Transmogrification

 You have to be certifiably old to recognize the name Ol’ Blue Eyes, otherwise known as Frank Sinatra. Maybe you have to be certifiably old to recognize Frank Sinatra—the crooner, actor, and OG heartthrob of generations of girls and women in the mid-20^th century—at all. My mother, born in 1922, swooned over him as a teenager and women were still swooning over him when I was a teenager, although we teens were swooning over the Beatles.

 Ol’ Blue Eyes inspired the name of our cat Frankie S. Frankie joined the family in 2009, one of many kittens born in our backyard to feral moms. We had quite a few batches of kittens over the years for three reasons: we had a pond that was a source of easily accessible water; we had a fence that kept the dogs out; and we fed the cats. (This meant we fed the raccoons and the opossums, too.) I’m fairly sure the pond drew them originally, but the free meals kept them coming back, with friends in tow.

 I loved watching the kittens frolicking in our yard. We’d turn the inside lights off, turn them on outside, and have a free comedy show for as long as we stood there. Playing a laser light across the patio and grass made the show even better, with uncoordinated kittens tumbling all over each other to get that dot!

 I began rescuing kittens, taking in five of them before we found help with Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) that got several adults fixed. In 2008, I rescued Smudge. In 2009, Frankie S. and his two sisters. And in 2010, Baby Boy, so named because we weren’t going to keep him. Ha! Of course, we did. Frankie’s sisters went home with a friend and have lived there happily ever since. Frankie, with his big blue eyes, stayed with us.

 As a specimen of cathood, Frankie is gorgeous. He has a long, silky coat, the markings of a Maine coon, including the long fur tufts between his toes, and those fabulous blue eyes. I’d never had a long-haired or blue-eyed cat before. I was besotted with him. I could have spent hours petting him or simply looking at him. Therein lay the problem. Frankie was the scaredest scaredy-cat I have ever known.

Ol' Blue Eyes

 

New Frankie

 You couldn’t get him to sit beside you, let alone hold him or pet him. Crinkling a plastic bag would—no kidding—terrify him and send him dashing out of the room. He had to be coaxed to come and eat and wouldn’t take treats if a human stayed within his sight. It took literally years before Frankie jumped up on my recliner and took a spot as far from my body as possible without falling off. My daughter Alix, who has regularly fed my cats when we travel, could stop by every day for two weeks and never actually see Frankie.

 Our menagerie of cats, which has numbered as high as five at any given time, slowly dwindled. The old cats, Jack and Trixie, passed away. Scruffy, the roaming stray who insisted on living with us, disappeared one night. Suddenly, we only had three cats—Smudge, Frankie, and Baby. Two years ago, Smudge passed away and last year, Baby. Frankie is the last cat standing. Now 16, he has the run of the place. And guess what? The old timid Frankie disappeared after Baby died.

 Frankie snuggles with me in the recliner whenever I sit there, as long as I sit there. He rolls onto his back and lets me scratch his tummy for extended periods. He comes up on our bed for some exceptionally serious biscuit-making every night before I go to sleep. (Sometimes this even comes across as a little perverted, and I have to shoo him away.) He begs for treats and—no lie—lets me pick him up (briefly) before I reward him. It is as if the cat we knew for 15 years received a personality transplant.

 When Alix fed him during our spring trip to San Antonio, he came out to say hi several times. Visiting friends have actually seen this cat, which they previously only knew through photographs. I’m sure some people doubted his existence.

 Frankie’s transmogrification has led me to reflect on why. Why did a timid, reticent, fearful cat become friendly, curious, and personable at the ripe old age of 16? The obvious conclusion is that his competition is gone. He has no one to beat him to the punch on getting affection, treats, or even dinner. The over-the-top kneading he subjects me to use to be directed at Baby (who also thought it was a little perverted, BTW). Without Baby, he needed a new target and humans were all he had left.

 I wonder what kind of cat Frankie might have been if he had been a singleton from the start? We’ll never know, but it makes me happy that he is, at long last, getting his shot in the center ring with no competition.

 Tschüß (Tschüss)

 P.S. Cat is Katze in German. And, in German, all nouns are capitalized. I’ve been working diligently to get ready for our trip next year!