You know how someone tells you a compelling story, and you believe their story is true, and the urge to help them becomes a call to action? So you help them. But after a while things don’t quite line up. The person who told the story is acting in ways that make you wonder if their story isn’t entirely true. A feeling grows within you: I’m being hustled.

 

Doesn’t hustle mean you’re working hard? Like playing in a basketball game?

 

You could say I’ve been working hard, 9, but what’s really happened is I’ve been worked hard. By a couple of cats!

 

Does this have something to do with Bob?

 

It definitely involves Bob, Lily, and Hoosegow is somewhat complicit. . .

 

Dear Reader, I’ve probably mentioned Bob a few times:

 

 

 

He showed up in the back yard several months ago, infrequently at first. As winter set in he spent an increasing amount of time in the yard and on the deck. He discovered the cat door, and the cat food. He seemed so desperate for food I assumed he was a stray, and though I’m reasonably fluent in cat language, he did nothing to dissuade this impression.

 

All well and good. Like most people I feel empathy for cold, hungry beings, especially as winter sets in. I didn’t worry too much about him getting some food from our household here and there, or finding a quiet place to sleep indoors on cold nights.

 

It was always in the back of my mind, though, to capture him and get him into a vet for a checkup (including tests for viruses he could pass on to Hoosegow) and vaccines. I borrowed a “capture alive” trap from a friend. For a week or more I agonized over when I would do “the deed.” This was complicated by my regular veterinary office’s requirement to book an appointment in advance of bringing a trapped cat in. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how, in the real world with all its variables, trapping a cat and getting it to a pre-scheduled appointment would align.

 

Then, something else claimed my attention.

 

Oh no, this sounds bad.

 

Hoosegow had become a little bit sensitive to touch on his sides, and his temper with me when I brushed or pet him was uncharacteristically short.

 

That explains the scratches on your hands.

 

I made the first appointment I could get at his regular vet to check things out, but the day before that his symptoms escalated. His sides appeared bloated and he was talking to me nonstop. Fortunately, the urgent care veterinary clinic just south of here in Milton-Freewater, Oregon was open that afternoon. As we drove there his incessant meows grew faint. All the way to the clinic I meowed back at him and said “Stay with me, buddy,” several times. The eleven mile trip seemed like a hundred.

 

Poor kitty!

 

I’m relieved and grateful to report that Hoosegow and I were the lucky ones at the clinic that day. All the other patients seemed to be terminally ill. Waiting while blood was drawn and tests were run, I feared that would be our situation, too. Hoosegow has a history of crystals in his bladder which could quickly turn fatal if untreated. He’s been on a prescription diet to prevent that for years, but now that he’s at the far end of middle age. . .well, sometimes things just give out.

 

Turns out it was pancreatitis. The vet explained this could be acute or chronic, and that many animals recover from it. Primary causes: diet and stress. Given his prescription diet, stress surfaced as the likely suspect, especially in consideration of Bob. The relationship between them is that of Frenemies. Not unusual for any two cats, but if the stress was harming Hoosegow. . .

 

We arrived home with a bottle of gabapentin, and a groggy, grumpy kitty who was tired of being poked and prodded. Next step would be to capture Bob, get him to the vet (turns out I could take him to the urgent care clinic as a walk-in), and get him re-homed. Because it seemed like, from the way he’d glommed onto the food and shelter I could provide, he was homeless. But. . .

 

Something in the back of my mind nagged at me. Was I really doing the right thing, with the capturing and all that? What if he really did have a home and they were missing him? The vet could check him for a chip, or maybe I could. . .

 

Turns out, contrary to the destruction it so often causes, social media saved the day. I found a Walla Walla lost and found animals group on Facebook and learned within hours that Bob lives a couple of blocks down the street from me in a household of several bob-tailed cats.

 

That little sneak!

 

A very good home, I was assured, making Bob no longer my worry except in terms of how he affects Hoosegow.

 

So here’s the plan. Limit Bob’s access to food and shelter at my house. I don’t know if it’s possible to shoo him away entirely, and Hoosegow does have a certain fascination with him. I’ve observed a couple of pecking order rituals (in which Hoosegow is dominant), and I’ve caught them in side-by-side deck chairs:

 

 

 

But the pancreatitis needs time to subside. Gabapentin has calmed Hoosegow considerably, but it makes him drowsy, too. In the short term it’s a useful tool. I’m reticent to leave the cat door closed entirely: Hoosegow is and indoor/outdoor cat and sprays when he gets frustrated. But I can close it for intervals- -when I’m away from home, a few hours in the evening, etc. I hope this barrier will encourage Bob to spend more time at his own home.

 

Because the gabapentin is for Hoosegow, not for me.