The Cat Whose Original Name Must Not Be Mentioned

It’s all my fault. The woman who was supposed to be getting an orange tabby from the Orland cat rescue that Arlin had orchestrated was driving down from Seattle to pick up the cat. Arlin couldn’t capture the cat, and asked me what she should do.

“Isn’t there another female orange tabby on the property?” I said. “Why don’t you just grab her? I mean, the new owner has never actually met the cat.”

So Arlin grabbed Perdita, then known as D—–, took her home, and gave her to the new owner, who we’ll call Melinda.

Melinda drove home to Seattle and introduced Perdita to the dog and birds in her household. Perdita went bats. A week later, Melinda realized that Perdita was not the right cat for them. She posted on Facebook that she’d be taking Perdita to a shelter.

I saw the post, and, feeling responsible for the terrible mis-match, said I’d take Perdita. (At this point, we were in the middle of The Long Tale of Mr. Tippy—Tippy was missing, Tinkerbell was living in my office before being introduced to Zoe and Max, and our elderly deaf white cat, Sheba, had just died of kidney disease.)

Tom and I drove down to get Perdita. She was in a spare room, perched atop a sofa, and clearly frightened of the household’s large birds. When I picked her up, she chomped right through my hand. Melinda’s mother offered me an herbal remedy, but we drove to Urgent Care and got antibiotics instead. Then we returned to Melinda’s with a cat cage and rigged it as a trap. They baited it with food and, when the cat went inside, closed the door. We drove over, picked up Perdita, and brought her home. We put the large cat cage in our upstairs hallway. When I reached inside to install a litter box, Perdita shot out, knocking me flat, and vanished.

Now we had two cats missing somewhere in our house, Perdita on the top floor and the other, Mr. Tippy, possibly in the basement.

Perdita was invisible during the day, although, unlike Mr. Tippy, she was clearly eating food and using her litter box. At night she would emerge every few hours and yowl at the top of her lungs. We installed a security camera in the hallway so we could watch her. These performances inspired us to name her Perdita, after the opera-singing young witch, Perdita X, in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. (Terry had died a few days earlier, so we thought this was a lovely homage.)

BTW, Perdita’s original name had been “Droopy.” WTF?

We wondered if Perdita were going to live in the upstairs closets and hallway for the rest of her life. But when Mr. Tippy finally (after three-and-a-half weeks) was found, and put in my office with Tinkerbell, Perdita raced downstairs to greet him. He was thrilled. She was thrilled. Apparently, they had been very close in Orland. She would spend the next several years following him everywhere. I don’t know what would have become of Perdita if we hadn’t found Tippy.

August 27, 2015—I think this was Perdita’s first trip to the vet. As you can see, she was not a happy camper.

Sept. 8, 2016—We have to give Perdita, our fantastically squirrelly orange kitty, oral liquid meds for 5 days. The first day, yesterday, we managed to mix it with her food and some tuna oil and she ate it. Today, she refused to have anything to do with the “contaminated” food.

She already won’t get near us at breakfast because she associated that with being captured and taken to the vet on Tuesday. So we captured her at dinnertime, which she mistakenly assumed was safe. Tom held her, and I squirted the liquid from the syringe between her madly gnashing jaws. She swallowed most of it, but managed to run upstairs and shake her head so that little droplets of the white medicine sprayed all over the wall.

Three more syringes to go. Tomorrow should be a real hoot.

Nov. 25, 2016:

Jan. 12, 2017— Enjoying the winter sun. Perdita can be very squirrelly. I was amazed this didn’t require a telephoto lens

July 8, 2018—Perdita refuses to come out and help in the garden. She insists it’s lunchtime.

Jan. 29, 2019:

March 15, 2019:

May 27, 2021—Once a year we take Perdita to the vet. This coincides with spring cleaning, which is perfect because catching her involves us moving half the furniture in the house in order to capture her—and then mopping the floor after she pees on it. We can usually collect a fecal sample, as well.

The only reason we were able to catch her today was that Mr. Tippy decided to hide along with her, and thus he blocked her escape route from under the quilt storage cabinet. This allowed me to drag her out from under, using a large towel and wrapping her as she emerged.

The bizarre thing about the annual “Perditarod” race through the house is that the vet always tells me the cat was relaxed and pleasant during the exam! And when we get Perdita home she just walks over to her food dish and waits for a treat.

July 20, 2021—Perdita. The Marlene Dietrich of cats.

February 22, 2022—Perdita remains aloof and decorative. She is leading the current feline food strike, rejecting Fancy Feast in favor of Extremely-Fancy-and-Hard-to-Open Feast.

June 21, 2022—Today we ran the 5th annual Perditarod. Tom and I posted a record time from our initial approach to the cat, armed with beach towels, to the finish, where she squirmed out of Tom’s towel only to discover that her exit led into the cat carrier I was holding. We attribute our success to closing off the doors to our offices and basement, which meant the course was limited to the dining room, living room, kitchen and the open-space upstairs master suite. We only did the stairs once! Perdita did, however, create a water hazard under our bed, which I mopped up when we got home from the vet.

The cat got a clean bill of health and a rabies shot. We’re all recovering.

August 28, 2022—A rare photo of the elusive Perdita. She is actually purring loudly.

June 18, 2024—The annual running of the Perditarod to get this cat to the vet. For the first time, we deployed movable bookcases to block her access to various routes upstairs. Perdita quickly established a defensive stronghold under Tom’s dresser. It’s an antique, and the drawers are removable. I wish I had a picture of the expression her face when we lifted out that bottom drawer and she was exposed to the enemy. We then literally threw in the towels (two huge beach towels), tucked them around and under her, and lifted the betoweled cat into the carrier. I thought we had earned points because, for the first time, she didn’t pee and crap all over the house, but when we got to the vet, she crapped all over the staff. Anyway, she’s home, she’s healthy, we’ve put all the furniture back, and we all have a year to recover.

Oct. 2, 2024—Packing up the patio for fall. Perdita is protecting her cushion (we’ll leave it there for her all winter—it’s under a canopy).

Oct. 15, 2024—A rare appearance in front of the house:

Dec. 8, 2024 — We were at a conference in Sea-Tac when our petsitter called to say that something was wrong with Perdita—she was meowing constantly and having trouble walking. The cat had been perfectly fine the day before, so we were puzzled. (Also, Perdita had a habit of pretending to limp whenever we had a cat sitter—the fact that she switched the “injured” paw gave her away.)

Tom left the conference at lunchtime and drove home. He found Perdita curled up on our bed, but when she got off the bed, she fell over. He took her to the emergency vet, who determined that Perdita had had a stroke and would not recover. I took a Lyft to the emergency vet, where we spent some time in a sitting room with Perdita. After a while, we called in the vet and they euthanized her while we petted her. We were pretty much in shock. This is a picture of Perdita from previous day, which is classic Perdita with the arms crossed.

The best pictures of Perdita are on the “Formations” page—because she was happiest when curled up with one of her companion cats: Tippy, Tink, or Zoe. Tippy and Tink will miss her, but they’ll recover. We don’t think she would have been able to handle it if Tippy and Tink had died before her.