Our Pasadena Community Cat (Photo – llen Finkelpearl)
A couple of years ago a magnificent young tomcat began coming by my house, vividly orange with symmetrical circular markings and orange eyes.
By Ellen Finkelpearl
Initially, he came to see our 20-year-old female cat, but wouldn’t let me or my son near him. He was wary of humans, but he kept visiting, irregularly, even after our cat died; he uncannily showed up for her burial. Mr. Orange, as we called him, filled our cat needs; we fed him and he came to trust us. My neighbor Mo, another cat-lover, watched for him as well, and we reported sightings to each other. He would come to my door and then see Mo and hop along the fence and up to her roof where she petted him through the window and gave him treats. But he would disappear for a day or two and clearly had other options. We asked each other, “Where does he go when he doesn’t come to us? How is he always dry when it’s raining? Is he anyone’s cat? Why does he smell of perfume and have oil on his tail?” I wished he could tell us.
But one day, Mr. Orange appeared with a collar, and on it was a tiny receptacle with a note inside: “Is this your cat? I want to get him neutered. Erica.” I called Erica who told me she works down the street. So Mr. Orange had another life with two other names: Big Red and Texas Pete. He was their company cat, though they felt maybe he ought to have a permanent home. We suspected he might, because once he came back to us with stitches and a partly shaved head, the obvious work of a vet. But nobody else had responded to Erica’s note, so we engaged the Humane Society’s “trap, neuter, release” program. On their website, the Humane Society re-defines stray cats as “community cats:” they are not homeless, their home is the community. Clearly, Mr. Orange was a community cat, so I took him in to the Humane Society for neutering where they already seemed to know all about him.
But the story didn’t end there. Shortly after the neutering, he appeared with a different collar and another name: “Baby”. At first, I was afraid to call because I took the collar to mean “Hey, leave our cat alone!” But after a couple of weeks, our community cat had some worrying fur loss and I thought about taking him to the vet. So I bravely called the number on the collar and asked “Is he your cat?” Instead of being angry, the woman at the other end of the call, Vanessa, just around the block, was happy that her cat has so many admirers, is loved and supported by so many of us in the neighborhood. “He is a blessing to us all,” she said. We talked about his comings and goings, agreeing that we don’t really know where he spends many nights. The other day, she let me know he was coming my way for breakfast. Today, she asked if he had come to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day, last weekend, and she wrote to Mo, introducing herself as “one of Mr. Orange’s moms.” I highly suspect that Baby/Mr. Orange/Big Red/Texas Pete has yet other names and yet other moms. For now, though, he’s already created a community around him.
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