We took him to the vet and the vet said that 'Crybaby' wasn't a very good name. We were having trouble coming up with a good name. The vet suggested we call him 'Baron.' That sounded good to us, so from then on, his name was Baron. We did eventually take him into our house. Before that happened, one warm day, I heard a commotion over by our shed, the 'Garden House.' I went over to see what is was and Baron was doing battle with a large family of Norway rats that had taken up residence under the shed. That cat was no wimp. Those rats are nasty and aggressive and he rooted them out of there. He looked like he was enjoying the whole thing.
Baron liked to be in the car. I have never had another cat that liked to be in the car. We had a Chrysler New Yorker sedan and Baron liked to get in the back and sleep next to the back windshield. One morning, my mom got up and was looking out the window when she saw the cat stretching in the back of the car as he was just waking up. Fortunately, it was cool out, a typical Ohio early Spring day. She had to go open up the car and let him out. We had to watch him around cars after that. At least he never got up inside the engine like some cats do, he preferred to be next to the back window where he could see out and the afternoon sun would warm him up. He also used to like to ride in the car and look out the windows. People would look at him and smile when we drove by. As long as we weren't going to the vet, and were just going for a drive, he loved it.
Baron and Tiger
We had to introduce Tiger and Baron slowly. We kept them confined to different parts of the house at first. We made sure Baron got his shots. Little by little, we put them together more and for longer lengths of time. Neither cat was happy about meeting the other. There was some hissing and growling as there always is when introducing a new cat to the household. Tiger would get jealous if we payed attention to Baron, so we had to give them both attention at the same time. Tiger and Baron learned to tolerate each other, even to the point of being on a bed at the same time. They would fight sometimes in play and sometimes for real. They did mostly play fighting. They wouldn't admit it, but it gave them something to do, especially when we were at school and work. This kind of fighting wasn't as noisy as a regular knock-down-drag-out cat fight. They would be rolled up in a ball, biting and kicking each other until one of us would break it up or one of them decided that was enough. One time, they knocked over a box in the basement with an Easter bonnet my mom had made and worn one year. When I found them, the Easter bonnet was upside down in the box and the cats were in a ball inside the Easter bonnet, kicking and biting each other. Needless to say, my mom was quite unhappy that her Easter bonnet became a fight venue.
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Mom wearing the Easter bonnet that Tiger and Baron were to have a fight inside in the future.
Baron also liked music. My brother, Dan, liked to play records on his record player. Baron would come into his room, lay on his bed and listen to the music. Dan always played different kinds of music. Baron seemed to like classical music, which delighted my mom because she loved classical music. Dan and Baron had this love of music in common and Dan grew quite fond of Baron. This was special for Dan because he was never really into animals. He liked Tiger and would help feed Tiger, but never got close to him. Baron was his special companion.
My dad had decided that the neighborhood we were living in was going down hill, so he said that we should move to a nicer neighborhood. My mom didn't want to move, but my dad convinced her in his own way. In other words he told her that he was moving and she could stay, but he was moving. Needless to say, she started getting ready to move. We had to put our house up for sale and this meant lots and lots of cleaning, painting, wallpapering. There was a brand of wallpaper called 'Wal Tex' which was wallpaper with a fabric backing. Dad and I started putting Wal Tex on some of the walls. We had to keep the cats away from the wallpaper paste. This was the 70's, we put up mirror tiles in the dining area to make the house look bigger. There was also the matter of getting carpeting put in. We had hardwood floors, but they weren't that great looking, they squeaked and groaned when we walked across them. I hated them because my mom was always yelling at me for scuffing them up and I would get in trouble if I spilled something on them. In those days, if you wanted to sell a house, you had to put in carpeting, which delighted me to be free of those stupid, ugly wood floors. The two cats stayed clear of all of the fixing up. We kept them in the basement when the carpeting was installed and they didn't like all of the noise. They especially didn't like all of the vacuuming that followed the installation of the carpeting, they both hated the vacuum cleaner. I think we had to board them at the vet's place when we had an 'Open House.' I don't exactly remember, but I know we couldn't have had them loose in the house with Tiger's tendency to attack strangers he didn't like. That would not go over as a good selling point for the house.
Our vet had moved to a new location and the new office was nice and sparkling clean, but it didn't stay that way for very long. This guy was the only vet we knew of in the area. If I knew what I know now, I would have shopped around more. Fortunately, in the new place, there was a boarding place that was separate from the cat patients that were sick. I remember once I had to bring Tiger in to stay overnight. I think it was to get him fixed, but I'm not sure. I remember walking back with the vet technician to put him in his cage. The cage did not look real secure and the latch looked like one that Tiger could figure out in no time. I asked the technician if that was secure enough. She nonchalantly said. "Oh he'll be fine." The next day, when I came over to the cage to pick Tiger up, they let me come back to his cage. I noticed it was secured with twist-ties all around the door. Tiger sat there looking totally innocent. I asked them if Tiger got out, but they wouldn't admit it. Some time later, I had to bring Baron in to get 'fixed.' When I brought him in, there was a different vet technician there. She said, "Is he an escape artist too?" I told them that he wasn't, but it was then I knew that Tiger had gotten out that one time he stayed there. I could imagine them chasing him all over the place. When he got out, he was not easy to catch, he was smart and fast. I'll bet they didn't make that mistake again!
After much looking around and checking out different houses on the market, my parents found a house in Gahanna, Ohio and our old house sold. The house in Gahanna required some fix-up, the basement had a crawl space with no door and we didn't want the cats wandering in the crawl space, so we had a door put on it. Also, unfortunately, it had hardwood floors. We covered those wooden floors up with carpet almost as soon as we moved in there. Moving day came and once again, the cats had to stay at the vet's boarding place for a day while we moved. Moving is always such a mess, we had boxes everywhere. We brought the cats into the new house. We introduced them to the basement first and showed them where their cat box was. The next room they learned about was the kitchen, where their bowls were. Then they discovered the family room. This family room had a sliding patio door. Our old house didn't have one of these. The cats could comfortably sit on the floor and watch the bird activity in the back yard. The cats were delighted with this. They had fun playing in all of the moving boxes, it was like a new adventure to them.
The next thing that happened has always been a mystery to me. Tiger got deathly ill. All of the hair on the top inch of the tip of his tail fell off. He wouldn't eat or drink and he ran a fever and lost weight. I took him to the vet and the vet put him on antibiotics. The vet thought he got into something in the new house. I had to take Tiger's temperature several times a day, which meant gently wrapping him in a towel and carefully sticking a thermometer in his rear and writing down his temperature. I would also give him water via a hypodermic syringe without the needle to make sure he stayed hydrated. I called in sick from work so I could take care of him around the clock. I fed him watered down baby food with the syringe. I was scared that we were going to lose him. I felt like a mother looking after a baby, even though I'd never actually been around a human baby.
Tiger gradually got better. He started getting a mixture of cat food and baby food and started eating on his own. We also knew he was getting better when he started putting up a fight when he got his temperature taken. He fully recovered and never had whatever that illness was again. Baron never got sick, he was fine the whole time. He did not show any symptoms whatsoever, which made me think that Tiger did get into something in the house, but we never did figure out what it was he got into.
In the evenings, Baron would hang out in Dan's room, listening to Dan playing his records. Tiger would hang out on the corner of my bed. If we were watching TV in the family room, Tiger found the spot on the top of TV console that was warm and that was where he would sleep. Both cats got put in the basement every night so they wouldn't get into fights upstairs and break mom's glassware. She had a collection of glassware on this credenza in the living room. Tiger was always able to get around the glass items so he could sun himself in the window sill. Baron wasn't quite as coordinated, but I think it was because he was getting really big. He got up to 15 pounds or more. Tiger knew when it was bed time and time for him to go into the basement. We would have to chase him around the house to catch him. This really frustrated my brother when I wasn't there and mom asked him to catch Tiger. With Baron, all we had to do was pick him up and take him downstairs.
For a while, Tiger used to like to get on top of the refrigerator.The top of the fridge was warm. The stove was right next to the refrigerator, so he would jump up on the stove and hop to the top of the fridge. It was an electric stove and Tiger walked across the burners without any regard to whether they would be hot. He must have singed a paw one day, because he started walking very gingerly around those burners to get to the top of the fridge.
We had a bunch of plants that we put over by the patio door in the family room. One thing Baron loved to do was eat plants, so we had non-toxic plants, still, I did not like him eating my plants because he was like a feline lawnmower. One day Tiger came up to me in my room and started meowing. Then he started to walk away and looked to make sure I was following him. I followed him and he kept looking back as he walked down the stairs to the living room, to make sure I would follow him. He led me to the family room where Baron was chowing down on my plants. I yelled at Baron to get away from the plants. Tiger had a very satisfied look on his face. Tiger told on Baron.
One time my mom meant to ask Dan something, but instead, she had yelled out just as loud as can be, "Tiger, do you know where the potatoes are?" We all had a good laugh over that, especially my dad. Tiger, it turned out, did not know where the potatoes were or at least he did not tell us.
Tiger and Baron were such good company. It's hard to believe that I didn't have pets as a kid, pets make a house whole and give it a happy, comfortable feeling. It was fun during the holidays, my grandmother would come over and make the most amazing meals. The whole kitchen smelled so good. On Thanksgiving, the cats would spend all day in the kitchen. I always got them at catnip toy for Christmas and would give Tiger a treat of dried beef. Baron wasn't that crazy about dried beef, he preferred chicken.
Tiger still did not like strangers and when I went out on a date, I would not only bring the guy home not only to meet my parents, but also to meet the cat. There were some he liked better than others, but he never attacked any of them. Tiger was also real fond of my dad and would sit near him when he would sit on the couch and read or watch TV. Tiger and Baron were real special cats and members of our family. Tiger and Baron's stories will continue, but first, there was another stray that showed up at our door. Along came Princess.
metatarsal stress fracture
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