Abigail M. Schilling

Once upon a time I lived in a quaint little village surrounded by brick pathways and cheerful neighbors. Cats were the preferred pet in this hood and I was constantly being warned to keep my (non-existent) cats inside, less the wolves get to them. I pondered getting a cat but was afraid of losing it to wolves. And I certainly wasn't going to be an inside-cat person. Inside-cat people won't drink tap water or let their kids walk home from school.

While I pondered these things in my heart, a stray cat started hanging around my quaint little village. He was white with grey cow spots and he was very, very dirty. He clearly didn't belong to anyone, but he was still fairly tame.

He was a mystery, according to neighborhood buzz. "Gramma," the lady across the way, said he appeared one day. She said she fed him a couple days but couldn't keep up with it. She said that R-- took over feeding the random stray cat.

A couple days later she said that R-- decided not to keep the cat and was thinking about calling animal control. And still, no one knew where the cat had come from.

When my mom came to visit I introduced her to the cat. She's a regular James Herriot and lured him into our house with leftovers. She spoke softly to him and fed him real food.

He started making changes. He was looking less dirty--Sally had convinced him to clean himself. He was walking proudly--Sally had helped him stand up to the inside cats. She bought him cat food and gave him lessons in propriety.

And she named him Jack.

Sally is a chatter so she introduced herself to all the neighbors and struck up conversation about the cat, our flowers, the village. In a conversation with Gramma (during which Sally mentioned we were thinking of taking Jack to the vet to get shots and other procedures) she learned that Jack had belonged to her son. And he had moved. Apparently, he had lived near?

It was rather sketchy.

The next day Gramma shared some more information: Jack had all his shots and other procedures. Also, his name is Ushki. We agreed that it was weird--how much information she suddenly knew about a supposedly stray cat--but didn't think much of it.

We continued to feed Jack (while calling him both Jack and Ushki) and he became very friendly. He slept on our beds and purred. He waited on our porch for us to come home from work. He wasn't dirty anymore. He was a sweet and civilized indoor/outdoor cat.

One weekend, Gramma's family came to visit. Jack was chilling in our back doorway and these grandkids yelled "Ushki!" and came running towards him. He didn't shy away, but let them pick him up and throw him around. The children clearly had a relationship with this cat.

Gramma's daughter-in-law mentions to me that it's a shame they had to give Ushki to Gramma, but he wasn't getting along with the family dog. As we've started to put the pieces together through various conversations (Gramma slipping up; grandkids weaving me yarns) we've discovered that the son never lived here. He gave his cat to his mother when they realized it wasn't working out with the dog. And his mother, Gramma, wasn't a cat person so she SET HIM FREE.

And THEN, she acted like she had never seen the cat before. She let R-- feed him. She lied left and right.

But if that wasn't bad enough, now that we've tamed Ushki Jack and he's sweet and loving, Gramma is stealing him back. She lures him into her house every night after he eats dinner with us. She "just wants to keep him out of the rain." We've stated our intentions. We buy cat food. The not-cat-person IS TAKING OUR CAT.

She probably doesn't drink tap water.