What is jet black, long, skinny, and has extra sharp needle claws? If you said a cat, you are half right. If you said a little black cat who runs a sanctuary, you win. Her name is Tituba, and as of 2018 is fourteen years old. She is a full blood Black Bombay cat who came to the humans of Crazy Cat Sanctuary even before the thought of a rescue or sanctuary made its presence known. Her daddy was a friend of Mark’s back in San Antonio, TX. Everything was fine until one day, when Tituba was approximately eighteen months old, the man’s wife tried to kill this precious cat by putting her in a bedroom with a bunch of open bottles and containers of cleaning chemicals in the hope they would gas Ms. Tituba to death. She thought Mark’s buddy liked his cat more than her, which in the end became true. Mark and his buddy worked together at the same local trucking company, and they became very good friends. When Mark first met Tituba, he figured out right away this little ball of fur had real Cattitude as she tried to run the friend’s house for him. Tituba would wake up daddy by knocking things off the window sill on to the bedroom and onto his head. If he did not feed her quick enough, she would dump things off the top of the fridge, and on and on and… You get the point, she has real Cattitude, but that’s the Bombay breed.
Well, when the woman tried to kill Tituba her daddy was at work, and she had set this up before she went to work that afternoon. When her daddy got home she was not waiting at the door like she normally would be, so he started looking around for her. That is when he found her in the bedroom behind a closed door. She was laying down in an unnatural position, and he thought she was dead. Thankfully, when he picked her up she moved a bit, and he rushed her outside into the fresh air. When he confronted the woman, she said she was not paying a pet deposit at an apartment they were moving into, so she was taking care of the “problem.” With that, Mark’s friend called, and the humans decided right then, and there Tituba needed a new home. So she came to live with her humans of today. That was in 2004. When she moved in, she met her future best friend by the name of Madeline or Maddy for short.
It only took a couple of days for these two to form a long tasting friendship, but like any Best Friends, they had their spats and would have a small fight or angry chase throughout the townhouse. But at the end of the day, lying in sunbeam together always won out.
In August 2009, though, things changed. The humans were talking about moving and a new kid was introduced. The new kid was a full-blood, long-haired Maine Coon who took the name of Boots. When daddy came off the road for a few days at the beginning of August, the cat was out front and wormed his way into the family with Daddy Mark’s blessing, and we became three cats and a Boston Terrier named Bogey. By the middle of August, everything was in turmoil as the humans were packing all their stuff and our stuff as they prepared to move across the county to a place called Mt. Sherman, KY, where we were to have a new place to call home. We are now on an acre of land with three hundred acres of woods behind us, and we loved to explore there when I was younger. I am now fourteen and lost my best friend Maddy in 2017 along with Bogey. In 2001, we lost Mr. Boots, our well-loved Main Coon due to urinary tract issues, and Ms. Maddy and I missed him so much. He was so laid back, and I like curling up with him in the sunbeam at the front door.
But here I am, slower due to my age and arthritis, but I am still the Supreme Commander of this cat sanctuary and Mr. Jules Verne and Ms. Donna Noble still answer to me. Oh, Ms. Madeline? She was the original Queen of the pride, but I trained Ms. Donna well to serve alongside Mr. Verne, our King of the Pride. They run it very well, and yes they do listen to what I say. However, whether they do it all is another story. Despite that, I love them and my humans.
“Mom scratch my back please and give me a Little Bit of love. O yeah, right there is soooo good.”
Tituba went over the rainbow bridge after this was written. She is very missed.