Bandit: For the Love of a Cat

Charleston, SC

www.PalmettoPublishing.com

Bandit

Copyright © 2022 by Sharon R. Smith

All rights reserved

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form

by any means–electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or other–except for brief quotations in

printed reviews, without prior permission of the author.

First Edition

Hardcover: 979-8-88590-517-6

Paperback: 979-8-88590-518-3

eBook: 979-8-88590-519-0

A special thanks to Bandit’s primary vet, his other vets,

and to the staff at the Cat Clinic of Greensboro for

taking care of my precious boy for nine years.

Table of Contents

Part I: Homeless Cats Find My House

Part II: The Transformation

Part III: Little Timmy

Part IV: Life Goes On

Part V: The Dreaded C Word

Part VI: Death Returns

Part VII: More Chemo

Part VIII: Like Sands through the Hourglass

Part IX: The End Comes Hard

Introduction

I

t was a dark and rainy night when I fully saw Bandit for the first time. I know it sounds cliché, but it was a dark and rainy night. I’d only gotten a glimpse or two of his face hidden in the bushes before that fateful night. It was on that dark and rainy night that I decided to rescue this pitifully thin, homeless cat who showed up in my yard wounded. It was a decision that resulted in a nine-year relationship between cat and human. Some people believe in fate, some in divine intervention, but whatever the reason, Bandit came into my life and never wanted to leave, not even at death.

Most pet parents think that their pet is special and unique. I’ve known lots of cats, dogs, and assorted other pets over the years since childhood. Bandit stood out and not necessarily because he was unique, but because his life was even more so. His personality emerged from a place that I could only say was his inner being or soul. He was wise beyond his years. He was independent, smart, fearless, engaging, expressive, curious, and a scrappy little fighter. He lived more than nine lives and experienced more than his fair share of adventures, both good and bad. He was an old soul tucked into the fearless heart of a cat warrior.

This is the story of Bandit’s life, his adventures, his courageous battles with cancer and inflammatory bowel disease, and his death. It’s also about how that little cat and all that he went through affected me emotionally. For a long time, I couldn’t bear to write his story because it kept me from moving past my grief. But I knew that it had to be told and that I was the only one who could write it. Bandit lived an amazing life because he was an extraordinary cat. I’m sure that he would want me to tell his story so that others would know how remarkable he was in spite of his expected yet tragic death.

This book is dedicated to all who have experienced or will experience profound grief and loss over anything that they love, especially a pet. Pets are special beings who bring love and joy into our lives, and their deaths can affect us deeply. Grief walks into death’s open door, finds its way into a broken heart, drains it of joy, and fills it with despair. But in time, the love we have for what we lost can repair a shattered heart, and a healed heart can once again be filled with joy and happiness.

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

(Psalm 30:5 ESV)

Part I

Homeless Cats Find My House

Chapter 1

I

already had a cat before Bandit. Her name was Ruffles, and her hair made an appearance before she did. My husband, Tom, noticed a lot of long cat hair on our bench cushion on the front porch during the early summer of 2008. Tom worked as a self-employed carpenter during the daytime and at UPS part time on the night shift. Tom noticed the cat’s hair before I did. I worked full time at a large insurance company, where I was working long days and sometimes Saturdays. That spring and summer, Tom decided to redo all the windows on our 1956 ranch house while he was in between carpentry jobs. It was a long process that was interrupted by the arrival of a long-haired cat.

Tom and I figured that a mystery cat was sleeping on our porch, although we hadn’t seen it yet. I got the bright idea to leave some cat food out to see what would happen. Well, after a few days, the cat happened! It showed up sitting at the front door of my house, looking into the living room. I didn’t know if it was a she or a he at the time, but it was a beautiful cat and mewed at me on the other side of the full-view glass storm door. It was a large, full-grown cat that I would describe as somewhere between a Maine Coon or Norwegian Forest cat. It was gray with white trim down the nose, chin, chest, and feet with a long, bushy tail. It had slanted green eyes that almost looked cross-eyed at times. It had huge feet and hair tufts in the ears and in between the paw pads. I thought the front feet looked like snowshoes. The hair around the neck framed its face like a sixteenth-century Elizabethan collar, so I called the cat Ruffles. I slowly opened the door, and it walked right into the living room, looked around, and jumped onto one of my fancy chairs. (I have what I call old lady furniture because it’s a mix of antique, Queen Anne, Sheraton, and Federal-style pieces.)

Ruffles made itself at home in my fancy chair, circled until it was comfy, and started washing itself. When I walked over to the chair, Ruffles was carefully washing its extended hind leg and glanced up at me with a look that said, Hey, what’s your problem? It seemed to belong there. But the cat got nervous the closer I got and quickly exited my house out the same door it’d entered. I followed Ruffles outside to the porch and did a quick physical exam to determine sex, but honestly, it was hard to tell with all that fur. I think there were five pounds of hair to ten pounds of cat. But I decided it was female, and the name fit. She was prissy and fussy and hungry.

Nobody in the neighborhood claimed Ruffles, although a couple of people thought she may have belonged to a senior woman down the street who lived alone and had passed away recently, and nobody took the cat. Based on her preference for my living room, I was pretty sure she was an indoor cat but was familiar with the outdoors. Now, she was homeless. She’d made her way up the street, looking for a home, and found my inviting front porch with a cushioned bench. She found a sympathetic human, food, and shelter.

Tom and I decided to adopt Ruffles after a fair time had passed without anyone claiming her. She became our pet and eventually received a clean bill of health from the vet along with her shots. She was a handful to get into a carrier; she didn’t like being picked up, she tried to scratch and bite when I shoved her in the carrier, and she threw herself against the sides of the carrier, bit and clawed at the carrier door, and hollered the entire time. Thank goodness the vet’s office was only about five minutes away from my house.

Because of my allergies (I’m an asthmatic and very allergic to animals), she had to stay outside most of the time. Ruffles was a bit skittish but was energetic, liked to play, and was very good at catching birds right out of the air if they swooped too low to the ground. Tom and I sat with her on the porch, and although Ruffles wasn’t much of a lap sitter, she’d lie right next to us on the bench. By summer’s end Tom had finished repairing the windows, and we had gotten to know Ruffles, and she was getting used to having us as her pet parents. As the summer flowed into the fall, Ruffles loved to chase the leaves and was quite content on our front porch or running around the front yard, chasing things. Secretly I thought she was too fancy for the outdoors, so I let her come inside once in a while. I fixed up a warm place in the basement for Ruffles once the weather turned cold.

My coworkers and church friends heard all about Ruffles. Without children I was more preoccupied with cats than maybe I should’ve been otherwise. My good friend and coworker, Angela, was also a cat person and lived with two of them. I met her in 1997, when we were transferred into the same department and shared a cubicle. We’d recently moved into apartments (mine due to a divorce). That was how we got to know each other. She was the first and only genius I’d ever known personally. She was a member of Mensa, had two degrees, and was working on another. By 2008 we weren’t in the same department anymore, but we remained close and continued to socialize outside work. A couple of years later, Angela died of heart failure. It was sudden and unexpected. She was only in her mid-forties. Angela was home alone and it was the weekend of my birthday. We were supposed to have celebrated together.

It was a traumatic and devastating experience for me because although I’d experienced the death of relatives and aged parents of friends and church members, I hadn’t experienced the death of a close friend. Spiritually, I struggled with where she was spending eternity because my dear friend did not believe in God. I never tried to convert her, although I shared my faith on many occasions, hoping that the Holy Spirit would find a path to her heart and plant a seed. I prayed for her soul after her death and left the eternal judgment to God.

Her coworkers boxed up her personal items from her desk, and I picked it up from her cubicle at the end of the workday. I gave it to her brother, who had traveled from another state to handle her affairs. He wanted me to keep some of the stuff, so I took a couple of photos of her and me together and some other items that I’d given to her over the years that she’d displayed in her work cubicle. It wouldn’t be the last time that I’d deal with a box of mementos.

I planned a memorial service for Angela to be held early in the next year close to the time of her birthday. It was a small gathering of her friends, her brother, and myself at one of her favorite restaurants. After the meal, we gathered outside in a circle, shared our memories of Angela, and released party baloons. We watched them float away high above until they were out of sight. I thought about how much Angela would’ve enjoyed being there. I missed her very much.

Chapter 2

S

ometime in mid-February of 2009, I noticed that Ruffles’s food bowl I’d left on the front porch was emptying way too fast. And Ruffles was missing more and more from the front porch, even in good weather. I saw her and fed her in the mornings and after I got home from work. But after dark she would disappear and so would any leftover food. Tom had already warned me that I was attracting other animals like opossums or raccoons, which also meant other homeless cats. I thought about feeding Ruffles in the basement, but unfortunately, it was too late.

There was an unseen critter coming up on the porch, chasing away my cat, and eating her food. I saw the signs, but I hadn’t seen the culprit yet, until there it was; I only got a glimpse of a black cat hiding under the bushes at the bottom of the front porch. Oh my, it was something—a small black cat, crouched and hidden in the dark, stealthlike. Its face was striking—black, white whiskers, a white stripe down the forehead to nose and mouth, and then white only on the right side of the face as if the cat was wearing a mask. I saw its eyes only briefly, green and very intense. It stared right into my eyes without blinking. I thought it was probably a feral tomcat or a stray and was very smart and street savvy—a survivor.

So you’re the bandit who’s been eating my cat’s food. And on that note, the black bandit quickly withdrew from the bushes without making a sound and disappeared into the darkness. That little thief had been watching my house for a while and knew that I was feeding another cat. It felt strange to be the victim of a real Peeping Tom.

I had to wait until my husband was home in the morning before I could tell him that I saw what was eating Ruffles’s food. Needless to say, Ruffles disappeared that night too. I stopped putting food out, but I was afraid that Ruffles wouldn’t come back if I didn’t leave food. But eventually, Ruffles returned one morning before I went to work and was very hungry. She received her food and water, but we went through the same disappearing act once it got dark outside. Sometimes I’d cave and leave food on the porch, hoping that Ruffles would come back. This went on for a few days and into a week or two.

I was afraid that the bandit was running Ruffles off and that she’d have to find another home. I thought about how many times that had already happened to her before she found my house. I felt sorry for the bandit but sorrier for Ruffles. And I didn’t know what to do. Tom thought that the black cat would eventually move on once it figured out that there was no food. I spotted him again hiding in the bushes, but he didn’t seem afraid of me, just cautious as if he was watching the porch, waiting for another opportunity to steal Ruffles’s food. A couple of weeks passed, and I didn’t see the bandit anymore, so I thought that he’d moved on or that something had happened to him.

Then late one night in March, the bandit returned. Tom was at work, so it was just the TV and me. Ruffles was nowhere to be found. It was raining hard, but I heard the most pitiful noise outside in the front yard. The sound was somewhere between a caterwaul and a long, mournful howl produced by some desperate creature. Immediately, I assumed it was Ruffles and ran to the front door. When I looked out in the yard, I didn’t see Ruffles, but what I saw shocked me. It was the bandit cat—in the front yard, about ten feet from my porch.

It was so skinny and small, sitting in the rain, soaked. The rain was pouring down its head, spilling over its down-turned ears. It moved its head side to side as it pitifully howled. To me it sounded like the cat was crying and saying over and over, Help me. Please help me. Was I the only person who heard this cat? It didn’t run away the closer I got to the edge of the porch. And that was when I saw the terrible wound on its neck.

A large, bloody, raw wound extended from the left side of the jaw down the side of the neck. No hair, just red flesh. I couldn’t tell due to the darkness and at that distance whether the wound extended into the muscle, but it looked really bad. I thought that only a vicious animal could have grabbed that cat by the neck and inflicted such a wound. Was it a dog, fox, or coyote? Another cat? The poor thing had managed to fight or wiggle its way from its attacker but not without suffering a terrible injury. My heart ached for the little wounded bandit sitting in the rain, pleading for someone to help it.

I brought a bowl of cat food out to the edge of the porch, hoping to coax it up the steps and to safety. It would not come to me. This was not a trusting cat. So I left the food bowl right at the edge of the porch and then went back inside the house and waited and watched. It took a few minutes until the cat eased closer to the food bowl. I thought it looked weak and frail. In fact, I thought that one of its nine lives was just about up, and this might be it.

The cat approached the food slowly. It didn’t even come up entirely on the porch. Instead, it stretched its body from the step to the porch so that only its head was protected by the porch overhang, while the rest of the cat was getting rained on. Like I said, trust issues. It wasn’t about to stick its neck out any farther than necessary. It occasionally looked up to make sure I wasn’t getting close, and I saw the empty eyes of something that was near death instead of those same expressive green eyes I’d first encountered several weeks ago. Was its hope ebbing away?

The little cat sniffed the food and started eating very slowly, just taking in a morsel and chewing it for a long time, before taking a hard swallow. I thought that this cat must be in unbearable pain. But what could I do? This cat wasn’t going to let me get anywhere close. A wounded animal could be dangerous.

I opened the door to see if the cat would bolt, but it didn’t. It didn’t even look up from the bowl. Then I noticed that it was facedown in the bowl. I thought it could be dead, but instead, it was resting or nearly passed out from exhaustion. But as I stepped closer, it looked up at me, ready to run at any minute. I knew that Ruffles wasn’t coming back that night anyway, so I told the poor kitty that it was OK to eat the food and to stay on the porch if it wanted to. Oh, how much I wanted to hold the cat in my lap, to comfort the injured little bandit, to gently stroke its fur, to show compassion, affection, and human kindness, maybe for the first time in its short life. But it wasn’t ready for any of that.

I checked the porch again sometime later that night. All that remained was an empty food bowl—the bandit cat was gone just like it came, back into the darkness of night. It was then that I thought of the cat’s name, Bandit. And I assumed he was a male. He’d practically told me his name the first time I spotted him in the bushes. I had no idea what would happen to him or how to help him. But at least he wasn’t going hungry that night.

Chapter 3

B

andit stayed out of sight for days on end but was close by, given that he was eating the food I left out. Ruffles found refuge in the backyard or under our neighbor’s storage shelter. I started feeding her on the back steps and letting her stay in the basement at night. Bandit didn’t bother her too much because of his wound. I don’t think he had the energy to chase her. But she was still terrified of him. Occasionally, Ruffles would return to the front porch, but she didn’t stay there.

As time went on, Bandit started coming up on the front porch more often, but he wasn’t friendly. I’d describe his behavior as standoffish or suspicious. If I got too close, he’d just slink off the porch and trot off. With his size (although underweight), he appeared to be about a year and a