Cats on Tuesday: Memories of King Preyor

Every time I visit Gattina's site and see her dear Arthur I am reminded of my white cat, Preylor. He was only with us for about six months. He was abandoned along with his brother, a patchy gray and white. They had both taken up residence at my mother's place and she finally convinced me to take the white cat home. Three cats, her own boy, plus the two new males, were just too much for her to care for.

He was very friendly and I was so enamored with him that I eventually consented and brought him home. We had no idea how old he was exactly, or what his name was. His front claws had been removed and he had been neutered. He was clean and well fed. Mother had seen to that. We figured he was around two. He was very playful. Obviously, at not too distant a time, he'd had a good home. Mother had been taking care of the two strays for over a month. The only question I had in my mind then was how he was going to adjust from romping around in her backyard, to a small two-bedroom apartment. He would not be able to go outside here, and even if he did get out I worried about the busy road in front of our apartment building.

So, suddenly, on June 21, 2003, I had a cat. I had been pining for a kitten since I left Boo Boo Kitty with my daughters and headed west in 1995. Then, when one finally presented itself to me, I had been diagnosed with my first breast cancer and had just had my first surgery.

We named him King Preylor after a character in the Scrungy Series. Except for the eyes, he was what I had pictured when I was writing about the King in my story. He was large, heavy, to say the least, and he had been abandoned.

He took up residence at the foot of my bed, was not a lap cat, unless he just wanted a tad bit of attention. He loved to eat and when I wasn't fast enough at opening his cans he'd reach out with his paw and would open the cabinet door, let bang, (it had a spring type closure) over and over again. For a large cat he did not have a large voice. So it was kind of comical to hear him mew for something. Needless to say at that time I fed him on the floor like all the other cats in my life until Gretchen came along. She's been the only privileged feline in my life to have her own placemat at the kitchen table. But that's a whole other story in itself.

Preylor loved to play and jump high. He'd wear me out just keeping him occupied. It was summer and the windows were always open. He spent the nights, like Gretchen does, sitting in the windowsill and looking out into the darkness. When he jumped from the windowsill to the bed, as Gretchen is wont to do, I felt it. The whole bed shook and then he'd thunder down the hall to the living room window for further nighttime investigations. He kept up the window to window sorties all night. Of course it was always me he bounced awake, I was nearest the window.

Besides chasing feet and biting toes that stuck out from under the blankets, and nipping the back of the ankle or thigh in a tag, you're it, way, he had a fetish for wood. He loved the projects on my art table and I kept the table covered with a sheet, secured at the corners with clothespins. They were handy at the time. It wasn't long before my clothespins started disappearing and I'd find them hidden somewhere, half chewed.

I used clothespins for just about everything that needed closed. A fatal mistake. I had had a Flash Pulmonary Edema episode in November that year and was hospitalized in critical condition for almost two weeks. My daughter and her friend had flown in from the Midwest and stayed with her dad and Preylor. I had worked very hard to teach Preylor not to play rough, but all that was undone while I was away. Preylor had the time of his life while the girls were here and he was allowed to play as rough as he wanted. I know he missed them when they left.

After I came home from the hospital I was on oxygen for a while. The oxygen machine was to be kept in the living room; one, it was very loud, and two, it was to be kept so many feet from away from me and that was the largest space we had. So I solved that problem with extra long oxygen hose that ran from the living room, down the hall and into my room, to my bed. One night I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting enough oxygen. I got up and checked the flow and all the tubing, but still couldn't find the problem. Eventually, at one point during the night I wasn't getting any oxygen at all, so switched the machine off and used the emergency tank, thinking I had something wrong with the equipment. The next day I discovered little tiny holes all along the tubing, and in the middle, it was nearly chewed in half. The next day I hung the new oxygen tubing from the door jam to door jam and taped it along the walls. It worked; I didn't have any more holes.

At Christmas time I was afraid that a big cat like Preylor would knock over the tree and because I didn't have the strength to put one together that year anyway, I omitted the tree. The rest of the decorations went up, but that was the first year, ever, that I didn't have a tree up for Christmas.

In January I had been contemplating finding a new home for Preylor. He was getting quite aggressive and wouldn't leave my husbands feet alone. He no longer waited for a toe to pop loose from a blanket, now he went under the covers after his feet. My husband is a diabetic and Preylor was drawing blood. That behavior had to stop. I hesitated to give him away for the very reason that he had once had a good home and then was either lost or turned out in the streets. And I didn't want to be the one to send him to a shelter or another home. Unfortunately, fate, or God, whomever, or whatever one chooses to believe in, intervened and Preylor got sick. Preylor had evidently gotten a sliver of wood caught in his intestinal track, probably from a clothespin that escaped my protection. At first I thought he had just gotten a bad can of cat food because, he seemed fine at different times throughout the day, but by the next day he was on the road of no return. He died January 20, 2004.

It was a hard thing to go through, for both Preylor and me. I've regretted since the day he got sick that I ever thought of giving him away. And now, when I view Gattina's pictures of Arthur, I think of him fondly and I miss him. Teeth marks and all.

By the way, his brother, whom my mother named Hobo, still comes and goes from her place. He is a roamer and a fighter and carries the wounds for his battles. In the following months I was diagnosed with a second breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. That's when Gretchen came into my life. I've written two books in a series of books about abandoned and unwanted cats. Evidently, Preylor just made a brief stop in my life to help me work out the details of the characters in my stories.