Maya and Cherokee Die the Same Day

 

I don’t know if we have ever had two cats die the same day.  Today we lost Maya, a Bengal Cat and Cherokee a Bobcat, and had the trauma of sedating Cameron the lion for a mass removal.  It’s 3:36 now and I can finally exhale, knowing that we aren’t having to say good bye to three old friends to today.

 

Maya was the accidental kitten of Draikko the Leopard Cat and Sheeba, a domestic stray.  She and her brother and sister, Kiki and Tiki, were born on 7/16/1996 after a case of mistaken identity caused their mother to be put in the “Bengal Barn.”

 

When my Dad came to work at the sanctuary in 1996, his first project was to build some fountains and a play yard for the Bengal Barn cats.  Draikko, Shalimar and Zazu were the Leopard Cats who lived there and Atlas, Rafiki, Arianna, Kinza, Kaleena, and Zulu were the Bengal Cats who lived there and then there was a domestic tabby cat or two as well.

 

The Bengal Barn was a 70 foot long, single wide mobile home that we had gutted and turned into indoor cages for the cats, with a little window run on the outside of the trailer, so the cats could come and go from the air conditioning to the fresh air outside.  The window runs were only about three feet deep and three feet tall and stretched down the exterior of the mobile home in compartments for each cat or group of compatible cats.

 

One day in 1996 a volunteer came up to me and said that somehow Sheeba must have escaped the Bengal Barn, but that she had put her back with Draikko.  Sheeba had been spayed and kept Draikko from being an absolute spaz, so it had been a good arrangement.  Except for doing the wormings, vaccines and medical care, I didn’t go in the Bengal Barn very often, as I have horrible allergies to cats that require daily doses of Claritin.

 

When Sheeba had kittens, it came to my attention that the tabby cat who had been found wandering and thought to be Sheeba, was a different cat.  No one had seemed to pick up on the fact that there were two tabbies, living in the Bengal Barn that were both being called Sheeba, because they were thought to be one and the same.  I’m sure the people who fed and cleaned in there must have thought it odd that we would have two cats with the same name and never thought to point out to me that odd fact.

 

At any rate, being F1 Bengal Cats, the kittens were wild as the wind, but beautiful.  Kiki and Tiki found homes with volunteers.  Maya found a home with a volunteer, or a visitor; I don’t remember exactly.  When Maya became an adult the person brought her back to me.  She said her father loved the cat, but she sprayed, and pooped all over the house, so he had to keep her on the lanai.  Now her father was sick and could no longer care for the cat, and she remembered that I had told her to bring the cat back if things didn’t work out.

 

Maya, being a Bengal Cat, wouldn’t adjust to new cage mates and we had no space at the sanctuary for her.  I took her home to the island and figured on almost 5 acres of river front property she could be free and live in the yard.  That didn’t last long.

 

Because I am licensed as a wildlife rehabber, I get the weird calls.  This one was from a man, just hysterical that a Florida Panther was stalking his wife in broad daylight.  When I asked where he lived, I learned that he was my neighbor.  I asked him to call me the next time the “Florida Panther” showed up and sure enough, it was Maya.  I promptly netted her and decided she would have to live on my porch if she wouldn’t stop stalking old people.

 

For the next 14 years Maya lived on the porch.  I never was able to pick her up or pet her, but I respected that.  She never did learn to use a litter box, although in her last few years of life she would relieve herself on newspaper…most of the time.  The porch reeked, despite frequent blasts from the pressure washer and digging out all of the dirt in the flower beds and replacing it year after year.

 

When Howie