We're reminded of an Anthony Trollope novel when it comes time to start talking about Hexapuma and the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory here in East Winslow because, frankly, all stories start before you know it. Sometimes years before you know it.
Hexapuma, for those coming late to his adventure, is a Maine Coon cat. Not just because we say so, but because it is in his blood, blood traced back generations of champion and grand champion Maine Coon cat lines. He has a heritage of beauty and grace, and Coon cat talkiness; and he's even got paper from not one, but two internationally recognized agencies certifying him as a Maine Coon cat of distinction. Let's consider him an athlete of sorts. His job initially was to stretch well, to be alert, to be calm in front of a public. Like the big cats he so much resembles, part of his job was to be regal.
Distinction aside, Hexapuma arrived in Maine, where the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory is located, in October of 2008, when he was just over two years old and by which time he should have been well into his career of chasing pretty peacock feathers at cat shows and racking up champion points before going for stud to spread his striking looks around. That's Hexapuma on the cover. My, he does have striking looks, doesn't he?
Hex, as he is sometimes known, though he is also known as 'puma, Hex we say, arrived here because his career showing other cats how to look precisely the thing was cut short.
This was not, we note, in any way his fault.
He was not, like some athletes, overfond of gambling, nor of alcohol. He didn't fight, and he wasn't abusive to arena crews.
Like other athletes, Hexapuma's job depended on his physique, his essential regal catliness and form. Working out of Ithaca, where he was of the Blueblaze Cattery, Hex went on the road to compete. He already had 101 Championship points in the 2007-2008 season**, when nature failed him. One of his ears developed an irritation, which developed into polyp. The good folks at Blueblaze committed to a complex surgery for Hexapuma, which he went through quite handily.
Alas for the competition cat, the surgery affected nerves in his ears and face. On eye lost a bit of roundness and his head assumed a constant rakish tilt, with a slight curl to his lip, as if he always had a private, and ironic, opinion about whatever proceeding he was viewing. While entirely attractive, not to breed standards, alas.
This, meant change.
Now, let's go back to Trollope. Remember Trollope? This essay started out mentioning Trollope.
Right. Approximately 29 years before Hexapuma was born on August 23, 2006 in Ithaca, two people who'd previously met made a holiday date for a party in Baltimore, where one of them was temporarily living in the upper floor of an former theater owned by a friend (an even longer story that, saved for some other occasion, perhaps).
Right, it was Sharon who was living in the ex-theater, which had a charming and complicated custom-built spiral staircase with rope-hung bridge leading from the lower floor to the upper. Steve arrived at the party with poems-and-stories in hand, intending to spend as much time a he could with Sharon while otherwise engaging in partyish behavior, this in a year which had been very mixed for him, as it had encompassed some excellent professional progress and some very awkward and painful personal moments. Party sounded good.
What Steve hadn't expected was Archie, Sharon's short-haired orange and white feline companion, who had the run of the place. Archie quite enjoyed navigating the marvelous stairway, and once introduced to Steve he was all about laying on the folder of poems-and-stories when he wasn't buzzing about Steve, mooching peanuts. Archie'd been born on a tugboat, and liked activity.
As it turned out, Sharon wasn't adverse to the company of someone Archie approved of – and who approved of Archie – and a few days later the trio got together again, this time at the undisclosed location Archie called home, a location which also had a spiral staircase. Archie made it difficult for Steve to leave that first visit, and not long after they reached an agreement that Archie would move in with Steve, as long as Sharon could come along. The cat Arwen could come along, too, since she was somehow attached to Steve...which meant an adventure for many was just starting.
And thus, a household was born that orbited around the shared needs of cats and people: some housing was rejected for permitting only two cats when the household had grown to three – Archie, Arwen, and Brandee. And that started the trend, for all three of the cats were to some extent "rescues" which is to say, cats who needed to leave prior situations, usually for reasons not of their own making.
Archie'd been born on tugboat and his mother, Captain Nemo, wasn't up to taking care of boat and kitten at once. Arwen was born of a cat who'd lived in a desk drawer at the Social Security Administration's headquarters, and was in need of a sudden home when she'd come to Steve's care through his first wife, Sue.
Brandee had lived with Steve's brother Ron when Ron was in transition and needed to find a comfortable spot for his pal. Later came Buzz-Z, who'd tangled with racoons – and got a tooth-in-bone souvenir for his trouble – and also the Reverend Mr. Blackwell, who guarded Book Castle and Dream's Garth's office in Reisterstown after being rescued from a 12 cat household where he was unable to thrive... and he moved on to Sue's house before the great migration from the 900 square foot townhouse on Lowergate Court to Liberty Road, where Archie, Arwen, and Brandee got to oversee hundreds of storage units and a few crazy patrons from the comfort of their own ranch house at the top of the hill. Those guys went a-traveling to Maine, Brandee sleeping in the cat crate, Archie sitting in the window of the Beretta Sharon drove to keep her company, and Arwen riding shotgun in the rental truck that carried the cat's furniture.
Once in Maine, the cats tried out a small apartment on Water Street in Skowhegan within earshot of busy Route 2, but that paled quickly and the crew came to Waterville, where they had a city house of their own (except for a tiny apartment carved out of the upstairs) on Park Place. That house was a comfortable spot; Archie, then Arwen, finally Brandee went from it to their tenth lives, with young Patia (that's Hypatia to you!) having entered the household from a local holding pen for kittens of uncertain futures, and Kodi – formerly the Cat Doctor's own office cat! – having joined in along with Nickalot der Fluffer, who had needed a quiet place away from children.
A move to the country was next. The Cat Farm and Confusion Factory land-and-building had been spotted on one scouting trip and then nearly forgotten, the location being just too excellent to expect it to be available. But then it was available, and so was financing, and Nick, Kodi, and Patia took charge.
The city kids took to their new, roomier digs. Kodi adopted the brown cat role, Patia tried out the new location of the co-pilots chair in Steve's sudden new office, and Nick became king of the roost. This state of affairs lasted for some years, with the sudden and unexpected addition of young Max Hamish, later known mostly as Max!, who came to the Cat Farm because he had defended himself from a young girl who insisted he was a doll and treated him as a lifeless lump. He'd been huddled in an high level cage at the local shelter, with a note that said "does not like to be handled" … but when Sharon, using some of her friend-of-the-cat-shelter-fu opened the door he immediately draped himself round her neck on her shoulders, an act he later also displayed to a visiting Tom Easton. So much for cat shelter Max!
White with black ears and a magnificent tail when he arrived, Max! aged gracefully into a cafe-au-lait wonder, despite his odd hearing. Max! and Kodi hit it off quite well – attraction of the opposites – and that helped later on when Kodi's "textbook" macular degeneration took her sight. The house adjusted to Kodi's state by leaving most things where they were and by creating designated box zones – places Kodi avoided because things changed and she might run into them there.
Eventually, Nicky slowed and slowed more and more, until he'd about recall that he was eating and sometimes fell asleep at the task. He crossed the bridge, as did Patia and Kodi.
Along the way, though, had come our first Maine Coon cat, Mozart. Mozart's old position – he'd been first cat at a house on the southern coast – had been eliminated when his mistress brought in something called a "husband." He came to the Cat Farm via air-taxi to New Hampshire, and then a ride to Maine in the Blazer. Patia ruled the roost... but for some reason, as defensive as she'd been about her food with all the other cats, Mozart could tuck in beside her and eat from her plate while she was eating. Mozart's first days in the Cat Farm were noticeable because he disappeared into the basement's drop ceiling, coming out only at night, and for the absolute fear he showed of Steve's feet when Steve had boots on.
As time went on and local stores went in and out of business, The Animal House opened in town, and began to feature visiting catstaff from the local shelter. Artie at Animal House tended to an open cage policy, and young Scrabble, a streetwise veteran at an estimated age of 14 months, came to be a counter-top regular, comfortably sleeping next to the cash register... and taking note of Steve each time he came in, daintily stretching and bowing. Artie swore that it was only Steve she did this for, and a visit by Sharon seemed to confirm this, so eventually Scrabble came to the Cat Farm to takeover a vacancy in Steve's co-piloting chair.
And that is the kind of place Hexapuma came to, a house where window seats were put in for the cats, where accommodations were made for Kodi's blindness and for the declining jumping ability of Patia and Nick, where cat sitters meet and greet before they take on the responsibility, where it took clear clinical evidence that, for whatever reason, young Dulsey was not thriving here before we decided to return her to the disposition of the home cattery...where she apparently found a place more suitable to her constitution.
Hexapuma's move to East Winslow came together at the end of an AlbaCon. Driving a few miles west of the consite on a Monday, to the Neptune Diner in Oneonta, NY, where the Blueblazemobile arrived at breakfast time, the Cat Farm contingent met and admired him for the first time. At that point his right eye still tended to be over-dry and his ears needed daily drops and frequent cleaning as a result of his surgery. Once the change of cat carriers was made, Hex sat alertly behind the pilot and co-pilot in the Forester, and after awhile allowed the miles of interstate driving to lull him to sleep. On arrival at the Cat Farm he was shown the facilities … and settled right in, despite the early dismay of Scrabble and Mozart, who had become accustomed to a two cat household.
And so Hexapuma went from a large cat-centric cattery situation to a quiet country situation. His "bad" eye became less bad and eventually stopped developing daily crudspots; his ears seemed improved, his demeanor, always acceptable, became even better as he made his way from a cat-couch sitter to a people couch sitter, and began even to take part in the nightly catpile on the bed.
Yet something was still not quite right. His ears were... not always good, and sometimes were odorous. He wasn't gaining weight as fast as expected, and he often shook his head in a way that showed he wasn't pleased, and he scratched himself in an effort to get at something bothersome below his ears. Thus, after months of pouring various antibiotics into him, our local vet suggested that it might be time to attempt a surgical solution – one that he wasn't comfortable in performing himself.
Adventuring to Portland, Hexapuma met the vet and staff with his usual straightforward interest. The diagnosis confirmed, the prognosis was indeed continued trouble if something wasn't done. So the die was cast, and his affected ear was drilled, scraped, and cleansed of a number of polyps, (which should not return). He came through his operation with panache, quickly disdaining the "cone of shame" or "Elizabethan collar" he was gifted with.
After 10 days, and a trip to the local vet, Hex is confirmed as doing well. His bare neck and ugly scar are giving way to fresh fur, and his hesitant sitting under the kitchen table has given way to a return to his normal social self. All is well!
All is well, except that the Cat Farm's finances were hard struck. Thus, the book you have in your hands, a special editon of The Cat's Job, with Hexapuma's photo on the front cover, of which $5 from each of the first 400 copies goes to pay down the cost of his surgery and the last few months of antibiotics and local vet bills.
And that's part of where Anthony Trollope comes in, because as you see, we in the tale all have our parts, as ordained by our background and breeding and family history, with Scrabble taking the brown-cat in charge role, Mozart taking the handsome elder-cat role, Hexapuma taking the rakish young cat with a problem survived role, and Sharon and Steve taking the long-time cat people role. Our stories began before you knew us, and now that you do know us, you know our stories continue, with ripples moving through history. Thanks for riding the wave, thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.
-- Steve Miller and Sharon Lee
writing from the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
April 2010