Old Scully

Scully is now my girl, too.

This is how Scully came to live here:

A little over a year ago old Myrtle collapsed and ended up in a nursing home. I'd known Old Myrtle a long time. She lived upstairs and across from the Post Office down town. She fed strays by the Post Office. Every night, Myrtle could be heard, loudly calling "Kiittteeee!"

The cats were pretty much her only human contact outside of a caregiver who came a couple times a week to help her out. Myrtle was almost completely deaf. When I would encounter her, I'd write her notes and then she would respond.

I got them fixed. Scully, the black long hair mother of most of them, I trapped first, way back in '97. But then, even though Myrtle wanted Scully's adult torti tux daughter Splash trapped for fixing, if she saw me coming to do it, she'd shoo the cats down the other side of the Post Office and away from me and the traps.

I'd had a hard time with Myrtle over this sort of behavior. She wanted me to help Gunner once, her big orange tabby tom she fed. He was one mean cat and had a huge territory he would roam. I once ran into him in the middle of the night marking territory as he marched down 4th street. He was crossing Monroe. I'd not been able to trap Gunner or Top Gun as I called him for neuter. But now he was sick and Myrtle wanted my help catching him and getting him helped.

Well I didn't have a car. But I hauled by hand all this gear down to the Post Office to try to help her catch him---net, trap and cage. Heavy stuff to carry that far.

Here came Gunner drooling and looking bad. I did net him, but then Myrtle started her "stuff". She began screaming that I was killing her cat and pulled the net hoop up so he could get away. People were staring. Gunner ran off and I slunk back to the Julian.

Gunner died. I saw him last the night of a huge windstorm. I heard him screaming inside Copeland Lumber Yard but I couldn't get in and the wind was howling. I had to hold my arm up to block debris flying through the night air. I found him later along the river dead. I bet he died because he got FIV fighting like he did with anybody and everybody.

I saw Myrtle at Safeway the next week. She ran over and clung to me and sobbed "My tom is dead." All I could do was hug her and try to comfort her.

She'd given me problems with kittens she really wanted trapped, too. The bike cop came along and kicked Myrtle's bed for those kittens down the riverbank. He looked back at me all smug after doing it, too. I had a trap set for them nearby.

Then I got hassled by another officer when sitting in my old Fairmont down there watching traps trying to catch those kittens. Then Myrtle herself, when I had the black and white one in a net, shoved me down the bank screaming bloody murder again. Man.

But I caught the orange one finally one night. Then along came four drunk students with a club and hit my set trap and were going to throw it down the bank. I jumped out of my Fairmont and hollered at them. Then they came at me. This wasn't long after I'd had major neck surgery to repair the damage done when I got beaten on a psyche ward by staff. I had a neck brace on still.

So I tried to get someone to call the cops but no one would. It was entertainment. I tried to find a working pay phone and finally parked across from the Whiteside and asked them to call the cops. My trap had been damaged. And just then, here came the students again. I ran back across the street to defend my car and the kitten in a trap in my car. I knew they were going to club my car.

They ran and I chased them. Then they cut back down through the alley, the two guys at least, the girls had vamoosed. They were again heading to my car, wanting to club it and I got between them and my car and started yelling at them and lecturing them for pulling something like this on a woman their mother's age who was doing volunteer work to boot. They finally ran. I called the cops but they wouldn't do shit.

Got to me, you know, that whole scene, played out in front of a whole lot of citizens and nobody lifting a finger to help me. Me in my neck brace from being beaten in Portland.

So anyhow, I finally got all the kittens, got them fixed and placed. I caught Splash and they were all fixed. Then Myrtle went down ill with something and ended up in a nursing home. So I went and trapped the two old girls I hadn't seen in ages--Scully and Splash--mother and daughter---old tough river girls.

I had them tested, the whole bit and brought them here, not knowing what else to do, since Myrtle wouldn't be feeding them anymore.

Then Splash got out of here in holes the raccoons had torn in my netting containment of the yard. I thought I had it shored it up. My back was a mess at this time and often I couldn't walk much at all, due to my bad back.

I re-trapped Splash and she exited my contained yard again. This time, I never saw her again. I've trapped and trapped for her and caught neighbors cats and the landlords cats over and over and over again. I've caught a couple of strays I've gotten fixed, searched the neighborhood and still haven't given up.

But it's been over a year and she's old and you'd think somebody would have seen her. I keep food out always and I keep up hope and old Scully calls for her daughter every night.

When I let the cats stay out in the contained yard nights with the cat doors open I swear she comes in. There are indentations in the hardware cloth of the yard containment, like something, like a cat. has sat at the edge until it bent, before hopping down and in.

She always was a ghost cat. You could be right beside her and never know it.

So Scully is here with me. She's a tough old old river cat. Old as the river itself, she is. I clipped her matted fur and she loves it here. She is happy as a clam here. And as for Splash, her daughter, if she's not dead it would not surprise me if I wake up one morning to see her darting, like a ghost, off the foot of my bed trying to vacate before I see she's coming back in nights on the sly. You never know with a river cat. They're smart. She she's a torti, too. Think about trying to outwit a torti. I don't try it anymore. They're more clever than I, I admit. To try is to waste time on Earth.