Cats, cats, cats

I'm a native of Prague. As a child, I wasn't allowed to have any pets at home. It wasn't until much later that my husband and I got a dachshund. I used to walk him around the block and dream of a house with a garden. Years later, when my dream came true, our family began to grow with more and more furry household members. I may have gone a little overboard with the animals. But I figure if we can feed three necks, we can feed ten or fourteen...

I can't imagine life without them. They're partners in adversity and healers of the aching soul. Especially cats, which I've literally fallen in love with. Maybe I'm a little weird. Maybe I just need a little more of that pure animal love and energy. Either way, they've gotten me out of a lot of trouble that life has brought.

It started subtly. I worked in radio, as an accountant. A colleague, the morning news anchor, brought a kitten to work, and I was the first to get in his way. I tried to protest that I had a dog at home, but to no avail. The kitten slept in the bag at my feet for the rest of the working hours and we went home together. Eliška then became the proud mother of the whole future family and the feline brood began to grow.

Our house is on the very outskirts of a small town, so every now and then we are "adopted" by another feline creature. She simply comes in, lays down on the bed in the kitchen, turns her head, fixes those gorgeous cat eyes on me, and clearly (so there's no doubt that she means it) says "Hi. I'll be staying with you."

And so, every Friday, I process fifteen pounds of chicken quarters for them, each time thinking that one day my beloved Holot will eat me. But then I realize how much love and strength they give me every day. How many times have they pulled me out of the problems that have come up in my life, and so I root and root and root.

They usually get names based on various situations or a spur of the moment idea. And so we have already had Žižka, Rýminka, Kýlinka, Mr Bezouška, Mikeš and Blondie come to us for meat, last year we had Dalmatian and Bubu, but we also had Bája and Ňoumík. Of course, there were also classic names. I like the old Czech ones the best. Ema, Káča, Rozárka, Madlenka, Barunka, Heduška, Vendulka, Amálka... A lot of them passed through our household. A house full of love.

Each one had a different character, different tastes, different habits or radiated different energy. We once had a black cat named Hedushka. Such a hungry little stray kitten.  She was a healer. Black as coal. When she lay down with you, it made you feel better. Eliška was a mother, Ema was a lady, Bájínek was a scaredy-cat with an incredibly wide range of sounds. He would talk to me. When he cuddled, it was with all the love and vigour. He moved in with us from the neighbors. He's a partner in mischief. I had a feeling he might be the reincarnation of someone very close to me. He would regularly lie on my chest in the evening and shake all the bad energy out of me. Our Masha - the cat from the pipe (that's his full name) fell down the manhole of the former sewage treatment plant in our street. A skinny roaring devil, crawling in the overflow pipe, which we pulled out by its tail, which was the only one peeking out. She was crying water and was a poor little frog. We took the little wretch home. It took her fourteen days to figure out that the food was just still there. Until then, she'd always stuffed herself so full that it was out in no time. She was so ugly she was beautiful. My daughter then declared "Mom, we don't want kittens from this cat, do we?!"Rosaria was brought back from work by a friend. She fell into a concrete crusher at a construction site and couldn't get out. When he came home from work, she was snuggled up in his hood, sleeping. To this day, we still sometimes call her "Little Cat" or "Cat without a Cat" as a joke. She's the only one who comes to make up when she's done something. She sits down and tries to lick all the "badness" off of you. She was so small I was afraid she would even be able to eat on her own. In any case, she had to learn pretty quickly. She's got her own style. She'll impale the meat on her claw and then eat it. She drinks in a similarly funny way. She dips her paw in water and then licks it.

There have been so many cat stories that it would take a long time to tell.

The point I wanted to make with this story is that animals are the most amazing therapy. When they love, they love truly. But we have to earn that love.