I’m a cat person. I have been since I was around four years old and (directly against my mother’s instructions) I started feeding the stray cat that showed up at our house. Her name was Missus and she was a beautiful blue cat with a little white badge on her chest that looked pink. She lived outside and let only my dad and me pick her up. She tried to have several litters of kittens but the litters were always really small and none of the kittens ever survived. She would grieve over those lost babies the way I grieved over her when, one day her heart just gave out. I was away at camp and Dad found her by the pump house shed where we put her food. I was eleven or so when she died and I mourned her deeply.

We lived outside the city limits – not in the country, exactly, but certainly not in a neighborhood. Missus had likely been put out or dumped by someone. That happens all too frequently. People can’t keep their pets anymore for whatever reason and they just put them out somewhere. Many go feral. Many die. But, if they are lucky, they find a disobedient four-year-old……or the 51-year-old she grew into.

For several years now, I have had four cats living in my house and, as much as I love them, I will tell you quickly that four cats is two too many. Bodhi and Wallace are great pets, but Link and Lucy are still pretty feral. I keep them because they are too tame to live outside, but they are too wild to be adoptable. I’m afraid that no one else will love them right if I don’t keep them. So, I had four cats.

Had.

This summer, my sister and I were completing our daily steps when we saw this bedraggled, medium-haired cat approaching us. I could see her mouth moving to make mewling sounds, but no sound came out. After some time of getting to know her, we picked her up and brought her home. My sister and I do some trap, neuter, and release with the ferals in my neighborhood; so, we took this cat to be vaccinated, evaluated and sterilized before we released her back into the area. Except that didn’t happen. Her exam revealed that she had already been both spayed and declawed! She also has a cleft palate and has neither upper nor lower incisors. This cat has no weapons. It’s no wonder she was at half a healthy weight! After months of failing to find her family and of working with her, she has been introduced into my clowder, which now numbers five. Here’s the thing, though – I don’t want five cats.

In recent conversations with both my friend Sean and my dad, I’ve admitted that I don’t want five cats. Both of them suggested that I take her to the pound. Here’s the thing, our shelter is not a no-kill shelter. Tests show that the cat has neither kitty AIDS nor kitty leukemia and they show that her kidney function indicates an age of between 12 and 15 years. I am afraid that if I surrender her, they will kill her and it’s not her fault that she was made defenseless then lost or abandoned. Both Sean and my dad pointed out that it’s not my fault, either, and they are right. Here’s the thing, though: I know. I know she’s old and defenseless. I strongly suspect that a shelter will put her down. I know that the likelihood of a life-ending event is great if I don’t care for her. I know that and I can’t do that to her.

Ignorance is bliss, right?

But, I’m not ignorant. So, Drue is the fifth member of the clowder. She’s a good old lady who, even without claws or incisors, shreds toilet paper like a master. I suspect that I should have named her Magda because she has turned out to be such a Tartar – running the other cats off the bed and away from the food with nothing more than a menacing glare and an imposing hiss. At the same time, the old lady is a snuggler and I often wake to find her curled up by my legs during the night. She is easy to love and I will love her for as long as she has left because I am a Cat Lady and because there is a burden that comes with knowledge. In this case, the burden weighs eight pounds.