Tater - Part III - The Ghost Cat

Shortly after Carlie was born, Tater had just become extremely ragged looking. The other cats picked at her and she looked like she was on her last legs. I didn't want to put her to sleep, so I asked Mom and Dad if they'd take her home with them and let her live out her last years in peace.

After she went home with them she filled back out and perked up. She would love on them in the evenings. Tater's favorite think in the world has always been milk. And I swear she could ASK for it. She would stand in front of the ice box and demand "Meeeeeiillllk! Meeeeeiiilllllk!" until someone came and poured her some milk.

My parents went to China last summer. They got a high school boy to watch their animals while they were gone. And they warned this boy that Tater was very, very old (at least 18 years old) and that it might be possible she would die while they were gone.

When they got back from China, Mom called me up crying and said that Tater was "gone". I reply "What do you mean 'gone'? Did she die while you were away?" And she said that Tater had just disappeared. They have a doggy door that they'd left open, and they assumed she'd gone out the doggy door and had gone off somewhere to die.

I knew she was very old, but I cried. I'd had that cat my entire adult life. When I went back to visit Mom and Dad that next weekend, I looked out the kitchen window and cried again. I told my Dad that it really bothered me that we didn't know what had happened to her, and I just had the urge to go and look for her. At the same time I knew my parents had alreay looked and looked and looked for her.

Another week went by, and Granny woke up early one morning and there was that Dang cat sitting in front of the fridge and demanding "Milk!!!! Milk!!!!" Granny said the hair on the back of her neck stood up, she said she thought she was seeing a ghost! But it was Tater. All we can figure is that she'd wandered outside and had been staying with someone else for those two weeks.

My poor Dad, he said "Every day I came in from work, and I was afraid that cat would be dead. I worried and worried about her. Then she did 'die' and I got used to her being dead. Now she's back, and I'm back to worrying every day whether or not she's alive!!!"

Tater lived another six months or so. Still, she had gotten very frail, and we knew she wouldn't make it much longer. Even at the very end though...she literally only had one tooth left in her head....she managed to bite my Mom one last time and drew blood! And once again, she disappeared out the doggy door.....only this time she didn't come back. Rest in peace, Taternator....you gave me alot of good company.

Tater - Part II - Life after Kids

Tater never really did adjust to the idea that there were kids in our home! For the most part she would just hide out somewhere and avoid them. Tater also never adjusted to my Mom. Over the years, my Mom tried REPEATEDLY to win that cat over. However, every time my Mom tried to pet her, it usually ended with Tater biting my Mom. Tater just had this look that said "I HATE YOU!!!"

When Frank was 5 he instructed Granny, that he could now pet Tater. But only sometimes. He can pet Tater when her ears are pointed up...but when her ears are pointed down...then you'd better not pet her. LOL. That boy had her figured out

Tater - Part I - The College Years

When I went away to college for the first time, I was living in a small apartment in Student Housing at K-State. I was very lonesome…missing my family and my pets. I was not allowed to have pets in my 1 bedroom apartment. I tried taking my young Siamese Cat, Moses, with me. However, he was so wild, I was afraid someone would hear him in my apartment and turn me in. So I sent him back home with Mom and Dad.

I was hoping that I could find an older, quieter cat that I could keep in the apartment. Mom came to visit one day and brought in a large package in a JC Penny’s bag. I set it on the floor and inside was a cat carrier with a beautiful silver Persian Cat inside. The cat’s name was Tater. Mom had had the cat for over a week, and had kept it secret for a surprise. She said in that week she’d tried and tried to win Tater’s affections, but any time she tried to pet the cat, Tater would bite her!

For the first few days, Tater hid out under the bed. If I tried to get her out, she would hiss at me. Then one day I came home and all of my kitchen scrubbies and a pair of folded socks were in the middle of the living room floor. I knew the cat had to have done it, as she and I were the only ones in the apartment. I put everything back up, and the next day they were all back in a neat pile in the living room again!!

One day I was sitting on the couch and hear the most awful racket. Tater comes into the living room with a pair of my rolled up socks in her mouth, and she’s meowing this pitiful meow!! I guess that maybe she had had white kittens at some point, and maybe she thought she was carrying around a lost kitten or something.

As she got comfortable with me, we became friends. But she soon started another bizarre behavior. She started running around my apartment in the middle of the night like her tail was on fire. She would zip from one end of the apartment to the other over and over again. I lived upstairs, and I wasn’t supposed to have any pets in the apartment. She sounded like a herd of buffalos running through my apartment. I tried several different things to get her to stop. I tried feeding her. I tried shutting my bedroom door, and I tried holding her in bed with me. None of these worked. One night out of desperation, I took her and got her wet in the bath tub. She had to lick herself dry, which took a while….and hence ended the wild running.
The whole time I lived in that apartment I had to wet her down on a regular basis.

When I went home to visit Mom and Dad, I didn’t want to leave Tater in the apartment by herself. Again, I was afraid that the people downstairs would hear her and know that since I wasn’t home there must be an animal up there. So I took her with me. To sneak her in and out of the apartment, I would put her in the cat carrier and then cover it up in the JC Penny’s bag. We did this for TWO YEARS and never got caught.

I had not been in my new apartment very long when the Air Conditioning went out of my Pontiac Fiero. I didn’t have the money to fix it. Riding around with the windows down wasn’t really a problem for me, but poor Tater had a thick and long fur coat. When I would take her in the car with me to go home for a weekend, she’d get over heated and start panting. To fix this problem, I began packing her cat carrier with ice packs, and that kept her cool. I enjoyed her company so much those two years. She helped keep me from getting lonely.

When I graduated from college and began traveling, I took her with me on the plane. Tater was a very good traveler!!! One time when I was flying with her, we had to change flights in a major airport. I had heard horror stories about pets getting lost when planes where changed. I asked the flight attendants repeatedly if my cat had made it onto the plane. I refused to take a seat on the plane until I knew that Tater had made it safely aboard. Finally the flight attendant told me that if I would just get on the plane she’d let me know when my cat arrived. So I’m sitting in my seat…still worrying….and they announce over the intercom. “To the passenger in seat 3A, your cat has now safely arrived on the airplane and we can depart from the gate.” I wanted to crawl under the seat!!

We had a lot of good adventures together.