Kathleen the Cat

This is a picture of Tute but Kathleen looked exactly the same

My first cat came to me in a most fortuitous way.  One day while when I was working at the University of Florida CIRCA I was talking to Robin about pets and said that I might like a cat but I would want a solid white cat. She immediately grabbed the paper looked up pets and said here is someone that has several white kittens. So I called them and then went by to see them. They had three left, two females and one male. I wanted the male but they said someone else had already claimed him so I took a female and named her Kathleen. I had it several months letting it come in and out of the house when it wanted when one day I was backing up when I heard a shriek and found that Kathleen got under the wheel and then ran under the house. I coaxed her out but it looked like she had broken something so I took her to the vet and the vet x-rayed her and said that she had broken her hip but it should heal but she might not be able to have kittens. Well I took her home and she laid in the bed I made for her for several weeks

 I had to put litter in a small tray in the box with her. She did heal fine after the while and grew to be quite big. One thing though, a few months after she was up and around I could not help to notice, Kathleen was actually a male! When I moved out to my Aunt Iva Mae's old house in the country Kathleen became quite a hunter and would bring me all sorts of birds and mice. When I moved to Indialantic I would leave the sliding glass door cracked open so that Kathleen could go in and out whenever he wanted. In April of 1979, Kathleen came home and his cheek was all swollen up. This was not the first time for he would get into fights with other cats and sometimes the wounds would get infected. I put a hot compress on in and then squeezed all the pus out and he seemed to be fine. The next day John St. Jacques was coming by my place early in the morning and we were going to the 24 Hour Daytona races. When John got there Kathleen had gone out early that morning like he always did and I could find him to get him back in. Usually when I was gone for a day or so I would lock him in the house. Well I thought he would be OK so I left the door cracked so he could get back in. When I got back the next evening he wasn't there. I looked all around the neighborhood for him and asked the neighbors if they saw him. I never did find him. An interesting thing happened a year or so later, the next door neighbor's son was home for a few days and he had a white cat that look just like Kathleen. He even came over to my place, and played with me for a while. I kept him in the house overnight but the next day I let him out and he went back to the neighbor's house. I asked the neighbors about it but they said their son got the cat at school. I always wondered if it was really Kathleen.