May 22, 2025 By Nick Jacobs 4 min read

My proper British grandmother, Dora, loved cats (as long as they lived outdoors). There was never a time when we did not have at least two or three feral cats on our back porch. They always sat on the porch steps and played with me as a kid. Kitties were my friends.

Twenty years later, we bought a house in the country from a young couple with an outdoor cat. They were moving to a city and could not take the cat with them and said, “She just wouldn’t know how to live in a confined apartment. Would you let her stay and live at the house?” We acquiesced instantly, and Miss Kitty, queen of all queens, became our outdoor cat.

As she grew older and slower, when I was pulling into our garage one evening, she darted past me and had a run-in with the right front tire of my Honda Accord. It seemed like a slight collision, but the next morning, we discovered her on our deck in an unalive state. (That’s a euphemism for dead. Gen Xers use it on TikTok and YouTube to bypass the algorithms.)

When our young daughter found her, she was devastated. She cried uncontrollably. That broke my daddy-heart. She immediately asked for a replacement cat. Unfortunately, it was a cold and snowy February, and kittens were hard to come by because cats are not in the mood to make kittens then.

I looked for kittens, cat breeders, pet stores, and the like in a book used in the 20th century for business listings called the Yellow Pages. But after several calls, I found no kittens. The local shelter didn’t have any. Finally, a pet store 75 minutes from home said they had a few kittens left.

After work that evening, I drove to the mall, picked out a tiny grey kitten, and started home. The only way I could keep him from crawling under my feet and onto the gas pedal was to shove him into my shirt. It was a kangaroo-type bonding experience for that cat and me.

When she saw him, our daughter was thrilled. She named him Oliver, and that should be the end of the story.

Here’s part 2.

When our son moved to Washington, D.C., a kitten stood outside our garage door and meowed so loudly that it could have been an African tiger cub. He adopted this kitten, named it Kato, of Pink Panther and O.J. Simpson fame, and took it with him to his new apartment in Bethesda, Md. There, it specialized in wreaking havoc and hiding his possessions under cabinets.

Then, when our daughter graduated from college, she adopted a jet-black kitten that she named Coal (or Cole if you’re a jazz fan). And here’s where things took a major turn. During the next several months, both kids moved, and neither could have pets in their new apartments. So, Oliver, Kato and Cole became housemates in our home.

Here’s part 3.

As you age and your testosterone diminishes, you can develop new allergies, and my new allergies were to shellfish and cats. First, my eyes began to water and swell shut. Then, I began having trouble breathing. I tried allergy shots and inhalers, but things didn’t get any better.

When I suggested that we might give them to a farmer, I got the stink-eye from both adult kids. Consequently, I lived a miserable, allergy-filled existence for five years. When we moved to another house, the three cats were bothering our daughter’s newborn son.

She took them to a farm.

Later, she brought a rescue kitten that she found in a field. Today, that cat who loves me dearly is curled up at my feet purring like a diesel engine while I pour a bottle of Alaway into my eyes while typing this. That kitty just doesn’t understand.

Nick Jacobs lives in Windber.