I’ll just say it. Before the end of the day, Romeo will have gone on to join the twenty-something Chesney-Lind cats that have graced our lives over the decades. The past year has been difficult as Romeo’s health and weight have declined precipitously in the face of failing kidney’s, a tumor in his gut that’s likely cancerous, a growth in his mouth, and painful arthritis in his hips, and a heart murmur that has developed into galloping arrhythmia. But his gaze remains as strong and expressive as ever. We’ve waited longer than we probably should have to make this difficult decision. Finally we couldn’t avoid it. We have been saying the long goodbye since making the decision yesterday.

This sent me digging through long-ago posts here on this blog for the story of his arrival.

Here it is, tidbits that tell the tale of his appearance and eventual adoption 17 years ago.

Please join me for a stroll through this hall of memories.

January 2, 2005
Now we’ve got a New Year’s refugee, a beautiful gray cat looking for food and refuge after the fireworks, or so it appears. I’ve only caught glimpses of the cat so far, which left the first clue by breaking into my bag of dog biscuits on the deck. I put food out last night, which quickly disappeared. And just a few minutes ago Leo was facing off with the visitor under the house. A lot of whining and crying but no move to attack from either side. I’m not sure how we’re going to finesse this scene.

January 11, 2005
I thought the “visiting” cat that appeared on New Years Day seemed relatively benign and potentially able to find a place in our pecking order, but we’ve not got three injured cats on antibiotics (Harriet, Leo, and Silverman) to challenge that initial assessment. So now I’m having to switch into hard hearted mode and actively encourage the visitor to move on. Perhaps he can find an under-catted household. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to consider the trap and remove option. I’ve only done that once and hated it, and would prefer almost any other option. But sometimes reality and wishes refuse to coincide.

January 14, 2005
I admit to being a bit preoccupied with the stressful scene here among the Kaaawa cats on Haahaa Street. The intruder is still here. He’s a male gray tiger-striped cat, who our vet later estimated at least a couple of years old. Unfixed. Origin unknown. He looks a bit like Silverman, although without the blue eyes. And a bit like Lindsey, my favorite, who disappeared a couple of years ago. He’s looking for food & shelter. I can’t hold that against him.

There have been several skirmishes, perhaps fights, that left three of our cats with injuries. Relatively minor, but worrisome nonetheless and requiring some medical intervention.

The “shoo cat” routines didn’t work. The visitor can sense that this is a cat friendly property and returns. I hate to turn to the Humane Society solution. A couple of our best cats were originally strays like this one, but we’re really at about our population limit. And, in any case, the Humane Society doesn’t expect a cat trap to be available for at least another week.

Yesterday I checked with our vets at VCA in Kaneohe, and was referred to one of the no-kill shelters. No room in the inn, but they offered to assist with trap-neuter-release. The catch is that they release the cat in the same place that it’s trapped. The positive potential is that without those streaming hormones, aggressive behavior will drop and perhaps we can all work out an accommodation. The down side, of course, is that he’s back under our house.

So right now we’ve got all of our “regulars” inside. That’s all eight of them, including Silverman. Most have been in overnight, except for Leo, who I let out for an hour or so earlier in the morning. The visitor is outside, yowling around the perimeter with an occasional foray up onto each of the decks in turn. The trap is under the house, baited with a spoonful of Friskies Liver & Chicken from a fresh can, along with a handful of Whiskas latest crunchies.

Silverman, mostly an outside cat, is pacing the house and signaling his urgent desire to escape.

But we wait. Not sure for what. I hope for an option not yet apparent.

January 15, 2005
Our cat saga continues. About 10:45 yesterday morning, the wandering cat went after the food and triggered the trap under the house. After a very brief few moments of confusion, he calmed down. I draped a couple of towels over the cage, which is supposed to contribute to further calming, and after a while moved cat and trap downstairs into the newly completed bathroom.

With the image of the nice folks from the non-kill shelter, Joey’s Feline Friends, in my mind, I developed a plan.

Head to the vet, although this required waiting for Meda to return from UH with the car. Test the cat for the scariest of feline viruses. If positive, goodbye. If negative, proceed to neutering, then either integrate if possible or place if at all possible. If socialization proves impossible, goodbye. There were enough potential good endings in this scenario to reduce my guilt at the built-in possibility that he might finally end up at the Humane Society anyway. The plan does involve spending some money, but it’s well spent if we can luck out and find a good solution.

Long story short. When Meda got home we turned around and headed back to Kaneohe, and by 6 p.m. were sitting in the waiting room at VCA Animal Hospital. This cat turned out to be a good patient, allowing himself to be poked and prodded with a minimum of fuss while hiding under a couple of towels. He seemed to enjoy being touched and stroked, so is not totally feral. He also tested negative for the scariest of feline viruses, although he’s got other maladies (worms, an infected wound, etc). He reminds me of Kolo, a gray tabby with a stunted tail and the first country cat that we rescued after arriving in Kaaawa. Can you see where this is heading?

We’ll try to bring him home today if I can find a suitable cage of some kind. In about a week he will be ready for neutering. One step at a time.

January 16, 2005
The wandering cat saga continues. A quick stop yesterday at Koolau Pets in Windward Mall turned up a mid-size dog cage suitable for a cat (ka-ching!), and another stop at VCA added the cat after an overnight stay (ka-ching, ka-ching!). So the wanderer is now downstairs in a private suite and Meda says I’m playing the Cat Whisperer role.

As it turns out, the poor guy is real skinny and didn’t fare too well in the turf battle under our house, and ended up more beat up than any of our cats. He’s got an abscess behind his left ear and one back on the right rear leg. But he’s tame, likes being petted generally, is especially fond of “food pet” (petting while eating), and has let me administer the antibiotics (ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!) without a fuss.

January 22, 2005
For those who wonder, Mr. Wandering Cat is still downstairs. He’s in a nice dog cage converted into a kitty condo, with several opportunities during the day to wander around the room. He’s waiting for clearance from the vet to proceed into his life altering surgery, but in the meantime is feeling good enough to start late night yowling, apparently letting us know that nature is urging him to roam. Even with the windows closed in that room, it’s enough to disrupt sleep upstairs in our bedroom.

But with one brief exception, he’s been a very cooperative patient. He likes me, and turns into a boneless rag doll when I pick him up. At some point I had the fantasy that he had been declawed, since he has been so gentle, but a look at those big paws quickly found sharp evidence to the contrary. In any case, he’s due for his next check late today. I’m hoping he’ll be cleared for immediate takeoff.
Pun intended.

January 28, 2005
Cat update: Stray Cat now has a name. We’ve dubbed him Romeo. It apparently was his search for females as much as the noise of New Year’s Eve that brought him up our way, so it seems appropriate. And it can also be thought of as Roam-eo, another reference to his wandering past. Or perhaps Ro-meow? He’s scheduled to make use of that Humane Society certificate on Wednesday morning. Not a moment too soon, I would say.

February 3, 2005
And for those (few) who might be wondering, Romeo is back home after his veterinary experience. He lost a couple of parts and a bit of dignity, but it took several vet techs to wrestle him back into his carrier when we arrived to pick him up last night. Apparently he can put on quite a hissy fit when approached by strangers. Once back here in Kaaawa, though, he was just lonely and hungry. He even sat in my lap for the first time. And I’m not at all sure he really misses those parts anyway. Now we look forward to the adventure of his release from isolation, probably on Saturday.

February 11, 2005
Martha from Seattle asked for an update on Mr. Romeo. Well, he survived takeoff just fine, thank you. So this week we decided to start the next level integration by bringing him upstairs at least part time. So I stayed home on Tuesday to supervise the initial round. I moved his cat box along with a water dish and food dish into our bedroom, then moved cat. I put him down on the floor in the living room. He looked around, sniffed, walked down the hall, sniffed, went into the bedroom, sniffed, then went slinking under our bed and stayed there for the next five hours. After failing at various cat whisperer attempts, I just closed the door and just left him. He finally got tired of scrunching down to fit under bed level and also got hungry, so tentatively reappeared for at least long enough to clean out the bowl of food. Then back under the bed. A bit later he emerged long enough for me to pick him and deliver him back downstairs.

Romeo spent yesterday closed in our bedroom again, and again immediately crawled under the bed. There is some curiosity among the other cats, so one or another can often be found sitting outside the closed bedroom door. Once or twice there have been paw interactions under the door. But Romeo still favors the under-the-bed cave. I figure a couple more rounds of this and then we’ll open the bedroom door and see what happens. It might be rough going, but he certainly hasn’t seemed to be aggressive. So we’ll see.

February 13, 2005
We’re trying to introduce Romeo gradually to the rest of the cats. Today was the first time that he let him wander through the house while other cats were also inside. He quickly found some of the catnip toys and settled right down.