I met cat number 7 for the first time in the psychiatric hospital of Santpoort (in the Netherlands).
"Huh? Haha, what were you doing there?"
Well, my mother lived there and I visited her with my father every week.
I will explain in short, because it is not my favorite subject. When my mother was 30 she got a brain haemorrhage. The damage was of that size, a normal human life was no longer possible. Her mental and physical condition was best compared with a seriously demented granny. The course is also comparable. From rather bad, to even worse.
The psychiatric institution of Santpoort was a huge and nice piece of land with old, low-rise buildings, gardens, walking paths, workshops and greenhouses.
But, on a nasty autumn day in 1995, a project developer with a huge bag of money walked into the gate and planned large mansions for the rich, on the beautiful grounds.
The old residents/patients were spreaded across the country to other institutions. My mother ended up in a nursing home in the center of Amsterdam. Except for a small balcony, there was no possibility anymore to be outside.
She only had to live in this new place for a few years before she died, 23 years after her stroke.
But back to 1995.
There were also a number of animals on that hospital site in Santpoort. Goats, chickens, peacocks and more of that kind. Also a cat lived nearby my mother's unit. Some of the nurses feed her and most of the time the cat was allowed in the shared livingroom of the patients.
In case the safe place of the cat would be knocked down by bulldozers, we asked the nurses if we could have her. Or ... no ... to be honest ... we did not really ask it. Because also in those days, none of the employees was 'responsible' for the ins and outs of anything. So who should be the one to ask something like that?
We simply said that we would take her. And we did.
Nellie was a good cat. She got welcomed by the other cats and properly shared the litter box with them. She excelled herself in her job as a lap cat. And she became a fantastic surrogate-mother for the kitten of a later cat-story.
One night I woke up because my mister did an horrific scream. There isn't excisting a more frightening sound than the scream of a man. He had jumped up, turned on the light, and with a dismayed expression yanked the blankets from the bed, shouting that a cat had peed on the bed. There was no cat anywhere to be seen, but the spot was indeed smelly like cat pee. Goddamnit. Soaked into the mattress.
We turned the mattress over, put a pile of old towels on it as an extra barrier and finished the night in a moderate rest.
A few days later I woke up in the middle of the night. Because of a strange 'warm' sensation.
It took me a full minute before I realized that the sudden warm spot had to have a certain cause ...
I felt a men's scream coming up in my throat. And the corresponding jump.
Damn, what cat did that ?!
Gradually, Nellie became as crazy as her former house mates.
She attacked her food like a wild predator, she screamed all day and became skinny.
The vet had no clue.
More favorite cat pee spots appeared in our home.
"Why is my sock suddenly wet?
"Did you spill 'tea' on the couch?"
"What happened there on the carpet?"
For a while we cherished the illusion that a private litter box would help.
But no …
I'm a patient and flegmatic person, but sometimes Nellie made me so desperate. After the umpteenth piss-discovery I grabbed her skinny bony body and swooshed her over the granite floor where she glided helpless through the hallway and hit the wall. If I'm thinking back to that moment I still regret my explosion of anger and I calculate at least 1 week of high pumped up hellfire after my death for that action.
The vet still couldn't find anything special. Not even the well known kidney disease. Just old age. Maybe cats can get some form of dementia too. Who knows.
We just had to sit through it.
She remained our responsibility. We have coped with her behaviour until her last day
Nine cat lives (part 7A) la Francaise
Nine cat lives (part 6) short and intense
Nine cat lives (part 5) the wise cat
Nine cat lives (part 4) the reluctant cat
Nine cat lives (part 3) the Forest cat
Nine cat lives (part 2) the Peeër
Nine cat lives (part 1) the Gentleman
You can also find my posts on SteemitWorldMap