Little Miss Hemingway's Cat

She is laying across the room from me, right now, looking at me with drooping eyes.  The Little Miss Hemingway's Cat.  A petite black cat with almost enough white to be called black and white.  Look at her from the front and you might call her white and black.  Look at her from the side or rear, and she is a black cat with some white. She has mostly white legs, but with long black marks; her legs remind me of the markings on an orca whale.  She has a white blaze on her forehead, just above eye level, that extends up to about to the top of her head.  An inch of black fur, with a very few white hairs, and the white picks up and runs down the back of her head in a wide swatch.  Like the markings of a skunk, only reverse. 

She somehow found her way onto our property, but we don't know from where.  She just turned up.  She'd settled under Kent's shed for protection. He was raking leaves when he spotted her, and, being a cat person, just out and out asked her where'd she'd come from.  She just looked at him with terror filled eyes and ran under the shed.  I asked him who he was talking to, and he said "A Hemingway Cat".  I have never seen a polydactyl cat before, and I dearly wanted to see one, so I went back to the back yard to see her.  Only to have her scurry back under the shed.  All I had a glimpse of was a streak of black as she disappeared.  Because she was so scared I figured she had to be hungry so I went in to the house and fetched some cat food.  I put it down in a trail from the shed out to where I could get a better look at her, then backed off and let her eat some food.  As she came out and nibbled her food, I saw this little black cat with white markings.  She didn't look to be over 4 to 5 weeks old, size wise.  Not old enough to be away from her momma, really.  No one around us has any cats as pets, so we had no idea where she could have come from.  I put some food in a dish and some water for her, and left her alone for the day.

Next day I set out to try and win her trust.  And the next.  She was clearly terrified of both of us.  I found out that if I lay down flat on my stomach she'd at least come out and look at me.  And even talk to me.  We had some great conversations, with her squeaking out answers to my questions or comments.  Sometimes her squeaks sounded as if she understood what I was really saying to her.  I was starting to fall in love with this scared little cat!!  It was obvious that she wanted company, but she was scared to death of us.  On the second full day of trying to win her trust she let me reach out and touch her head.  I stroked her forehead with my fingertips, the only part of me that could reach her.  She finally reached out her head and let me rub her under the chin.  When I tried to slowly scoot forwards, she ran away and hid back under the shed. 

On the third day I placed food and water out yet again, but this time up on the patio, with a trail leading from her hidey hole so that she had to come up and walk by me to get it.  OK, slink.  She had to slink by me to get it.  And slink she did.  There were only a few bites of food, so when those were gone I'd add few more.  And at long last I made a grab for her and found myself with a squirming armful of kitten that I smashed against my chest.  I crooned to her, spoke softly, and stroked her head and scratched her chin until she calmed down somewhat. Barely.  But she wasn't biting me, just trying to squirm from my grip. 

Now, what to do with her?  She was feral, and normally feral cats are just put to sleep by the shelter.  But she was cute as a button.  Would they take the time to try and socialize her, or just be done with it and put her down?  With all the animals which had been dumped by families forced from their homes by financial troubles had overloaded the shelter for over a year.  Was she the kitten from just such a family, who turned out the mother and kittens?  We'll never know.  But I had a feeling that her fate would be unkind if I turned her over to the shelter.  Would they notify me if no one adopted her and her time allotment was up?  I was afraid they'd say yes, and then not do it.  I couldn't let this precious life be snuffed out after such a hard beginning, when it was in my power to give her a good life.  We already had 4 cats, and weren't in need of any more.  We'd had 6 at one time, and it wasn't an easy thing to deal with.  Adding her would up the tally to 5.  But she was adorable, with shiny soft fur, intelligent eyes, and this squeak of a meow that just won us both over.

In the end I decided to adopt her in to the house.  And so I carried her in to the house and in to the lives of 4 grown cats and 2 humans.  I carried her in and showed her the litter box, letting her get a whiff of what it was used for.  Then I showed her the food and water.  And then I set her down, determined to let her decide to come back to me when she was ready.  For a full day she ran and hid from us, but she did come in to the living room and watch us.  It was hard on me watching her run away.  My cats love to be in my company, love to be stroked and scratched, and love to sleep by and with me.  But this little thing only ran away.  The second day, as I sat in my chair, though, she came over and jumped up on the chair.  I didn't move a muscle, barely breathed, and waited on her next move.  She sniffed everything, the chair, my legs, my hands and arms, and at long last she was standing on me.  I cautiously reached out and stroked her and she tolerated it.  She then climbed up on my right shoulder and curled up in to a tight ball, and went to sleep. Yes, she was that small that she could curl up in a ball on my shoulder!  She had accepted me as her human and her protector, as her pride leader.  Every day, for a couple of months, she either slept on my shoulder, or wormed her way between my hip/thigh and the arm of the chair, feeling safe there as well, when we were in the living room.

We really didn't know what to name her.  Normally a cat's actions or something about their physical appearance suggested a name, but she remained a mystery to us.  However, to the 4 adult cats in the house, her name was Terror. Or Pestilence and Terror.  She was desperate for company, feline company, and being adults, they wanted nothing to do with this upstart.  She needed to play, and they were cats, and so she thought they were her playmates.  She mostly ended up chasing them, with them hissing and running from her.  They should have stood their ground, turned around, and put her in her place.  But no, they decided to run instead.  This set the stage for how she'd treat them all the time.

One day I saw her stand up on her hind legs, walk three feet across the hall up on her hind legs, with her front paws spread out wide, rather like an orangutan.  But her walk was predatory.  I described it to Kent, who found it very amusing.  Then he saw her do it a few days later, and laughed as much as I had.  I saw her do this walk a third time, and told her that she reminded me of a pterodactyl after its downed prey.  Kent heard me and stated that yes, she was a pterodactyl cat.  A polydactyl pterodactyl.  I said that her name would now be pterodactyl, but it would be spelled Ptera Dactyl. 

I never knew what hit me.  This little fur ball came in and took over my life completely.  She was my girl, and she made no bones about it and made certain that everyone else knew it.  She was TOP CAT at whole 3 pounds.  One of her funniest takeovers was in the bedroom.  Normally we exclude new cats from the bedroom, but the adults have been so used to coming and going all night for several years that we couldn't close the bedroom door like we had for other newcomers.  I was awakened one morning by growling from multiple cats, up near the head of the bed.  I switched on the light to see what had who was all upset and there were 4 adult cats arranged on my half of the bed, from my head to my hip, facing off this tiny little black and white girl who had no idea why she was being growled at.  I started laughing at the absurdity of it - the adults, all who were at least 2 to 3 times her weight and 3 to 5 times bigger than her - treed by this kitten.  And so it was that Ptera joined us in the bedroom.  If they weren't going to put her in her place, I wasn't going to deny her access to the bedroom.

To further emphasize that I was HERS, Ptera started coming up on the bed and laying on top of whoever was laying next to me.  Sometimes they'd growl and move off, other times they'd just let her stay there.  One thing was certain.  Ptera had to have body contact with me when she comes to sleep with me in the bed. I was also her security "blanket".

Then there were the times she would come up to my head and drape herself over my neck in order to claim the top spot.  Once in a while she would perch up on the pillow and proceed to "mix biscuits" on my shoulder, and lower...Those needle-like little claws were painful, but because she was so easily terrified, I lay still and accepted the pain.  We let her get away with more than the other cats because of her skittish nature, because raising our voice to her sent her running in a panic mode.  We tried not to have to raise the voice, but sometimes that was the only thing, short of literally walking up to her and removing her from the situation, to get her to stop the nondesirable behavior.  It was important to provide her with a loving environment, a calm environment until she relaxed enough to feel fully secure. 

One fear we have never been able to conquer is her fear of Kent wearing a hat.  If she sees him with a hat or baseball cap, she runs away in terror, and  hides.  If he takes off the hat/cap, she may still run, especially if she's seen it on him before he removed it.  No amount of sweet talking and crooning to her will keep her from running away from him with a hat on.  We envision one of two scenarios on why she is so terrified of hats.  The first one is that whomever her mother lived with grabbed up the kittens and tossed them out of the safety of house and home, forcing the kitten(s) to find their own way;  the hat represents that terror at being ripped from mother/home/safety.  The other one is that someone she encountered after being dumped took off a baseball cap and yelled at her and waved the hat.  At first we leaned towards the first scenario, but we now believe that it was the second.  We have a neighbor who is not an animal fan, and blames my cats for pooping in his fishing boat inside a shed.  Hate to tell him that he leaves that shed open so much of the time that any cat in the neighborhood could get in there at about any time.  Even when one of ours goes rogue and gets out of the yard, I've never recovered them from his shed... Our cats explore in back of his workshop because of there used to be a rabbit warren in the vicinity.  Squirrels bury food in the area, and other cats check it out.  Prime scent area.  But I've never seen one of my cats in his boat shed. He has other things far more enticing than this shed with the boat in it.   So we think it was him.  And she somehow made it in to our yard, where she found a place to hide that no adult cat could attack her or human could get to her.  And the dogs on either side of our property had to scare her as well.  We were secure from dogs and scary people, offered a dry place to sleep and a den in which she felt safe.

She is a black cat, and  as noted earlier, has a lot of white blotches on her body, some of them big, some of them just lines of individual hairs which make it look like blotches.  Block off the left side of her face and she resembles the mustache mask from V is for Vendetta movie.  Under her nose are just enough hairs that  it looks like half a Hitler mustache.  Her nose is stubby and her head is short, so she some Persian or Himilayan or something along that line.  But she very long legs, normal length fur, and the most expressive tail I've ever seen on a cat.  It is also longer than average.   There is white on all 4 paws, but not full boots on all 4.   She has a half moon marking on  one side of her face, and you can see the hairs of a matching outline of another half moon on the other side of her face resides.  But they are not identical images, nor even reverse images, but there is a symetry to them. 

She has a multitude of nicknames.  Her front legs, marked like an orca whale, earned her the nickname of Orca Legs.  Her half mustache earned her Half 'Stache.  She has a line of hairs, not a solid line mind you, but enough white hairs to emphasize both her rear haunches, and we adoringly refer to them as Butt Lights.  Her reverse skunk markings down the back of her head and neck earned her Skunk, which was later amended to Skunkin when we called her Pumpkin.  Skunk plus Pumkin equals Skunkin..  Dactyl Cat and Dactylly.  And of course, Ptera and Ptera Ptera.  Skunkin and Ptera earn responses.  She just sort of looks at us when we use the others.  Those names are just a part of our talking to her, which she loves.  Never had a cat that loved to be talked to.  Of course the stroking and petting and chin scratching also help, but the look on her face when we start sweet talking to her is so heart warming!

As noted, she is polydactyl.  She has one extra toe pad per front paw, located just below where her dew claw is.  In truth, she looks like she is wearing a pair of mittens, the extra toe being the thumb.  She stands on it and makes good use of it to snatch things! It is fully functional and fully a part of her front paw.

I have had 2 other great loves in cats.  The first was Zade, a beautiful  black cat that had lived with me during my first marriage and then in to my life as a single woman.  I never thought to love another cat the way I loved her.  And then, many years and several cats later, into my life came Smudge.  It didn't take long for that white tom to wrap my heart around his dew claw, and I found that I loved Smudge even more than Zade.  But then came this diminuitive kitten and in a matter of weeks I knew that I loved her as much as I had Smudge, if not more.  I didn't think that this would be possible, but even thinking about Ptera brings a smile to my entire being, not just my face. 

With all the cats I've had, I was never able to truly watch any of them grow from being a kitten in to an adult.  Being retired, I've watched Ptera grow in length and height. Watched her go from pure unadulterated kitten to young adult.  She still stalks the other cats for fun and pure spite, but 2 of them will now play a game of chase with her once in a while, and sometimes they initiate it.   I've heard her voice change.  She still mostly squeaks, but she does have a Big Girl Voice that she'll use as necessary.