Moira opened the closet door in the living room and much to her surprise found that her other cat, Tigger, had delivered three kittens in the laundry basket!
She hadn’t even noticed she was pregnant, but then ten-year-old girls weren’t taught these things when it came to animals in their household. Her parents had been divorced for two years, and her older sister Tabitha was practically raising her after their mom took off and left them with their abusive dad.
So, Moira had other things on her mind.
She and Tabitha named the kittens, Christopher, Tar Baby, and Kelly. Each one was black, white, and gray. Their Maltese cat Malty who the family had had for two years as a divorce condolence gift to the kids had gotten Tigger pregnant. Moira’s dad was none too happy about the kittens though he didn’t say a word.
The babes were still in their nursing stage when her father came home one day from work and abruptly told Moira with no explanation to gather Tigger and her babies and put them in the car.
They drove and drove until he stopped at a familiar apartment complex parking lot in the back.
“Grab the laundry basket,” her dad ordered, and Moira gingerly did.
Her bony frame could barely carry it as her dad instructed her to leave the basket with Tigger and her kittens at the edge of some woods in the parking lot.
Horrified, Moira started crying, “No! No!” but her father didn’t care.
He forced her to leave them behind as she sobbed in the back seat all the way home.
“Someone will get them,” he said, harshly on the silent ride.
Fast forward 28 years later and Moira was excitedly moving into her first house, paid for by her sister Tabitha. Moira had had cats through the years though she wasn’t supposed to because of her asthma and this time was no different.
Not long after moving into the rent house, she noticed a stray cat had shown up. The striped female Tabby started frequenting her area, but she couldn’t let her in because she had an indoor pussycat, Chaplin. But Moira started feeding the feline and providing water, and as the days got colder, she would supply blankets and other things for her to sleep on so she could stay warm.
Moira often joked that there must be some communication between feral cats in the neighborhood because before long another and another showed up and she started spending more money she didn’t really have to feed them and provide more bedding and dishes. The neighbors never hassled her for the 13 years she wound up doing this and she was happy about that. She found homes for some of the cats through the years, a few disappeared, and a handful got hit by cars or passed away from illnesses.
She loved those animals as if they were her own and she named some of them — Rocco, Choco (his brother), Thumbelina (after a doll she had as a kid), Gypsy (the first one to show up), Tinkerbell, Halloween, and on and on.
Then the fateful day arrived, and she got new neighbors next door who came over and introduced themselves and seemed friendly enough. They were dog people, though, which was fine because Moira had one, too, and loved them as well.
Soon, though it became apparent that she had sinister neighbors in this couple, and they called Code Compliance on her seven times for feeding the stray cats. So, Moria started working with a local cat coalition to do Trap/Neuter/Rescue (TNR) and help find homes for the creatures. Not all the trapping, which was very hard work, was successful and some felines slipped through the cracks, not falling for the lure of tuna in a trap carrier.
The city initially forced Moria to turn over some of the cats to the Humane Society where they would probably be killed because they were overrun with cats. She sobbed every trip she had to make to that wretched place as she surrendered each kitty via three to four separate trips through endless crying and begging the organization to find them a home. Soon Moira stopped doing it because she couldn’t take it anymore.
“I believe we’re here to take care of God’s creatures,” she would tell people and occasionally she would meet persons of the same mind.
By the seventh time the couple called Code Compliance on Moira she had come up with a suicide plan. But she realized then no one would be there to take care of the cats. She worked full time, and every day was a new surprise in the form of a note from the city or a visit. Moira found out she could register as a cat colony, and they wouldn’t bother her, but the neighbors still made her life a living hell every chance they got.
She was forced to take down the shanty town she’d built on the porch to protect the cats from the cold. College students rode by frequently, slowing down to gawk at all the animals and the protection Moira put up for them.
“Look, it’s that cat lady!”
“Look at all those cats!”
The students would laugh at her, this spectacle of the neighborhood now. It was as if they had told everyone to drive by and see “the crazy cat lady.” Moira felt like a freak, an outcast, the joke of the neighborhood, but she would not and could not back down. She continued to put items in the back yard to provide shelter for the cats but this time she hid them so the neighbors couldn’t see them. She did the best she could, but it wasn’t enough. These people weren’t giving up and it was obvious they just wanted her gone.
Moira would see stories about people getting arrested and convicted for feeding feral kitties, even ones who were doing TNR and though it worried her the anger overrode her fear.
Four years later Moira’s sister Tabitha started talking about how she was going to have to sell the house because it was a money pit and due to higher taxes that increased yearly. Moira was upset and lashed out at her.
“I can’t leave the cats!” she said.
As she frantically tried to find homes for them — some successful, some not, her mind and heart spun out of control about what was going to happen to them. She could picture them coming to her house to be fed and finding her gone. Moira had promised these critters she would never abandon them and now she was being forced to do it.
As the fateful day got closer and closer Moira’s panic and anxiety got worse and worse.
The moment arrived when she was forced to move from her two-bedroom house to an apartment for seniors. She was wracked with guilt and could not stop thinking about what was going to happen to the cats.
Much to her horror, the rented house was torn down and a three-level home was built for students on the property. Moira could visualize the kits walking up to the yard and finding her gone, replaced by boozing kids on the porch. It was all too much. She had gone to college for four years and never thought her life would be this, but she didn’t regret all she did for those cats.
When Moira moved into her apartment, her next-door neighbor told her there were 150 stray cats, but they could never catch them because there were so many. It was a violation of her lease to feed the moggies, so she didn’t — for a long time.
Then one showed up and though Moira had her indoor cat, Marbles, her heart couldn’t take not feeding this one.
Soon, just like before, another and another showed up and though she could only put out water and food twice a day without getting caught and no blankets or bedding, Moira was back at it. However, on cold nights or extra hot days she worried endlessly about the cats as she would hear them howling in the breezeway for someone to let them in and it killed her that she couldn’t do it.
Even after her pet passed away, Moira wanted so much to adopt one of the mousers, but she couldn’t afford all the bills that came with it. She still had regrets and depression over the cats she had to leave behind and she hoped they would find good homes.
Moira realized much later she had turned into this cat lady because of the trauma of having to give up Tigger and her kittens by her dad.
There were other neighbors who fed some of the cats, too, some even risking getting in trouble with the landlord by providing blankets and such.
Moira hoped she came back in another life as a spoiled, domestic cat.
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