When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go

It was a hard decision, but today I let Tom-Boy go. You can only domesticate a cat so far and this kitty just wasn't going to ever be good at being a house cat. A bad case of the whiz-bangs did him in. Well actually it did my furniture in! It seems some creatures never lose their wild and maybe that's a good thing.

So here I sit outside on my porch in the lovely October sunshine searching the terrain for a glimpse of orange and white, but he is nowhere to be found. What did I think? I hoped he would sniff around in the garden and settle down in the dust at the base of the bushes, here on his own territory. But he has fully disappeared. Off on an adventure that has been denied him for more than a year.

At 14, I wonder how he will do now, back with the younger neighborhood cats, and the dogs cooped up in yards, just waiting for a tasty morsel of cat. And will he reign terror on the yard birds, snagging them from their perches on neighborhood feeders? No, no that was not my intent!

Veterinarians tell you that it is far better to keep cats indoors. They frown at you when you tell them, "Puss is an indoor/outdoor cat." Oh, they smile widely when the answer is, "He's an indoor cat." But even vets won't tolerate a whiz-bang kitty. The resident cat at the clinic used to dwell indoors at the vet's home, but was sent to confinement at the clinic for his whiz-bang ways. Even there, he has to endure a daily dose of kitty Prozac so he won't anoint that pristine environment.

I tried the kitty Prozac. It's liquid and it's flavored. You can choose chicken, beef or tuna flavor. That must not do much for it because Tom-Boy made definitely sure that I understood that it was terrible and there was no way he was going to have that stuff shot down his gullet. Out of eight tries he only got one and a half doses actually into him. Most of it flew all over the furniture, the floor, and me. At nearly $50 a clip for a month's supply, it was clearly not going to be cost effective!

So Tom-Boy is back in the wild. Free to roam, free to explore, free to find available kitty bowls wherever he may wander. And should he show up back at the front door, I'll be happy to see him again. He can enjoy a nice bowl on the porch and snuggle into the bed in the plastic storage container there, protected from the wind, and the elements that are now, once again, to be part of his life. Happy trails, Tom-Boy. When you gotta go, you gotta go!