In memory of Nanci, Spunky, and Edna

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries
of life: music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer

Nanci

My first and oldest cat was Nanci, whom I found on September 12, 1989. At that time she was a pregnant young adult, so I guess that she was born sometime in 1988. Nanci gave birth to three kittens immediately after I found her behind my apartment building in St. Louis. Along with her son Spunky (below), she moved with me to Texas the next year and then spent the last 14 years of her life around the house I later bought in Bryan. The picture to the right shows her hanging out on the deck behind the house in 1994.

In this picture of them nursing, her kittens were, from left to right: Griffith, Spunky, and Sydney. They always arrayed themselves as shown when nursing, and reading left to right also gives their order of birth. Contrary to an old barnyard addage, these kittens' weights were directly proportional to their rearwardness on Nanci's belly, with Griffith the lightest and Sydney the heaviest from day one. (I weighed them daily on a little kitchen scale. And I took that opportunity each day to kiss their bellies, something that helps produce an adult cat who won't eviscerate you for scratching his or her belly.)

Spunky

This is a picture of Nanci's second-born, taken in 1991. The soft-focus effect is intentional -- he was standing behind a screen. I named him Spunky, after a male American kestrel I was handling at the time he was born. I was a volunteer at a raptor rehabilitation and propagation project outside of St. Louis then. Spunky seemed like an appropriate name for a kitten who meowed long and loud a lot of the time and who tended to claim his nipple with a great splaying-out of his front paws (as in the above picture).

I named her third-born Sydney, after a male Australian wedge-tailed eagle I was handling at the same place. The Australian wedge-tailed eagle is very similar in both appearance and habits to the golden eagle of North America and Sydney was kind of golden in color. Nanci was named after contemporary folk musician Nanci Griffith, so I named her first born Griffith.

I kept Nanci and Spunky and I placed Griffith and Sydney with a friend who moved on to teach philosophy at Drake University in Des Moines.

Edna

In October 1997 I adopted a stray kitten, whom I named Edna, for no particular reason other than that she looked like a elderly spinster to me. She and a brother arrived as famished strays in front of KEOS Community Public Radio (where I was a DJ at the time) and proceeded to eat more pizza that I'd ever seen cats eat before.

I was on the lookout for a third cat when Edna arrived, because I thought that the time to acquire a next generation would be while Nanci and Spunky were still middle aged. As I suspected, Edna learned lots of things by observing them. Without my having to teach her, Edna learned not to try to go out the front door (my cats were indoor-outdoor models, but they had to go out the back door), the meanings of "come," "no," "get down," "want to go out?" etc.

As a young kitten I also "taught" her to fetch toy mice, but an animal behaviorist later told me that there was no teaching to it -- some cats just fetch and others don't.

The end of an era

Edna died suddenly from an unknown cause at the age of 7, on April 4, 2005.

Spunky died two months later, on June 2, 2005, at the age of 16, after suffering from hyperthyroidism for many months.

After their deaths, Nanci became depressed; she lost a third of her body weight, became uninterested in doing things, hid in the garage a lot, etc. By showering her with attention and encouraging her to go outside with me while I did chores, though, we got her to bounce back and she enjoyed a fairly good quality of life for another year. Then she lost strength and weight and died on August 1, 2006. She was at least 18 years old and had outlived all three of her kittens.

All three of these cats were memorable and I feel glad to have had them with me across 17 years. They would all follow me on "walks" around the house and through the woods behind it. Nanci was the most intelligent cat I've ever known, and while she would (during her prime years) run large dogs out of the yard, she was always very affectionate towards humans. Spunky was vocal to the point of annoyance, but he was a loyal companion. And although Edna "the fetching cat" was extremely timid around strangers, she was warm and appreciative of people who invested the time needed to win her trust.