The Lorenz-Pulte Cat Page!

Cat Calloway

    This is Cat Calloway! He is named after our favorite jazz artist, Cab Calloway. We first met Cat C when he was about a year old and between homes. He had grown up under the name of Rodeo, and was called Ro-Ro for short. He had been an indoor cat, but ran outside one day, and his human refused to let him back in. Then she moved away and left him behind. We learned about him from our friend Linda who lived next door to him. Following his abandonment, Linda had put him in a box and had taken him to the pound, where they turned him away because they had no room for cats that day. So we built him a cat mansion and he came to live with us.
    We brought him home in the same cardboard box that Linda had used to take him to the pound, and to this day, it is impossible to get him back into a container. We tried taking him to the vet in a cat carrier one time, and he literally tore it to pieces. We didn't know it was possible for a cat to do this, but he ripped the door off it and escaped into the car. Our car has no air conditioning, so it was a long, hot trip to the vet that day with the windows all rolled up. Now we take him to the vet with a leash on, and he does much better.
    His first day with us, he explored everywhere, chased lots of lizards and bugs, and acted playful and happy, except that he cried constantly. This lasted for a couple of days, and then he settled in. He had a few months of rough treatment from the other cats in the neighborhood, who welcomed him by pooping in his cat mansion, but after Typhoon Dale, all feline opposition to Cat C simply vanished, and now he is undisputed in his territory. He no longer responds in any way to his old name, Ro-Ro. We don't think he liked being Ro-Ro.
    In fact, his personality has changed considerably since his arrival here a couple of years ago. He is no longer a timid, skulking, skinny cat. Now he is a fat, confident, dignified cat who walks right up to his feline and canine opponents with an upright stance and ears forward. He shows his affection for other cats by chewing on their heads.
    We feed Cat C reasonable meals of mostly dry food, but he supplements his diet with so many lizards, cockroaches and moths, as well as the neighbors' catfood, that he has grown somewhat stout.
    He is a loving and loyal cat who follows us whenever we walk anywhere in the neighborhood. But he doesn't like it at all when we walk out of his territory. (It's okay when we drive out.) He follows us and cries, saying, "Nooo, nooo."
    Cat C has an interesting way of playing with his other cat friends. If they are having a game of tiger in the grass, carefully stalking each other, Cat C gallops in with no subtlety whatsoever, leaps up, and lands on the other cat with all four feet. This tends to flatten the other cat.
    Cat Calloway always comes to greet us at the end of the driveway when we drive home. He then jumps out in front of the car and escorts us home. We have to drive very slowly, and all we can see is his bushy tail leading us like a flag. If we stop the car, Cat C stops and waits for us, but he won't move out of the way.

Frisco Flo

    This is Frisco Flo, named after one of Cab Calloway's songs. We adopted Frisco as a kitten from GAIN (Guam Animals in Need). She had survived an encounter with a car that had left her temporarily paralyzed.
    Frisco, as you can see, was a tortoiseshell cat. This made it unbelievably difficult to photograph her. She blended in with every background, and this picture was just the best of a bad lot.
    She had a merry personality and was always smiling. She also was a cat who made plans. She knew what time we would be coming out of the house, and would lean against the door. When the door was opened, she would fall in, and then make a dash for it, scrabbling on the linoleum like a cartoon cat.
    She loved to be picked up. She liked to climb up onto a person's shoulders, and then start slowly crawling down the person's back. The person would bend forward to avoid being clawed, and then Frisco would lie down and make herself comfortable.
    At first she was terrified of Cat C, but eventually they became close friends and he started chewing lovingly on her head.
    She died earlier this year, at the age of almost one year, when she was killed by a dog. She is greatly missed.
    The dog no longer lives in this neighborhood.

Willie "the Lion" Smith

    This is Willie "the Lion" Smith, named after another one of our favorite jazz artists. We have discovered that photographing a black-and-white cat outdoors is not much easier than photographing a tortoiseshell.
    Willie, originally named just Billy, was abandoned along with two other cats (Simba and Nala) at our neighbor's house. A friend of the neighbor's had asked her if she would take the three cats because she was leaving Guam and didn't want to take the cats with her. Our neighbor said she'd think about it. The next thing she knew, the cats had been dumped in her yard. Simba and Nala eventually worked things out with Figaro, the resident cat, but Willie and Figaro were and remain arch foes. Willie decided he wanted to live with us.
    It took awhile for him to make friends with Cat Calloway and Frisco, but eventually he learned to tolerate them.
    When we first met Willie, he was missing much of his hair and we feared he had mange. We were afraid to touch him. We had not yet accepted him into our family, because for one thing, we thought of him as our neighbor's cat, even though he spent most of his time at our place. After Supertyphoon Paka hit and we were without power, we slept outdoors in the bed of the pickup truck the first few nights because it was so hot inside the house. A couple of times poor Willie jumped into the truck with us. We screamed, and he went airborne. In spite of this reception, he remained friendly, and finally the neighbor said that we could adopt Willie if we wanted to.
    We took him to the vet, and it turned out that he didn't have mange, but merely an allergy to fleas.
    Willie is a bit of an odd fellow. When offered meat or other exciting foods, he snorts, stands on his hind legs and says, "Guff....guff, guff, guff." Then, if there are other cats around while he is eating the treat, he talks with his mouth full and drags his meat around with his paws. When picked up, he neither relaxes nor struggles to get away. He simply gets stiff. He rarely purrs, and when he does so, his purr is barely discernible. He seems to be happiest when given an opportunity to suck a blanket. This happens only during typhoons or other natural disasters when he is allowed indoors.
    He gets along with our other cats, but really doesn't play with them much, or get affectionate with them. He never lets Cat C chew on his head. He is willing to let Cat C's tail rest on his tail, but that's about it.
    We found out that Willie likes to show off in front of visiting humans. Our neighbor's female rottweiler, a friendly old gal named Brown Dog, was hanging around at our place one day when some friends dropped by for a visit. Willie had been ignoring Brown Dog all morning, and was at the opposite side of the yard from her when our guests arrived. When Willie realized he had an audience, he tore across the yard and attacked poor Brown Dog, who ran off crying. This display achieved the desired effect. The visitors were awed by his prowess.
    Willie doesn't show it often, but he has a sense of humor. Sometimes he likes to ambush Malachi. He'll crouch down in the grass next to the driveway, and when Malachi walks by, Willie jumps out and grabs his ankles. Malachi hollers, "Hey!" and Willie grins and bounces away. Then Malachi laughs and says, "Do that again!" And Willie does, several times.
    Willie also likes to lie down in the exact center of our driveway when one of us is driving in, and have the car go over him. This is nerve-wracking for us, but it seems to be some sort of a game for Willie.
    We don't know why, but he reminds us of Jean-Luc Picard. It isn't his looks, or his original baldness. Maybe it's his voice. So sometimes we call him Jean-Luc Pi-Cat.

Sweet Jenny Lee

    This cat is Sweet Jenny Lee. She was a calico cat whose face was half black and half orange. She was named after another of Cab Calloway's songs. Jenny Lee was a kitten with big feet.
    She was sweet-natured and friendly, but also tough and independent. She got the usual unfriendly reception that new cats always get when she first arrived. She spent the first couple of days cloistered in the cat mansion. The first person she made friends with, other than us, was Brown Dog, the old rottweiler. Sweet Jenny Lee would lie in the hole of a cinderblock with her head sticking out of one end, and her tail sticking out of the other end. Brown Dog would lick both ends. She eventually became one of the gang with the other two cats, although we never observed Cat C bestowing on her his ultimate sign of love; he never chewed her head.
    When Jenny Lee would see us, she would let out a protracted meow, stand on her hind legs, and twirl. She loved to be picked up and she purred very well.

Unfortunately, Sweet Jenny Lee died September 5, 1998, run over by a car a long way from the house.

Nefer

    This lively kitten is Nefer, whose name is Egyptian for "beautiful." She is a siamese calico. Never heard of that? Neither has anyone else that we know. Her mother (see below) is a black and white cat belonging to Wayne Lumpkin, our piano teacher, and her father is a siamese cat, now deceased. She has pale blue eyes, dark brown ears with white tips, and a dark brown ringed tail. As you can see, she has a symmetrical brown mask over her eyes. Her body is basically white with black and graded sepia spots. These features show up better in the picture below.
    She is bold and brave and independent. She is an avid explorer, and she loves other cats. She loves them so much that she drives them crazy, but she doesn't care. She has even won over the heart of Willie "the Lion," who generally tolerates other cats grudgingly at best. He swats her a lot (all of the cats do), but we've also seen him licking her and cuddling with her -- behaviors never before seen in Willie. She adores Cat Calloway but rubs herself against him so much that he gets annoyed and hisses at her. She also chases him down and tackles him by throwing her arms around his neck whenever she sees him coming. Cat Calloway finally got used to her, and now he loves her in return. He chases her down and jumps on her, and has bestowed on her his ultimate sign of affection - he chews on her head.
    When we feed the cats, Nefer always grabs food out from under another cat. Even if we put out a special pile just for her and put her in front of it, she'll leave that to go for what another cat is eating. She'll even grab meat out of Willie's mouth! No other cat would dare to do that. And amazingly, he lets her do it, although he does grumble and snort and hiss with his mouth full, which sounds really funny.
    When we first got Nefer, she was shy and nervous, and wouldn't let us touch her. Then one day, she walked up and rubbed herself against our legs and has been amiable and friendly ever since! She usually doesn't like to be held very long, but sometimes she decides to just relax and cuddle in.
    Once we came home late one evening and found all the cats looking at something in the yard. It was a brown tree snake. All the cats were fascinated, but Nefer was the bravest one. She kept grabbing a piece of the middle of the snake and trying to walk off with it. The snake was too big for her to carry, but she'd try. Then the snake would strike at her, and she would leap straight up into the air. It didn't scare her off, though. She kept right at it until our neighbor killed the snake. (If killing the snake sounds inappropriate to you, remember that this is a pest species on Guam that people are trying to eradicate because it is killing off a great many indigenous species - including almost all of Guam's birds.)

Blackie

    Blackie and her half-sister, Tiger, were given to us when our friends, their former family, left Guam. Blackie and Tiger ran off and disappeared the same day they arrived. A month went by, and we gave up hope that we would ever see them again. Then one night, we heard a cat yowling in the jungle behind our house and when we investigated, we found Blackie up in a tree. We couldn't get her to come down, and when we tried to climb up to her, she jumped to another tree. But she definitely responded to us when we called her by name. It took about a week before Blackie would come near us, and another week or so before she would come out of the jungle. We gradually moved her food closer and closer to our house where the other cats eat, and now, as you can see, she is almost one of the crowd! She'll occasionally even rub up against Nefer or Cat Calloway, but she doesn't get along with Willie very well. Not many cats get along with Willie.
    Sometimes we call her Whacky Blackie because she makes the funniest noises. She sounds mournful, but we're beginning to think that's just the way she sounds all the time. We also call her the Sweet Mumtaz, after a jazz instrumental by Luis Russell. She's a very sweet-natured cat who loves to roll on the ground when she is petted.
    As for Tiger, we see her in the neighborhood on rare occasions, and our neighbors say that she has moved in with a family up the street.

Uncle Dave

Uncle Dave is an old tomcat who belongs to no one and everyone. He is all white, with one yellow eye and one blue eye. Judging from the number of white cats in the neighborhood, Dave has been very active over the years. He is sweet cat who gets along well with humans as well as most cats. He makes the funniest noises we have ever heard come out of a cat. If we pet him, he starts doing a funny dance where he crouches down, kicks his back legs against the grass, and says, "Yow-de-dow-de-dow." We're not sure what this all means.
    Like all old toms, he is covered with scars, has massive jowls and he urinates on everything. He has urinated on our neighbor's leg twice, and once he washed the windshield of her car. But she loves him anyway, and her house is the closest thing he has to a home base.
    He used to belong to a family in our neighborhood, and they took him with them when they moved. But Dave ran away and came back to his old haunts. Every time they fetched Dave, he'd come back here, so finally they gave up and let him stay here. There is no shortage of food for him in our neighborhood!
    We figure that Dave must be well on in years; he's starting to get skinny, and the skin on his belly is saggy and loose.

Buttons

This is our friend Wayne Lumpkin with his cat Buttons. Buttons is Nefer's mother. She is a long, lean yellow-eyed black and white cat with a laid-back personality. According to Wayne, she wasn't always such a calm cat. Wayne caught her as a wild, feral boonie cat when she was a small kitten, and she chewed Wayne pretty thoroughly. Now she likes to sit next to Wayne on the piano bench and listen to him play the piano. She also likes to climb the wicker bookshelf and let her tail hang down tantalizingly, so that her son Socks will climb up and attack the tail. Then she and Socks chase each other up and down the wicker shelf.

All of our cats have been spayed/neutered. None are declawed or ever will be!

Here are some great cat books and things that we have enjoyed:

One of our favorite cat books is Asleep in the Sun, by photographer Hans Sylvester. It's stunningly beautiful, and we never get tired of looking at it!	Here is The Mediterranean Cat, another book of spectacular cat photography by Hans Sylvester.	Cats in the Sun, by photographer Hans Sylvester, is another must-have for the cat lover.	Hans Sylvester manages to pull off a collection of kitten photographs without making them disgustingly cute, in Kittens in the Sun.
If you love cats AND jigsaw puzzles, this 1000-piece World of Cats puzzle is great! All the cat breeds represented are labeled.	Six-Dinner Sid is one of my son's favorite books, about a cat who enjoyed the benefits of belonging to several different families.	Cats in the Sun Address Book is the most gorgeous address book ever, with photographs by Hans Sylvester.	You can entertain your cat, your children, and yourself with this Have Fun With Your Cat kit.

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