Now isn’t that a face every mother can identify with?
ZoZo was a working member of our family, and he took his responsibilities very seriously. Every morning, noon, and night he was on the lookout for any rodent who wanted to enjoy our home.
Now we’ve had cats before, but they were barn cats. I am allergic to cat dander, although I love kittens and cats. When we lived in Vermont, it was a well-known fact that someone would eventually drop off a cat if you owned a barn, usually in the middle of the night. The cats would snuggle together in the hayloft for warmth and seek out mice and other rodents to eat. However, they still needed to be fed, so I would buy a huge cat food bag and put out a bowl for them. The barn was rodent-free.
Anyhow, back to ZoZo. When we moved from Vermont to Connecticut, we lived on a mountain. A reservoir was practically in our front yard, and bears, deer, and wild turkeys would occasionally wander down the road. I had a skunk family take up residence in our garage (that was a treat), squirrels galore, and voles.
VOLES! Doesn’t that word make you smile? My kids would always laugh as they said vole. However, as cute as voles might be, they were digging tunnels in our backyard and our neighbors’ yards. It was drastic action time.
“Get a feral cat,” my husband said.
The kids and I went to the humane society to get a cat. You would think that with all the cats being abandoned that there would be a good selection. There wasn’t. We sat in a little room, and the woman brought in several cats. Some were too young or not hungry enough (the hunger that comes from a good hunt!) She brought in sweet Margaret, an older cat, that we had high hopes for until Margaret fell asleep in my son’s arm. Margaret was out—literally. We needed a cat that would stay await and guard our yard.
We waited patiently for the next cat to be brought in when we heard an ungodly howling from the hall. We looked at each other in horror. We closed ranks. What were we in for?
The door opened, and the woman came in holding Zozo, a big-boned kitty weighing about 20 lbs. He didn’t jump into our laps. Nope, not Zozo. He just stared at us. We stared at him. Yep, we found our cat.
Zozo had been a warehouse cat, so he was used to being alone. We needed an outdoor cat because of my allergies. The woman packed him in a traveling cage, and off we went. I warned my eight-year-old son not to get attached to Zozo because he would be an outdoor cat. Nick held the cage on his lap and had a conversation with Zozo. I stopped at a store and gave Nick strict orders not to open the cage. As if. When I came out, the dam….darn cat was outside the cage, snuggled up to Nick like they were best friends(heavy sigh). All is lost, I thought. A well-loved fat house cat is no challenge to all the chipmunks, moles, and voles outside.
We got Zozo home and put him in the basement to acclimate him to our house. After a couple of weeks, he was meowing and pacing the floor, anxious to get outside, and then he earned his keep. Within a month, the vole problem in our yard was resolved. In another couple of months, our neighbors’ yards were vole free. He was a savage hunting machine. After watching him toy with a chipmunk, I realized he liked loved the game. And then the presents started. A dead chipmunk one day, a vole another, and the best present of all—yep, you guessed it—an enormous black snake (in all honesty, it was a small snake.) Oh, good lord, that made my day.
Zozo had been with us for a few months when we heard a pitiful meowing coming from our neighbor’s yard. It took us a while before we realized Zozo was stuck about 30’ up in a tree and afraid of coming down. I never believed the myth about a cat having nine lives and that he would eventually come down. It was too high up. We hoped he would climb down, but Zozo didn’t budge. He just cried day and night for two days. Finally, we called the fire department, who came out in a cherry picker to get him, then swore they wouldn’t do that again since Zozo fought the whole way down and scratched his savior.
The next time (and of course, there’s always a next time), he got stuck in a tree and couldn’t get down. I had to make several calls before a tree service would come out to get him. Again, no thanks from him for his savior—just scratching and clawing him all the way down to the ground.
We moved again—this time to a smaller neighborhood. Zozo was in the basement acclimating to a new home and making it known he wanted out. Finally, we let him out. A couple of days go by, and there’s a knock on the door.
“Do you own a cat?” asked the new neighbor scowling at me. No ‘hi, how are you? My name is…’ That’s never a good introduction. I wanted to say no but…
Apparently, Zozo not only got into a fight with their cat but mistook a cat topiary for a rival. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The neighbor was upset. Justifyingly so.
We had several other incidents with the neighbors and Zozo. He hated to be inside, and I couldn’t let him out. We made the unpopular decision to return him to the Humane Society. It was an extremely unsettling and unhappy moment, but Zozo was a big boy, and we were afraid he would hurt a child in the neighborhood who might be holding another animal, plus we couldn’t keep him inside all the time. He needed to be outside.
My son was devastated. We love animals, but I would never have forgiven myself if a child had been injured. My son still bears a one-inch scar on his knee after being bitten by a passive-aggressive dog we owned.
A couple of days later, when my daughter found out, she called the Humane Society to get Zozo back, but he had already been adopted. I hope he found his forever home. Zozo had personality plus, just not the please, please love me kind. He had a job to do, and he took it very seriously. We look back fondly at memories of him.
