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Horatio P. Doyle
Oct. 7th, 2007 10:48 pmThe "P." stands for "Pippen".
We got Doyle from the anti-cruelty society just a few months after we started living together. He was a tiny little black and white kitten with huge eyes who liked to sleep on my face. For two days, we locked him in our room and kept his new big brother outside, to let them adjust to each other's smells. When we finally let Doyle out of our room, he came out swinging at Nim, who took it mostly in stride and slapped him down with one paw when he'd finally had enough. After all, Nim was almost sixteen pounds to Doyle's three or so. This went on for a couple weeks, and we all chuckled at it. Then, overnight, Doyle started winning every fight. He was all muscle, where Nim was fat and slow and didn't really care that much. I think that perhaps when it started to get difficult, Nimbus let him win. Doyle was the dominant cat thereafter.
He was a quick cat, and smart, but incautious. He tried to walk along the tops of the coathangers, which finally gave way and dumped him on the ground. He tried it at least three times one evening, and managed to get about three quarters of the way across the coat closet on the second attempt. He also managed to jump behind the little old oven in 2320; it was morning, and I was in my bathrobe, and managed to fish him out with a towel while kneeling on either side of the stove. He was so scared when I got him up that I set him down in the middle of the stove to comfort him, and I accidentally burned his little butt on the pilot light cover.
He was also a water kitty. He loved water, and loved to see it splash; we had to warn all the guests not to walk away from their glasses, though he would generally leave coffee, tea, and alcohol alone. His love of water combined with the ceramic tile in the old place meant we went through almost an entire set of glasses. He broke one of C's favorite pint glasses the day before the wedding and caused what was at that point the biggest fight of our relationship. One of C's groomsmen still has the funny bits of the argument on tape.
When we moved across the street, Doyle's favorite spot was the banister at the top of the stairs. He only fell down the stairs once that I can remember, by getting into an open box balanced on the top of the railing and then trying to sit in the unsupported corner. He used to jump from one railing to another at the deepest part of the stairwell, which always made me cringe, but I don't recall him ever missing the jump. He also liked to sit above the kitchen cupboards, about twelve feet up. He was miserable unless he could climb on something. C used to joke that if we ever wrote a children's book it would be called, "Doyle is Up High!"
He used to make mad dashes for the outside in our old place, and escaped a little less than once a month. Generally we'd corner him underneath the bushes and drag him back inside for a time-out. He didn't mind time-out at all, and I think he liked the opportunity to sit on the bathroom rug in the dark, and after the kitchen timer dinged I would walk by and pop the door open, but he was often settled by then. He often needed something to calm his mind.
In the new place he just felt cramped; there were no stairs, no second floor, and not enough things to climb on. We tried to keep him out of the third room, which drove him crazy because he's always been driven to explore anyplace we try to keep him out of. The fights with Nimbus got worse, and would end with an explosion of cat hair (both colors) all over the floor when finally I bothered to sweep. He bit my mother, hard, when I was about seven months pregnant. After that, he would twitch his tail defiantly as he laid on the dining room table because he knew we were a little scared of him. He continued to get stuck inside the closet with the washing machine--three times, beginning the day after we moved in and finally just a couple weeks ago--and I would haul him up the side of the machine and out, all sixteen pounds of him. Once he was stuck in there for almost eight hours, and he immediately got into the litter box when I fished him out but after that he jumped right back onto the washer and looked for all the world like he was ready to get back down there.
We couldn't justify letting him outside in the city, but we'd talked for a while about his desire to go outdoors and how he might someday be a good barn cat. Then we swung the other direction and talked for a few months about declawing him, because he was destroying the yellow chair and we hoped we could also even the fights with Nimbus a little. We never ended up declawing him; I just felt that in the event that we couldn't take care of either of the cats, it was only fair to leave them intact. In my family we tend to keep cats for almost twenty years, and that was too long to know what might happen.
We sent Doyle back to Ohio with my mother this morning. He is going to go be the barn cat at the house we lived in when I was in high school; it has an old airplane hangar with a bunch of tractors in it, a field that alternates between soybeans and corn out back, big lilac bushes to hide underneath, and some scrubby underbrush next to the tracks for him to hunt in. I hope he'll be wildly happy for all the time that he's there. We gave up fighting with him, we didn't know whether he would be safe around a toddler, he was hurting Nim more and more, and the house was too small for him. I can't decide whether we failed him or whether we're just finally giving him what he wanted in the first place. He seemed to know as soon as we made the decision; he spent more and more time away from us, and Nim got a little bolder about coming out for love. My mother was the last person I wanted to have to take him; they've never gotten along since the biting. We gave him a tranquilizer for the ride. He still managed to work the zipper apart and almost escaped the carrier on the highway. He got to meet his new owner, Gene, this evening, and I'm certain he's perched on the top of one of the tractors as I write this. We poured ourselves tall glasses of water with dinner and each walked away from them several times over the evening, just to see what it was like. It feels odd to be a one-cat family.
We got Doyle from the anti-cruelty society just a few months after we started living together. He was a tiny little black and white kitten with huge eyes who liked to sleep on my face. For two days, we locked him in our room and kept his new big brother outside, to let them adjust to each other's smells. When we finally let Doyle out of our room, he came out swinging at Nim, who took it mostly in stride and slapped him down with one paw when he'd finally had enough. After all, Nim was almost sixteen pounds to Doyle's three or so. This went on for a couple weeks, and we all chuckled at it. Then, overnight, Doyle started winning every fight. He was all muscle, where Nim was fat and slow and didn't really care that much. I think that perhaps when it started to get difficult, Nimbus let him win. Doyle was the dominant cat thereafter.
He was a quick cat, and smart, but incautious. He tried to walk along the tops of the coathangers, which finally gave way and dumped him on the ground. He tried it at least three times one evening, and managed to get about three quarters of the way across the coat closet on the second attempt. He also managed to jump behind the little old oven in 2320; it was morning, and I was in my bathrobe, and managed to fish him out with a towel while kneeling on either side of the stove. He was so scared when I got him up that I set him down in the middle of the stove to comfort him, and I accidentally burned his little butt on the pilot light cover.
He was also a water kitty. He loved water, and loved to see it splash; we had to warn all the guests not to walk away from their glasses, though he would generally leave coffee, tea, and alcohol alone. His love of water combined with the ceramic tile in the old place meant we went through almost an entire set of glasses. He broke one of C's favorite pint glasses the day before the wedding and caused what was at that point the biggest fight of our relationship. One of C's groomsmen still has the funny bits of the argument on tape.
When we moved across the street, Doyle's favorite spot was the banister at the top of the stairs. He only fell down the stairs once that I can remember, by getting into an open box balanced on the top of the railing and then trying to sit in the unsupported corner. He used to jump from one railing to another at the deepest part of the stairwell, which always made me cringe, but I don't recall him ever missing the jump. He also liked to sit above the kitchen cupboards, about twelve feet up. He was miserable unless he could climb on something. C used to joke that if we ever wrote a children's book it would be called, "Doyle is Up High!"
He used to make mad dashes for the outside in our old place, and escaped a little less than once a month. Generally we'd corner him underneath the bushes and drag him back inside for a time-out. He didn't mind time-out at all, and I think he liked the opportunity to sit on the bathroom rug in the dark, and after the kitchen timer dinged I would walk by and pop the door open, but he was often settled by then. He often needed something to calm his mind.
In the new place he just felt cramped; there were no stairs, no second floor, and not enough things to climb on. We tried to keep him out of the third room, which drove him crazy because he's always been driven to explore anyplace we try to keep him out of. The fights with Nimbus got worse, and would end with an explosion of cat hair (both colors) all over the floor when finally I bothered to sweep. He bit my mother, hard, when I was about seven months pregnant. After that, he would twitch his tail defiantly as he laid on the dining room table because he knew we were a little scared of him. He continued to get stuck inside the closet with the washing machine--three times, beginning the day after we moved in and finally just a couple weeks ago--and I would haul him up the side of the machine and out, all sixteen pounds of him. Once he was stuck in there for almost eight hours, and he immediately got into the litter box when I fished him out but after that he jumped right back onto the washer and looked for all the world like he was ready to get back down there.
We couldn't justify letting him outside in the city, but we'd talked for a while about his desire to go outdoors and how he might someday be a good barn cat. Then we swung the other direction and talked for a few months about declawing him, because he was destroying the yellow chair and we hoped we could also even the fights with Nimbus a little. We never ended up declawing him; I just felt that in the event that we couldn't take care of either of the cats, it was only fair to leave them intact. In my family we tend to keep cats for almost twenty years, and that was too long to know what might happen.
We sent Doyle back to Ohio with my mother this morning. He is going to go be the barn cat at the house we lived in when I was in high school; it has an old airplane hangar with a bunch of tractors in it, a field that alternates between soybeans and corn out back, big lilac bushes to hide underneath, and some scrubby underbrush next to the tracks for him to hunt in. I hope he'll be wildly happy for all the time that he's there. We gave up fighting with him, we didn't know whether he would be safe around a toddler, he was hurting Nim more and more, and the house was too small for him. I can't decide whether we failed him or whether we're just finally giving him what he wanted in the first place. He seemed to know as soon as we made the decision; he spent more and more time away from us, and Nim got a little bolder about coming out for love. My mother was the last person I wanted to have to take him; they've never gotten along since the biting. We gave him a tranquilizer for the ride. He still managed to work the zipper apart and almost escaped the carrier on the highway. He got to meet his new owner, Gene, this evening, and I'm certain he's perched on the top of one of the tractors as I write this. We poured ourselves tall glasses of water with dinner and each walked away from them several times over the evening, just to see what it was like. It feels odd to be a one-cat family.
