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A Cat’s Life – Mischief’s Story.

Updated on July 23, 2014
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I grew up in a small community in Northwest Arkansas. My life is a busy balance of family and friends, work and play, good times and bad.

Hi! My name is Mischief and this is my story.

Me with my brothers and sisters

The Beginning

My story doesn’t have a very happy beginning, some sad parts in the middle, but it has a pretty good ending.

I don’t remember much about being born. I guess I was too little to remember. Not long after I was born, the human who owned my momma took me and my brothers and sisters away from my mom. We were too young to eat regular food but the man didn’t want to keep us. The mean man was going to just kill us but his kids wouldn’t let him. He put us in a box that used have cans of beer. It was a tight fit for 6 kittens, even with us being so small. The man took us to an emergency clinic for animals and a nice lady she would take us home. (This is where my store starts getting happier.)

Squeaker, Mischief, and Lixie

Me with my green ball.

Lixie sitting in the cook pot.

My New Home

Over the next month or two, the lady taught us to eat canned cat food. It wasn’t as good as momma’s milk but it was better than starving. The lady also taught us to use a litter box to potty in. Some of my brothers and sisters had a lot of trouble figuring out the point of the litter box but the lady never got mad at them. She bought us all sorts of toys to play with. I always took the green colored toys. (Green is my favorite color.) The lady’s boyfriend lived with us in the little house and he would play with us when the lady was at work. After we had lived with the lady for around two months, she decided that we were big enough to find new homes. I figured that I would be the first to go since I tended to get into trouble a lot . . . that’s why they named me Mischief. One by one, my brother and sisters went off to their new homes until I was the only kitten left. The lady and her boyfriend decided to keep me!

The lady also had three grown cats, Ebby, Lixie, and Squeaker. Ebby was old and cranky, and would hiss any time one of us got close to her. Lixie was not sure about us and kept her distance. Lixie was strange and like to sit in the pots on the cook stove. Squeaker was nice. Squeaker liked to give us baths so she became our cat momma. I was so happy to be able to stay with my Squeaker momma and my human momma, but I missed my brothers and sisters.

Stripes is so cute!

Meet Stripes

Over the next couple of years, my momma took care of other cats. The first to come after me was Stripes. She was just a little younger than me. Stripes was a bad girl and would run out the door when someone opened it. After a couple hours outside, she would come back to the house and cry at the door until someone let her in. She kept doing that for a few days and then after a couple of months, Stripes had babies. Two were black and white and the other two were grey tabbies like Stripes, one boy and one girl of each color. I was curious about the babies but my momma kept the big cats away from the babies until they were a couple months old. Momma trained the new babies to eat canned food and use the litter box just like she had done with me. Then she found homes for the babies and life went back to normal for a while. Momma was really sad after the babies went to their new homes. Me and the other cats would curl up in bed with her to make her feel better.

Life in the little house was really nice for a while. Momma would go to work and her boyfriend would stay home with the cats. He had a lot of his friends come by while momma was at work . . . some of them were not very nice to us. They thought it was funny to shoot us with bb guns and to put duct tape on us. When momma got home from work, she would gently pull the tape off and then love on us and everything would be ok again. Momma decided that Ebby was not doing very good living in town where she could be outside. So momma took Ebby to the country to live with momma’s parents again.

Gizmo!

Here Comes Gizmo

The next addition to our family was Gizmo. Gizmo was very scared at first but after a couple of weeks he was ok. We had lots of fun playing with him. Gizmo had really long hair that needed to be brushed a couple times every day. Momma was working two or three jobs at the time so she wasn’t home very much. Momma’s boyfriend was home but he didn’t do a very good job of brushing Gizmo. Momma’s boyfriend wanted to shave all the hair off of Gizmo so that he wouldn’t have to be brushed as much. Momma didn’t like that idea so she found Gizmo a new home where he could be properly taken care of.

Baby Marius

Marius sitting in the garden box.

Marius is Born

Not long after Gizmo went to his new home, Stripes started running out the door again. A few months later, she had more babies. This time Stripes had 4 grey tabbies and one white kitten. The white kitten was a boy and there were 2 girls and 2 boys of the grey babies. Once again I wanted to play with the babies but my momma kept me way until they were big enough to play. Once again momma taught the babies to eat canned food and use the litter box. Momma and her boyfriend decided to keep one of the boy grey tabbies and they named him Marius. Momma tried to find homes for the other babies but found out that we had to move before all of the babies found homes. Momma ended up taking Stripes and two of the babies to the animal shelter. At first I was very jealous of Marius because momma gave him lots of attention but it was good to have him around when we moved to the country.

This is Cookie.

This is Sunny.

Squeaker in her dress.

Ebby sleeping in the sun.

The Country

Momma moved us to the country to live in a really little house next to her parents. At first, we were kept shut in the house because momma was afraid that we would get lost or get onto the highway. Lixie was the first to escape. I guess she must have been really scared because she wouldn’t come when momma called for her. After a few days, momma decided that it would be ok for us to play outside as long as she was home to keep an eye on us. We played in the yard and got used to being in the country. Momma started letting us play outside when she was at work instead of being kept shut in the house. We would see Lixie when she come to the house to eat but she stayed in the barn or the shed most of the time. We got to know our new brother, Sunny, and a new sister, Cookie. They lived outside at momma’s parents’ house. Cookie is really shy and doesn’t like to play with us. Sunny is kind of shy but at least he doesn’t run away when we are outside. Momma started leaving a little window open so that we could go in and out as we wanted.

We had been living in the country a little over a month when Lixie disappeared. After a couple days they found Lixie but she was dead. They didn’t know what killed Lixie since she didn’t look like she had been hurt. Momma was really sad again but me, Marius, and Squeaker stayed with her and tried to make her happy again. Then a couple weeks later, Squeaker got sick and died. Everyone was sad then because Squeaker was such a good cat. At this point I was really glad to have Marius around since he was the only other cat left from when we lived in town.

Momma decided to bring Ebby out to live in the little house instead of her parents’ house. Ebby was still old and cranky but we learned to get along. Momma told her boyfriend that he couldn’t live with us anymore so he moved out . . . but he still came for visits. Sometimes momma’s boyfriend would be gone for a week or two and then he would stay with us for a few days.

This is like the pool I fell into!

The Swimming Pool

Then one night me and Marius were playing outside after it had gotten dark. We were having fun and didn’t want to go inside when two big white dogs came through the yard. Marius ran up a tree but the dogs were between me and the tree. I didn’t know where to go so I jumped up on the rail for the swimming pool. I slipped and fell in!! Momma was in the house, working on stuff for school, when she heard the dogs outside. Momma made the dogs go away but she didn’t know that I was in the pool. I tried to cry out for momma to hear me but the water would go in my mouth every time I tried. I couldn’t get a hold of the side of the pool so I kept swimming in circles, trying to find a way out. Momma finally heard me splashing around and discovered that I was in the pool. She jumped in to save me even though the water was really cold. I was getting really tired of swimming but momma got to me just in time. Momma yelled until someone in her parents’ house heard her. Momma’s sister brought out a towel to dry me off. I was so cold and tired and scared. After momma dried me off, she changed into dry clothes and then took me into the little house to cuddle under the blankets. It took a long time for us to stop shaking. Marius had come down from the tree at some point and he joined us in bed. That is a night I will never forget.

The pretty snow!

Fall Turns Into Winter Into Spring

The days passed by pretty fast. It rained a lot. Me and Marius loved to play in the rain. Some days the sun would be shinning but it was too windy to be outside. Then it got colder. When it got really cold, we would all stay in bed under the blankets. Sometime momma would bring Sunny in to stay with us since it was so cold. Me and Marius got to play in the snow for the first time. It was cold but we had lots of fun. We would play until we got too cold or tired and then we would go inside and curl up with momma. There were a couple days that momma got stuck in town because of the snow and ice. Me and Marius were shut in the little house with Ebby while momma was gone. It was so cold that the three of us ended up curling up together in the bed to help stay warm. We were really happy to see momma and her boyfriend when they were able to make it back home.

Momma took me, Marius, and Sunny to the doctor to get “fixed” a couple months later. I didn’t know we were broken but momma’s parents said no more babies so we had to get fixed. As I was recovering from the visit to the doctor, I had a seizure. I don’t know if it was caused from a fever or what but it wasn’t very fun and it scared my momma bad. She babied me and Marius for a couple weeks after the surgeries. Winter changed into Spring and Spring changed into Summer. Me and Marius were getting big. We were really good at catching the big mice in the fields and we would bring them to the little house to show momma. She didn’t like it very much when we would bring in the mice that were still alive.

Momma’s boyfriend had not been around for a while and then he came by one night to say goodbye to us cats. Momma said that he was going to live with his momma and would never be back. I didn’t really miss him being around because he wasn’t very nice to my momma.

I got really skinny when I was sick.

Cytaux - Very Bad!!!

Marius got really sick and momma took him to the doctor but he didn’t get to come back home. The doctor said that he had gotten a disease called Cytauxzoonosis, which is spread by ticks. Marius was so sick that he had to be put to sleep. Momma thinks this disease maybe what killed Lixie and Squeaker. Since we were city house cats, we had never been exposed to ticks.

Less than a month later, I got sick too. Momma got me into see the doctor right way and the doctor gave me some medicine and lots of fluids. Momma took me back to the doctor every couple of days for more medicine and fluids. I had another seizure while I was sick and I lost a lot of weight. After a couple weeks I started feeling better. It took a couple months before I started gaining the weight back and I stayed close to my momma so she could take care of me.


Mischief and Sunny

The Flood of 04/11

Rescued Fishes

Time Flies By!

After I was feeling better, Sunny became my best friend . . . since Marius was gone. Me and Sunny would go hunting together and we would play together. Sunny even started sleeping in the bed with me, momma, and Ebby. Time passed fast once again. I played in the rain and chased the leaves as the wind blew them around. Before I knew it, it was winter again. Sunny would play in the snow with me but I sure missed playing with Marius. This year the snow and ice got so deep that I thought the roof of the little house was going to fall in. Momma had to clear the snow off of the house with a rake and a shovel. It was so cold that even Cookie came inside the little house to sleep for a couple nights.

Then spring came and brought a lot of rain with it. There was so much rain that the creek came all the way up and almost over the little hill that the houses sit on. After several hours, the water started going back down. All that water left trees and junk stuck in the fence. It was fun exploring the stuff that was left by the water. Momma rescued some baby fishes that were left in a puddle after the water had gone down. She kept them in a fish tank in the little house. I liked watching the fish swim but I really liked drink the water out of the filter for the tank. Momma would get on to me for sitting on top of the tank but she laughed at me too. The biggest fish ate all of the little fish and momma ended up taking the big fish down to the creek. It wasn’t very pretty to look at and it was getting too big for the little tank.

Mischief on the couch in front of the fan.

The Present

Now summer is here again and it is getting hot. I am not afraid of the swimming pool any more. Momma gets on to me for walking on the rail but I know not to fall in again. I don’t go as far away from the house as I used to before I got sick. I guess I must be getting old since I tend to sleep more now. My favorite place to be is on the couch, right in front of the fan. I still bring momma live presents every once in a while. It is funny watching her try to catch them.

Ebby is 13 years old and all she does is lay in the sun or sleep on the back of the couch. She is still cranky. Me and Sunny love to pick on Ebby but we pick on Cookie too. Cookie is around 10 years old now. She lives on the back porch of momma’s parents’ house. Sunny is around a year older than me and we get along fairly well. Momma calls Sunny her red-headed step child.

Of a morning, I enjoy chasing the squirrels and birds. In the afternoon when it starts getting hot, I usually find somewhere to take a nap. In the late evening when it starts to cool down, I am usually out trying to catch bugs or mice. Sometimes I just stay inside and watch tv with momma. We take one day at a time now and try not to worry about the little stuff. My life has turned out pretty good after all.

Update:

My sweet little Mischief is gone. We moved to an apartment in the city and had only been there a couple months when Mischief managed to open the kitchen window one night and disappeared. I searched and searched but could not find my little girl. I am afraid that she may have been "found" by one of the large hawks or owls that lived in the trees behind the apartment - but I hope that she found a loving home and is doing well.

Although it has been a couple years since my Mischief disappeared, a small part of my heart is still wishing for a miracle - that she will manage to find her way back to my parents' house in the country where we lived before moving to the apartment.

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