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Women who run with the cheetahs

Women who run with the cheetahs

110317-cecille-by-denise-1There are three Adoption Rooms at Tabby’s Place: cozy nooks fit for lucky handfuls of cats.

Behind door #3 are the little old ladies. Behind door #2 are Max, Trey and his lady. And behind door #1…well, there you’ll find the wild women of Tabby’s Place.

Another awesome Cecille shot from Denise
Another awesome Cecille shot from Denise

You’ve already met my buddy Cecille, the little sparrow who can turn into a harpy, then to a dove, all in an instant.

On the wildness scale, if Mr. Grey is a potato, Cecille is a habanero. If Allison is Neil Diamond, Cecille is Ozzy Osbourne. If Dobro is a saber-toothed tiger, Cecille is a saber-toothed cheetah.

Cecille is a different kind of wild than Dobro. Fully deaf and partially blind, Cecille is wild with a purpose. It’s hard to know who to trust when you weigh five pounds and can’t sense two-thirds of what’s coming at you. A little wildness goes a long way in keeping you alive and fierce and in charge.

And make no mistake: Cecille is entirely in charge.

This is no small feat. Ruling human beans is easy enough. But ruling cats – wild cats, wild women cats – takes all the powers of a Cecille.

After a brief spell as queen of her domain, Cecille acquired one roommate, then another, and now they are four. There was outcry right on this blog about Cecille’s first roommate. How could we put such a gentle soul as miracle-cat Sylvia with a habanero like Cecille?

Sylvia
Sylvia

Well

. Don’t let those gentle souls fool you. Yes, Sylvia is a love. Yes, Sylvia is a lamb.

But, no, Sylvia is nobody’s fool.

Although Vlad might have the right name for it, it’s Sylvia who’s getting a reputation around Tabby’s Place as The Impaler. Not one but two stalwart staffers have been skewered by Sylvia. I use these terms quite carefully. Many cats will bite. Many cats will scratch. But Sylvia is the first to regularly impale. Both Jonathan and Karin (yes, we have both a Karina and a Karin…but I digress) dared, on separate occasions, to give Sylvia her heart disease medication. An indignity, I know – and all it does is keep her alive. Pfffft.

Anyway, Sylvia did what she had to do: she drove her stake tooth directly through the offending human’s thumbnail.

Um. Can you say ouch? (And can you almost say ICU?)

Still, Sylvia meant no harm. She’s still a love, by no means a bad cat (as if there was such a thing – ha!). She’s just retained that elemental wildness. If we’re wise, we’ll respect and love her all the more for it. That, and also consider wearing gloves to medicate her.

Wilder than she looks: the mighty Flower in full-on snuggle mode
Wilder than she looks: the mighty Flower in full-on snuggle mode

Wildness comes in many flavors, and Cecille and Sylvia’s two roommates round out the palette. Timid, tender-hearted Flower may not look, act or in any way seem wild…but you need the soul of a warrior-cheetah to endure what she has ahead.

When this bashful beauty first came to us, we were concerned that she seemed to have a nosebleed that just wouldn’t quit. Time and meds didn’t stem the tide. Every time you saw her, poor Flower had a thin line of dried blood around her schnoz. So it was off to Dr. Fantastic for a look inside. The news was craptacular.

Cancer.

Still, all was not lost: Flower’s cancer could be treated, even cured, and she could hope for many happy years in bloom. Just one thing: the cure would be…well, kind of ooky.

Total removal of the nose.

The People Of Veterinary Brilliance (Dr. C and Denise) tell me that a cat can live quite happily without a nose. The whole procedure doesn’t even spite her face. But it is, in Dr. C’s delicate phrasing, a bit “cosmetically off-putting to some people.” In other words, after her upcoming surgery, our noseless Flower will look…quirky.

The sweetest sort of cheetah girl, Colleen
The sweetest sort of cheetah girl, Colleen

How right, then, that she be a Tabby’s Place cat, and a resident of the wild women’s room.

Finally, there’s Colleen, the larger lass who looks like the very antithesis of “wild.” With the markings (and, it must be said, the dimensions) of a tabby-patched cow, Col is a slow-moving vehicle and a Grade-A sweetheart. She chats, she cuddles, she shrugs off the posturing of certain roommates with well-endowed egos (whose names may or may not rhyme with Yecille).

But it’s true: Colleen is a wild woman, too.

Very, very few cats get epilepsy. Very, very few cats develop chronic kidney disease at the tender age of five. And very, very few cats live in Adoption Room #1. And so our wild Irish rose is a fitting fourth member of the wild women’s suite. We certainly hope, through medication, to keep a certain kind of wildness at bay – namely, the seizures to which Col is prone. But it takes courage, and a cheetah-heart, to live so blissfully through such big challenges. And so she does. Who knew that a cheetah could wear the garb of a cow-esque cat?

I’ll bet Cecille, our habanero-sparrow, knew. In fact, I’ll bet there are many secrets yet to learn from the wild women of Adoption Room #1.

Secret-keeper Colleen
Secret-keeper Colleen

7 thoughts on “Women who run with the cheetahs

  1. I just want to hug all four of these lovelies, even if in some cases it might be at my own peril. 🙂 And Flower will always be pretty, with or without her nose. 🙂

  2. haha, finally some ladies who could give Dobro a run for his money!! 🙂 Although I don’t recommed they ever meet as they might try to over throw us humans! Can’t wait to meet these lovely, lively, ladies 🙂

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