Scrambles
Hey Thanks, Feral Cats,
In early August I found a catnip plant dug up in my garden. I had planted it for Billy, my cat companion of 16 years. He had died suddenly weeks before. My grief had consumed me, even as the global grief of the pandemic made my own feel insignificant. I pressed the plant back into the soil, and a fresh wave of sorrow threatened to push through the surface. But I made a plan.
I put a bowl of cat food out that night, and a big gray kitty crept up to the porch and licked the bowl clean. He had the characteristic look of a tomcat — big-headed with jowly cheeks, a muscular body and a thick neck. Scrambles, as we named him, started showing up at the door all day and night. One ear torn, an eye clouded by a cataract, he hissed at me when I went to get the mail. I did not mind. I gave him everything he wanted. He was a survivor, and I his humble human servant.
First we thought he was a misanthropic loner, grumpily scavenging for whatever scraps the world would throw at him. Our surveillance camera captured him holding staring contests with a large white-faced opossum, chasing off mourning doves at dawn, snarling at an uncommonly long black cat with tall white socks.
But the world can be surprising. In late August, Scrambles showed up with two kittens and a mama cat (we named her Omelet — we like eggs) and stood guard as they ate. We brought Scrambles and Omelet to get fixed at the Joy Clinic in Lebanon, and we adopted the kittens. Two weeks ago, Scrambles showed up with two more babies and another female, and the three of them sleep on our back porch each night. Is he the social-service net of the neighborhood cats, guiding single moms to a food source and safe place to rest? Time will tell.
So thank you, feral cats of Nashville. You may piss in our flower beds and stalk our wildlife, howl in heat and screech in the night. But you are scrappy survivors, and you’ve provided me with much-needed entertainment — and a sense of purpose — in my cloistered life this year.
—Erica Ciccarone
Culture Editor, Nashville Scene
