever into a small, long=haired, gray cat. She was lovely really. Her coat was the color of woodsmoke, soft and fluffy as down. Her bright yellow eyes contrasted with the gray, making her more striking looking. Sam did not meow, her voice stayed small, too, sounding more like mew than MEOW. Her purr was louder by comparison, louder than the purr of the biggest cat in the house.

Sam did not let her physical limitations limit her world. She did not know she was different. She would end up in high places, but she would make several small leaps to get there. Somewhere my mom has a picture of her on the garage roof. She liked to climb trees, but only in her younger years. She got stuck a few times in trees she climbed up but had trouble climbing down from. A family member would try to encourage her to climb down, but she had to be hungry enough to do it.

Her hunting ability was not hampered much by her size or her early trauma. She regularly brought small dead things to the kitchen door. At first, she laid them down on the step and mewed to be let in. We thought jokingly that she must be laying them out so well so her efforts could be better admired by the one opening the door. After having her kills disposed of promptly, she stopped laying them down.

She managed to cry for the door to open for her with a mouse in her mouth. The person opening the door would not think to look for signs, like a mouse tail-shaped whisker. With some success getting dead mice in, she graduated to live mice. I heard of numerous instances when Sam managed to bring in a live mouse. Her goal was to get her mouse to the bathroom so she could drop it in the tub. She knew that a mouse in the tub could not climb out, the sides were too slippery. Sam would have a place to “play with her prey”. My younger sister could not tolerate it, but she had trouble with catching and releasing an injured mouse. The mouse did not have a good outcome in either case. Sam did not always get the mouse to the tub and a live but chewed mouse would get loose in the house. A few times she caught small birds and got those in the house. At least once the bird was able to fly when Sam loosened her grip. It flew around the house until it found a way out through a door my Mom or sister opened.

Sam liked the bathtub. She liked putting mice in it of course. She loved to watch the facet as water poured in and the drain as it went out. She would sit on the side of the tub while you took a bath, watching the water as it moved and splashed. She did not want in the water, though. She slipped once from the side of the tub and fell into the bathwater while my sister was in the tub. It would be difficult to say who was startled more. In her vulnerable position, my sister grabbed for Sam before she could panic and scratch her. She dropped the dripping cat to the bathroom floor and yelled for help. Then she put Sam and a towel on the floor outside the bathroom. Mom started drying Sam so my sister would dry and dress before she finished the cat-drying process. Sam’s bath-watching days ended after that. I don’t know if it was voluntary or if Sam was not let in the bathroom at bath time.

She loved to be chased by her humans. My mother developed a habit of stamping her feet in front of Sam, a signal that the chase was on. She would practically fly down the hall to the bedrooms, lean into a tight turn, then scratching the floor for traction, she flew back into the kitchen. Mom would act as if she was going to catch her and she would lean and turn, scratching as she went, hardly slowing down. This would continue for several more trips up and down the hall. It was funnier than most of the cat videos on Youtube. Seeing my mother chasing a cat was as funny as seeing the cat run like she had jets on her feet.

Sam became the queen of the house. She was into everything that the humans did, putting her head in between the person and whatever they were doing or reading. She truly loved wrapping paper and ribbon and would hang out near the rolls of Christmas paper to be sure to be close if gift wrapping started. Getting a package wrapped was complicated. Sam batted at the paper, the paper roll, the scissors, the tape, the ribbon, and the bow. The wrapper had to dodge the paws, avoid the claws and still wrap a decent gift. Shouting did not phase Sam, putting her off the paper did not. Putting her outside caused her to scratch the door and mew. I forgot to mention how stubborn Sam was.

She had her bed in the kitchen chair and one in the family room. She developed a taste for vanilla ice cream and would get her own little dish when the humans had one. She was mad about the egg nog that you can buy in the dairy case during the holidays Every time the carton was opened, she would beg and mew until she got her own serving.

She ruled the house until she was 19 years old. She was loved for her can-do spirit, for being a clown and a diva, for the big purr in her little body. Not a bad life for a cat that started out as the ugliest kitten ever.

When the time came I told my sister that I would be the one to take her to her next home on the rainbow bridge. My sister could not and I knew that. So Sam came in with me and left with me.