Madison
Finding Maddie
On Sunday evening, September 9th, 2001, Bil was out on the back deck of our Nevada Street house refilling our bird feeder. I was in the house on the phone with my Mom. Bil told me that as he was filling the bird feeder, he felt something brush his legs. He looked down and here was this little black kitty rubbing against his legs. He picked her up and brought her into the house. I looked up and saw him... carrying this small black kitty. I lost my train of thought in my conversation with my Mom and told her, "Bil has just walked in carrying a little kitty!" I finished up my conversation and we took the kitty into the kitchen and gave her a bit of milk, which she ate heartily.
We had no plans at the time to adopt any pets so we took her out front where some neighborhood kids were playing and asked if they knew where the kitty might live. One of them thought they'd seen a black cat at a house a block up so we walked the kitty up there. Not knowing exactly which house, we put her down and hoped she'd go home.
On Monday evening, she showed up at our house again. We gave her a bit more milk and after a short while, we put her back out again and told her to "go home". But we were beginning to wonder if she had a home and talked about what we should do if she came back again the next day.
Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001 (the 9/11), I finished my early morning run and as I stopped back at the house, the little kitty came running over to me. I brought her in for a brief visit--and another drink of milk--before we put her out so we could go to work. We decided that if she came again that evening, we were going to keep her.
So all afternoon and into the night on Tuesday, I kept watching at both the front door and the back door, secretly hoping she would show up. Bil would tell me later that he was doing the same thing. Finally, after 9:00 pm, there she was! We let her in and fed her a little bit of meatloaf. She ate, then went over to the couch, jumped up onto it, curled up and went to sleep.
That's it! She's ours...we're hers. I made a late-evening trip to our local grocery store and picked up a litter box, some litter, cat food, etc., to get us by while we figured all this out.
At the time, Bil and I were training to do the Ironman Wisconsin Triathlon being held in Madison, Wisconsin. I suggested Madison as a name for her, "Maddie" for short. Bil liked it too.
So unless we heard that someone was desperately looking for a small black cat with green eyes, she was our Maddie and we would be her forever family.
The following Friday, we took her to the vet for a checkup, start her shots, etc. The vet estimated that she was between 9 and 12 months old as she did have all her adult teeth. Her coat was dull and coarse indicating a bad diet, and her ears were pretty dirty and had evidence of mites. But no worms or other parasites. She got her shots and we scheduled her spaying for the following Friday.
In the week leading up to her spaying I kept looking at her and thinking that she seemed wider in the middle. Could she be pregnant? Or was she just starting to put some weight on now with a regular, steady diet? Hmmmmm.
The next Friday, we took her in to have her spayed. When I called later to check on her, we got the news: she was pregnant. They found 5 tiny fetuses. For her sake, they aborted the pregnancy and finished the spay. Very sad. But what would we have done with 6 cats?
Maddie's Temperament
I suspect that at worst, Maddie was mistreated when she was a kitten; at best she was simply never properly socialized. Although amicable, she is not and may never be a lap cat. She can only tolerate being held for a very short bit (although she gets better about that every year), or pet for very long. She is an independent kitty.
She is also "Daddy's little girl". She adores Bil and will follow him around like a puppy. She tolerates me since I do feed her, but that's about it.
We're very glad she came into our lives.