Distrust to trust: Wave Geber, cats go the distance
Eileen Mitchell
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
mitchell gillman
Poppy, Buttons and Ollie, formerly feral kittens, enjoy the good life. Their owner, Wave Geber, was afraid of cats until she adopted one. After that beloved cat died, these three brought smiles once again.
View Larger ImagesGrowing up, Wave Geber's parents were afraid of cats, and by default she was too. But as an adult, when a friend asked the San Francisco resident to cat-sit for a week, Wave had an epiphany. Not only did she like cats, she even began to consider adopting one.
One Saturday, the SPCA was doing an adoption drive, and that's where I found Poppy. We lived together for 14 years, and sometimes she was my only reason for coming home. When she died, I grieved for a long time. Even months after her death, it would hit me out of the blue that Poppy was gone. In those intense moments, I grieved for all the losses in the world and wondered: If I could mourn so deeply for a cat, how do people ever recover from the loss of a loved one?
When people suggested adopting a new cat, I felt like they didn't get it. Poppy wasn't replaceable. A friend said that Poppy's spirit was in all cats, and adopting another would be honoring her, but I didn't do it. I wasn't going to risk a loss like that again.
About a year after my boyfriend and I moved to Berkeley, I noticed a cat lurking in the front yard. It looked malnourished, so I gave her a plate of sardines. The next day she was joined by a little black kitten with a runny nose. Within days, a colony of feral cats appeared.
It wasn't long before I became a crazy cat lady. I learned about ferals and borrowed humane traps to get them to the vet. Most were sick and some were euthanized. Most ferals never make a sound, but the little black kitten was brave, approaching the back door and meowing for food. One day she came close enough for me to pet her and I found myself calling her Poppy. And just like that, I was adopted by a new Poppy.
Six months later, I saw that Poppy's mother, the most feral of them all, was pregnant again. Seven weeks after she had her litter, I trapped her and took her to the vet. She was very sick and had to be euthanized. My concern was for her kittens - where were they? If any were alive, I hoped to save them.
I knew they were on the other side of the fence in the backyard so I kept putting food closer to our side of the fence until I got two tiny ones into the trap. I named them Buttons and Molly until I learned from the vet that Molly was actually Ollie. They were smaller than my palm and would only come out while we slept. It took a month before the kittens even let me near them, but six years later, I'm definitely the cat's meow - at least to Buttons, Ollie and Poppy.
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This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/16/DDVE1KHQSA.DTL#ixzz1VIdR3MUo
From one crazy cat lady to another, I love you!
Posted by: lynnie | August 17, 2011 at 05:34 PM