The $100,000 Stray Cat
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Loving Our Cats

ViAnn Meyer

 

One orphan kitty with golden eyes—it’s hard to believe all he has inspired.

I’ve always loved cats. But until nine years ago, my pet cats suffered a high mortality rate. I decided that my next cat was going to live indoors only. Besides, I love wild birds, and this way I could be sure my cat wouldn’t hunt birds or little woodland creatures.

But then came Oliver. My sister works at a veterinarian’s office. One day she called up and pleaded with me to come see a six-month-old kitten that had been abandoned there. They were having trouble finding him a home. The other staff found him ordinary. They only kept him because he was a willing blood donor. It broke my sister’s heart to see the little kitten offer his paw for the needle and then purr while his blood was being withdrawn.

I went to the office and within thirty seconds had fallen in love. The kitten had short but soft black fur with a white undercoat, a round, pudgy face and luminous golden eyes. He was dignified but affectionate. I instantly thought of the name Oliver, after the Charles Dickens orphan. Home we went—together.

But Oliver didn’t want to be an indoors-only cat. He cried at the door, paced around the house, and tried to run outside whenever we opened a door. After much family discussion, we decided to build an outdoor cat run, an enclosed area where Oliver could safely spend time during the day. With the help of my dad, a retired carpenter, we built a thirty-by-fifteen-foot structure that had chicken-wire fencing on its sides and top.

Inside the cat run was a long strip of grass, food, water, litter pan, toys, scratching posts, a planter with catnip, and plenty of perches and high shelves. Oliver adored it. He loved lying in the grass, basking in the sun, chasing bugs and watching birds fly by.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh, no. The cat run overlooked our vacant, one-acre lot. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I decided, if we could grow a wildlife garden there to attract more creatures for Oliver to watch? So I read books and magazines, visited nurseries and went on garden tours to educate myself. I was a little nervous about tackling such an ambitious project—I’m rather shy, really—but, I reasoned, no one would ever see the garden but us.

I recruited my dad to help. He quickly became so enthusiastic that he began adding his own ideas. His contagious spirit spread to my other family members, and before I knew it, we were all out there clearing the field, preparing the soil, marking out paths and starting to plant. We put in trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, bulbs—thousands of plants over a two-year period. Dad built arbors, trellises, pergolas, benches, a pond with waterfalls and a bridge. We started collecting all sorts of garden décor—statues, stepping stones, fountains, planters, wind chimes, flags, birdhouses and wind vanes—all with cat designs. A friend even made me wooden signs saying “Meow Meadows,�?“Cat Country�?and “Kitty Grazing Area.�?Everything was purr-fect!

And even that wasn’t the end of it. A friend recommended our garden for Spokane’s big annual garden tour. So on a hot August Sunday afternoon, I had five thousand people tour our garden. People went nuts over it! They didn’t respond as much to the planting scheme as to the heartfelt emotion that went into it all. For weeks afterward, I was in the newspaper and being interviewed on TV. People called constantly.

Since that day, the Meyer Cat Garden is no longer our “little family secret.�?Over 10,000 people have visited it—everyone from nursing home residents to a tour group from a national garden convention. During my now well-practiced speech, I emphasize the importance of caring for your pets properly so they don’t harm wildlife.

And wildlife we’ve got. As the garden has grown, it’s attracted birds, frogs, squirrels, chipmunks, even raccoons, skunks and deer. I’ve grown, too. I’m now a master gardener and president of our local garden club, and I’m comfortable with both writing and public speaking. And our whole family has grown: Working on such a tremendous project has drawn us all closer together.

And what about Oliver? He watches it all contentedly through his cat run—his window to the world. Our family joke is that if we added up the cost of all the thousands of plants, cat decorations and hours of labor that went into the Meyer Cat Garden, we have easily spent over $100,000.

That’s why we call Oliver our $100,000 stray cat.

But you know what? He was a bargain.