Our Cats: Ouija

When I was a kid living at home, Dad would never let us have a cat. He was a gamekeeper on a private game plantation, the Horseshoe Plantation outside Tallahassee, where one of the popular hunted species was quail. Quail are ground nesting birds and cats do hunt them. I loved to play with our "neighbors'," the Bradley's kittens. They had outdoor cats who always had kittens I would lure out and play with and pet.

We did get to keep a stray kitten named Blackie when we lived in Williston, Florida when I was in 5th and 6th grade. He was a great cat! Very friendly and when we got our Toy Rat Terrier, he let her pull him around by the ears and never scratched or bit her. He DID box her ears sometimes with claws retracted, though. She had it coming. Unfortunately he was hit by a car before he was two years old. He was a great cat, though. Danny and I both cried over his loss. I think even Dad missed him.

Of course, when I was in college and the opportunity to get a kitten came up, I did get a black kitten from the landlord of my garage apartment in Nacogdoches. I got her when their cat, Angel (a Tortie,) had kittens. Ouija was born in 1971. Ouija had short shoulder and head hair with longer body and tail hair, so would be classified as an Domestic Shorthair. She was beautiful! She was all black, no white hair on her at all even though folklore says only males are completely black.

Ouija could be very obnoxious about some things. If she didn't want to use her litter box, she would just go wherever she pleased. She was not, however, much of a furniture or woodwork scratcher and she was very affectionate. And being a black cat, she loved to lie on light-colored clothes or furniture.

When I moved to a mobile home on the NW side of town with Sue, my roommate and co-worker at Safeway, Ouija loved it. It was well-insulated and much cozier than the garage apartment. But I had a scare with her there. She came down with something really bad. Poor little Ouija had terrible diarrhea and almost died. It was a wonder she lived but she was a tough kitty.

After my roommate, Sue, and I moved to the mobile home, which had mice, she wiped out a nest of baby mice and put them all in my shoe! The vet said she was sharing her catch with me. Umm, thanks, but no thanks! No Mouse Surpise on my menu.

When I moved to Dallas, well actually to Arlington, Ouija would wait in the window of my efficiency apartment every afternoon for me to come home. If I stopped downstairs to talk to anyone, she would meow to get my attention. She liked to sit out on the balcony, too, and never tried to get down. I sometimes took her out on the grass in front of the office and she was very good about staying right there. She loved to sit on my lap & I loved to have her there.

When Phyllis, my best friend and roommate at that time, divorced her first husband, she & I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment in the complex. Then Ouija had Cuddles, Phiddy's cat, and her dog Ming to play with. She didn't go out any more as we lived downstairs and right on the parking lot but she seemed to be content with the move.

Later, when Phiddy & I moved to some apartments just off Montfort in North Dallas, the three of them continued to live well together. About a year or so later, Phiddy married her current husband and she, along with Cuddles and Ming moved out. Ouija and I moved in with another friend, Sandy, who also had a cat, whose name was Muffin. About six months later Sandy decided to marry her boyfriend, (does anyone see a pattern here?) so Ouija and I moved to some apartments on Meadow Road by the railroad track, in Dallas. The upside was that there was a second floor balcony again, that Ouija could sit out on.

At Meadow Road, Ouija was an only cat again for a while, till Tache, the miniature Poodle, moved in from Mom & Dad's house in Tyler. Ouija never minded Tache, because he sat beside me and she got my lap. She always liked to be ON me. Even when driving with her in the car, she would get behind my neck to ride or lie in my lap. She was very affectionate...to me. Everyone else could kiss off as far as she was concerned. That cat could still hunt, though. I would let her out on the balcony when I was home. One day, to my surprise, she caught a bird! I'm sure it had to be either very old or very dumb to have let her get that close to it.

My brother, Danny, decided to quit college at the University of Texas and move to Dallas. We got an apartment together to save money, on Whitman just off North LBJ Freeway, and just off Audelia Road where it comes out to LBJ Freeway. Ouija & Tache got all the petting and Ouija even warmed up to Danny a little, but she was very much still a Mama's Cat.

When Danny and his Fiancee, Becky, married in 1981, he moved out of course, and I moved in with my boyfriend, Lou, to an apartment in what they used to call "Folsomville," the part of the City of Dallas that sticks up like a panhandle between Richardson and Farmers Branch.

Ouija continued to be mama's cat, and strangely obedient. Once she was out on the fenceless patio when a rabbit ran by about 3 feet out from the patio. She got a run across the patio when I SCREAMED "NO!" at her. Amazingly, she STOPPED! To this very day, I still can't believe she actually let that rabbit go and stopped.

Lou left his job at Precision Motors in the Spring of 1982 and was unemployed for months. He even interviewed for a job in Colorado. That was the same time the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike and Reagan fired the ones who wouldn't come back to work. Lou had been an air traffic controller in the Air Force, when stationed in Japan, and applied for one of the open positions. After an interminable time, while he had to go back to traffic school, we finally found out we would be stationed in Austin at Robert Mueller (pronounced "Miller") International.

In Austin, first we lived in a two story duplex on Cinnamon Path in the corner area between South Lamar and Oltorf St. This was the only time Ouija ever disappeared and stayed gone for a while. She usually stayed right by the duplex, but one day, she didn't come in. I walked and called her, called her, called her. (I have always taught my cats to come to their names and not to "kitty, kitty" because no one else can call them and catch them.) I cried every night. Lou was not overly fond of Ouija because she wouldn't warm up to him, so was not concerned that she was gone, except that I was so upset about it. After she had been missing two weeks and I had all but given up hope, I came home from work and THERE SHE WAS! Lou said she just showed up at the door wanting in. She had lost weight and we figured she must have gotten shut in someone's garage for the two weeks as it was the holidays and a lot of people were away from home. I was so glad to have her back! I could tell she was glad to BE back, too.

While living on Cinnamon Path, we acquired our second cat, Tigger. Early one morning, I was out walking Tache and heard a kitten crying pitifully (and very loudly.) I found a little silver tabby kitten up in the fork of a dead tree. I took her down and carried her back home with me, intending to find out if she belonged to anyone. I put her in the garage and went to the store to get something for breakfast and a Sunday paper. By the time I got back, Lou had her out of the garage and was holding her and calling her Tigger. Yep, she was there for good!

In1986 we bought a mobile home in Pflugerville on what was then East Dessau Road and is now the easternmost part of Howard Lane. Up till now, Ouija had pretty much ignored Lou as if he didn't exist. One day, Ouija had gotten under the house and was filthy. I gave her a bath. She was unhappy, to say the least! While I was toweling her dry, she got away from me and ran to Lou in the living room and, still sopping wet, sat on his knee. He was so happy about it that he wouldn't even let me pick her up and dry her off some more.

While on Dessau Road, we acquired Spot, who had kittens Willie, Missy and Peepers. We also were adopted by Bubba/Fuzzy Butt while we lived there. Ouija, while not exactly happy to have them, tolerated them in her twilight years. We lost my Poodle, Tache there to his old age of 16. He was buried in the pet cemetery in Pflugerville which has now been ruined by construction. We also got a little brown puppy named Tsin'tia the last few months we were there. (For more on Tsin'tia, see A Dog Called Little Stay Awhile, in paperback from FriesenPress.)

In 1988, we bought a house on Saratoga Drive, off Cuernavaca in the Westlake area West of Austin. We had with us at that time puppy Tsin'tia and cats Ouija Tigger, Fuzzy Butt, Spot, Missy and Willie. In 1990, the first day of the annual KLRU Auction, Ouija left us for the Rainbow Bridge at age 19. I was broken-hearted, even through I knew most cats never have such a long life. I hope she was happy with us. I still miss her.

Judy Ward

Edited 10/27/24