The Diabetic Cat

We had three sets of neighbors during our short two years in the Orient.  Neighbors can be very, very fun.  Either they ACTUALLY are fun, or they are highly entertaining to watch, much like animals in a zoo or a diorama in a natural history museum.  I have had some very entertaining neighbors through the years.  Some I have grown to love like family while others? Let's just say it was a good thing entertainment value entered the equation.

All that being said, I genuinely liked our first set of neighbors.  They were a vibrant couple with multiple children, a dog, and a diabetic cat.  While I was amazed at the chaotic menagerie that lived next door, I was most taken by their poor, decrepit, diabetic cat.

Oh, this cat was a daily fixture in my life.  She was white & fluffy, with fur that told of her ill health.  I have a feeling that she was once a medium, robust cat when she was in her prime.  But by the time I met her, she had dwindled down to fur and bones.

One day, I had made the major mistake of petting her.  If I had known what that would bring in the following 12 months, I wouldn't have done it.  It was almost as if, in her own addled mind, I became one of her "parents."

Every day, after that first "introduction," she would hang out in our front yard and in our carport.  At first I thought she was honestly exploring.  But then I saw that every single day, she would be waiting for me by our front door.  To say that our Nutmeg was jumping around the front window like a monkey in a cage is putting it lightly.  If our Nutmeg could talk, she would have been saying, "Just let me at her!!  I could take her down!  Just let me do it!"

Because of Nutmeg's strong desire to kill this interloper, I had a serious battle every time I wanted to enter my own house.  My Angel would be wanting to make a break for it, my arms would be laden by groceries, the poor delusional cat would be trying to get in, while my Nutmeg would be fighting to get out to kill her.  This daily battle got really old, really fast.

Things got worse when our neighbor's spouse got into a doctoral program in the States.  Since he was ERDing (early return of dependents) his wife and children back to the States, he had to move to a smaller home located in our little portion of the street.  With that came absolute confusion to this already perplexed cat.

Now, since no one at all answered her old door, and she couldn't find her new one, she was convinced that our door was her only option.  Some of you are probably asking why we didn't just take her in.  Honestly, I wasn't up for paying out the nose for her medication and giving her shots twice a day on top of that.  Nutmeg we loved and this poor thing had a family...she just couldn't remember where she put them.

I have no idea how many time I picked up her frail little frame and carefully took her back to her home.  While she may have been a bit baffling at the time, she is a firm fixture in our memories swirling around the Orient.  I will never forget the concern I felt when I noticed, one day months after first meeting her, that she wasn't at our door.  Keeping my eyes open for her, I never saw her again.  One day, walking through the front door after a long day at work, my engineer told me that her "dad" had gone ahead and put her to sleep. A sense of peace was there as I said, "while she won't be meeting me at the door anymore, she is much better now."