The Prandato family has had three cats in the past 15 years and it has become clear that one thing is for certain: we are terrible cat owners. Sage, our first cat (and my fake-name namesake) was a lovable black cat with striking green eyes that never came home one day after following our neighbor to the gym. Or, at least that's what my parents told me. My solemn seven-year-old self promptly informed them that I believed she had been eaten by raccoons. As it turned out, I was correct. Our second cat was named Dora, an a-DORA-ble (get it?! We were really clever) princess I received as a present for my 8th birthday who died very tragically right before I began my sophomore year of high school and coincidentally, in the middle of my youngest brother's 11th birthday party. Currently, we have one cat: her name is Sugar, we found her malnourished under our hot tub six years ago and now, she is severely overweight. While we have absolutely loved our animals, all in all, our track record with cats is not good. Here are three incidents we found ourselves in when we owned cats. These stories are all about Dora, arguably the sweetest of our cats and definitely the one that got into the most unfortunate of events.
The Refrigerator Situation.
In the 17 years we lived in Idaho, there were probably four isolated situations that warranted us to call my father hysterically begging him to leave work and come fix whatever problem was currently occurring at our home. The refrigerator situation was one of these times.
After the whole "Sage-Being-Eaten-By-Raccoons" thing, we decided that Dora would for sure be an indoor cat. I supposed we figured that if she was confined to the depths of our home, it would be virtually impossible for her to also be devoured by raccoons. Because of this, we were constantly able to monitor Dora's whereabouts, so when she abruptly disappeared one autumn afternoon we were not only confused -- we were absolutely panicked.
The amount of effort and grief we exhibited running around the neighborhood, crying and yelling Dora's name is truly the type of behavior reserved for parents who have lost their young child in a Walmart. When we all finally met back up in our kitchen sans cat, both emotionally and physically drained, we were absolutely devastated at Dora's missing presence.
Now, for reasons that I architecturally do not understand, our cabinets and refrigerator had a six inch gap between them and the wall. Seeing as we only used that upper cabinet space to hold a vast amount of large and heavy antiques that wouldn't be able to fit down there, it was a fact we quickly forgot about.
It was a fact we quickly forgot about, that is, until Dora made herself known via incessant meowing -- coming from inside the wall behind the refrigerator. Likely trying to get away from our constant love and attention, Dora had decided to jump up and explore the tops of our cabinets, then had promptly fell behind them, trapping herself within our kitchen wall.
When my father answered the phone and my mom began the conversation with a "You need to come home, the cat's in the freezer!," he was not only confused, but highly disturbed. He arrived home within the half hour to be greeted by the deafening noise of three hysterically crying children and the type of distressed sounds that only an emotionally anguished cat can achieve. In the type of calmness that only a dad could manage in such a strange situation, he pulled out our refrigerator, located the spot where we were pretty sure the cat was stuck, and began to cut a six-inch hole into our wall. His plan was to cut just a small hole at first to make sure that's where the cat actually was, then make the hole larger for her to be able to easily climb out.
Dora, however, had other plans.
After being stuck in our wall for a good three hours, she was not prepared to wait for him to make that hole larger. I have never seen a live birth, save for the one time we watched a homemade video made in the '70s in my sophomore year health class, but I imagine that it looks very similar to the scene I witnessed as a young child of my cat squeezing her entire body through a six inch opening in our wall. In a way that truly defied physics and all logic and had to have required at least some dislocation of ligaments, Dora crammed her entire body through the small space and never ventured on top of our cabinets again. To say she was emotionally damaged by the event would be an understatement, but unfortunately, that was not Dora's last incident getting into an uncomfortable situation.
The Kitty Sexual Assault.
If we had been monitoring Dora's whereabouts before the refrigerator situation, we were absolutely vigilant in the days and weeks after the event. I think around this same time, Dora had been able to reflect on the fact that she had actually been stuck inside a wall, decided we were absolutely insane for allowing this to happen and used any opportunity for us opening the front door as a chance for her to actively escape. When we'd left our door open one day, Dora went for it and found herself in the great outdoors of our neighborhood. Being an exclusively indoor cat, she must have been overwhelmed by the amount of options and space available for her to explore and, probably suffering from a cat anxiety attack, she only adventured as far as under our front porch.
Save for the traumatic three hours behind the wall, Dora was a princess who had a very easy life, so the likelihood of her staying under our porch for more than a day was highly unlikely due to her dislike of being uncomfortable in the slightest. Still, once my mother discovered she was under there and was stubbornly refusing to come out, she did the only logical thing she could think of -- which was pulling me out of school mid-day, interrupting my sixth grade reading time to rescue the cat we'd already let down once before.
Within seconds of me being home, Dora was out from under the porch. She'd always thought she was actually a dog and had quite the weakness for fetching my hair ties, a fact I exploited to get her back safely into our home. Through the opening in our porch stairs, I tantalizingly dangled my hair tie, Dora bounded straight into my arms and within the span of a half hour, I was back at school, finishing up reading time with the rest of my peers. For me, that's where the story ends.
For Dora and my mom, it continued.
In what has to be the most hilarious vet visit to ever take place in northern Idaho, my mom brought Dora in for an emergency appointment following her escapade. After learning that Dora had been outside for an entire night, yet didn't appear to exhibit any attack wounds or be in pain, the vet was confused as to why an emergency visit had been called.
"Well," my mom said. "I was wondering if you could check to see if any other animals may have... touched her inappropriately."
Yes. We loved our cat so much that we took her to the vet to see if she had been sexually assaulted. As it turns out, our vets did not carry rape kits for animals because, incredulously, we were the first (and last) family to bring in their pet for that highly specific reason.
The Accidental Murder.
After the possible kitty rape, Dora didn't really have any more traumatic moments for a long time. In fact, the worst thing that happened to her up until her death was when we decided to adopt Tony, a really lovable dog who got so excited that he would fall over constantly. Tony loved Dora; Dora was less than enthused. This was during the time we were having renovations done on our home and, apparently recovered from the refrigerator situation, Dora would take refuge from Tony inside our wall, where unbeknownst to our family, she was most likely eating the insulation.
Because of the renovations, our front doors were left open constantly and, again, without any misgivings toward the time she may or may not have been sexually assaulted under our porch, Dora once again made the decision to spend the night outside. This time, however, she was violently assaulted by a skunk. It wasn't the first time one of animals had been sprayed by a skunk, but it was the first time the skunk had gotten them right in the face, and in the following days, as Dora wheezed and coughed up what could only be described as the grossest substance on the planet, we knew it was only a matter of time before she passed away.
Still, when Dora died three days later in an extremely violent convulsion, I was devastated. In fact, our whole family was, yet it even went bigger than that. Our devastation extended down not only to all of the young children wearing party hats that witnessed her horrific death at my brother's birthday party, but also to the construction crew renovating our home. I clearly remember the lunch we had as a family the morning after she died. The five of us sat outside on our back patio, telling stories about all the good times we had with our cat and the construction crew looked on awkwardly, finishing up our roofing while we were bawling less than ten feet away. In what could possibly be the most embarrassing thing I've revealed on this blog, I was so emotional about it that I actually wrote an essay entitled "I Will Remember You," clearly based off the Ryan Cabrera song -- all about my cat.
There were a lot of factors that could have contributed to Dora's death -- the insulation eating, the skunk spray in her lungs, the emotional distress of perhaps being assaulted a few years back. The specifics of her death were something our family tended to gloss over. The memory of watching your cat have a seizure on your bed is enough to remember that she had died and, for seven years, none of us spoke of what had actually killed Dora. In fact, we didn't discuss her death again until this May, on the night of my youngest brother's high school graduation. After a full day of emotions, food, parties and a vast amount of champagne, my mom blurted out the secret she'd been keeping in for almost a decade.
"I killed our cat," she said. "I accidentally killed Dora."
As it turns out, my mother did not really kill our cat. However, she had full-heartedly believed that she was responsible for her death and, for seven years, had felt a terrible amount of guilt. What had happened was this: the day after Dora had been sprayed in the face by a skunk, my mom was talking to a construction worker while he was replacing the tile in our foyer. This was a common occurrence -- our house had been under renovation for so long that the construction workers felt more like family friends than contractors at this point and, after sharing her concerns about our cat with the tile man, he told her that the best way to get rid of the skunk smell was to douse the cat fully in vinegar. So, she did.
Two days later, Dora died. Shortly after our teary-eyed, outdoor lunch, my mom went back inside our house, only to be greeted by a wild-eyed tile guy.
"I didn't mean vinegar!," he said worriedly. "I meant tomato juice. You really shouldn't wash a cat in vinegar." After angrily informing him that our cat had died, my mom swore the tile guy to secrecy. She truly believed they had conspired in killing our cat together and they would never, ever tell anyone about how they soaked Dora in vinegar.
That is, until the seven years later, when my mom finished telling the story that had clearly been on her conscious for a long time and we spent the rest of the champagne-fueled night convincing her that the insulation/skunk poison of seven years past was much more likely to kill our cat than a little bit of vinegar. Despite her clear innocence in Dora's death, I'm still not sure that she believes us that she was irresponsible and, now, our cat's demise will just be a forever unsolved mystery -- much like her potentially possible porch assault.