The cuatro gatos are still battling each other for domination of our household, four months to the day after their “introduction”, and we have just about had it. Just when you least expect it (like when you’re in the shower) one jumps another and you have to race to wherever the confrontation may be (probably diagonally across the house and either up or down a flight of stairs), squirt bottle in hand, to break up the fracas. Both of us have struggled with what to do about the fact that they just seem not to be adjusting to one another, and it has become for us a terrible moral dilemma. Tabitha, my mother’s hugely overweight tabby female, and jet-black and big-eyed Luigi, the male, arrived on the scene just wanting lots of love and attention from us, but the minute they spotted their two rivals in the living room, war was declared.

I had promised my mother years ago, when she was still “compos mentis”, that we would take her two in if she and my dad could no longer care for them. In retrospect, my promise to her to keep them with us “forever” may have been not such a bright commitment to have made. And now, to be honest, if I wanted to weasel out of it and give them up for adoption, I surely could, because she is completely gone mentally at this point. Still, a promise is a promise, aside from which the shelters here are overflowing with stray kittens and cats, dozens of them, needing homes (that’s how we got Missoni, after all). But neither Arnold nor I could do that now to both my parents’ poor kitties. They have been traumatized; starting with being brought down here from the States and adjusting to that, then going through the death of my father last year (he adored both of them and they were really disoriented when he died) and then they suffered, not  comprehending, as my mother stopped petting them and talking to them (they used to sleep on my parents’ bed in the old days). They don’t understand why or how she became bedridden, blind and suffering from dementia, eventually not relating to them at all.

I think cats do understand death and dying, and sadly, they both reacted to the loss of their master and mistress by becoming hugely depressed and hiding in a closet in my mother’s house, pretty much all day and all night long.  Well, I’d promised to take them in. So, seeing these two poor cats confused and disoriented, if we have to run a kitty psychiatric ward once they come here to live, I thought to myself, so be it. Guess we’re stuck; and Arnold agreed. In the old days, back in Santa Fe, roaming around my parents’ house and enjoying their affection, they were the world’s sweetest pair of kitties, but they have been upset now to a point where – good news – they get it that we are their new masters, but – bad news – they want us ALL to themselves. Desperately, both of these poor cats want security and lots and lots of affection from us. From their point of view, there is no room for any other cats to compete for attention.

Thus, we quickly found that my daughterly devotion unleashed upon our household two panicky felines who, starting the day they arrived, began incessantly to stalk and attack our two delicate, much more sensitive cats, who are half their size and terrified of these two invaders. As a result, our original two have become nervous wrecks. This turmoil was, of course, on top of the stress we were enduring with Arnold’s coronary adventures and his stent procedure. We tried everything “natural” we could think of to calm them down, and which Dr. Jesus suggested, including various and sundry herbal and flower-based aromatherapy sprays and drops in their food, none of which have really worked, or at least not to the point where it’s made any difference that we can see. In exasperation, one morning I went out and bought collars and tags for both of them, and threw them both out onto the terrace. I had hoped that keeping the newcomers out of the house for much of the day would mean that Group 1, and we, had a break from the catfights and we could go about our lives for awhile each day in relative peace.

At first they were scared and hung out near the door meowing incessantly to be let back in – having been indoor cats their whole lives – but day by day they have timidly ventured further away from the house and thankfully, now they are totally digging being out there, chasing bugs and rolling on the grass for the first time in their lives. Our garden walls are so high they can’t escape and of course Tab is too gordita to climb anything, sadly for her. (That’s our next job, getting her on some kind of kitty diet …I keep saying she needs Dr. Catkins). If anything, her metabolism is now more messed up than mine from stress. Luigi doesn’t have front claws so fortunately he can’t really climb too much either. He was declawed when we adopted him from the shelter in Santa Fe, and luckily, now that he’s older, our garden seems to be plenty big enough for him to explore.

By now they are generally content to find chairs on the terraza and just hang out there.  Jet black Luigi also strolls around contentedly and has found a nice maguey he likes to crawl under for his afternoon naps. The only thing you can see, if you need to find him, are those two huge green eyes! After sundown, though, we still feel we have to bring them into the house. First of all, even though Ajijic is warmer in winter than many other places, the nighttime temperatures here in the winter can get down to the high thirties and frequently the low forties. And the creepy crawlies we do have – black widows, scorpions, and brown recluse spiders, are out there and much more likely to sally forth at night.  So while peace has begun to return during the daylight hours, we still are having battles in the evenings. Missoni and Rosie find high places and just stay hidden, trembling and wary. Winter is coming and the days are already getting shorter. Not good.

Well then, what to do? Mexicans are very paradoxical about drugs – some pills, like Viagra, it seems you can buy by the handful in any farmacia in the country. But anything that might be even vaguely addictive or dangerous is now controlado (controlled) and it’s every bit as hard to come by the stuff as it is in the U.S., even for animals. At my wits’ end and ready for a stay in an asylum myself, I went in to town to see Dr. Jesus, the classical-guitarist vet.  I said “I know you like all this natural stuff and don’t want to prescribe drugs for them, but honestly, we need to try to put at least the two new ones on kitty tranquilizers for a while to see if it ratchets down their “chase and dominate” instincts. It’s not fair to our two: their whole existence now is about being pursued and/or hiding in high places”. I confessed to him that I had dug around and found a few pills left over from when Arnold brought Group 2 down in the plane. Even though the medication had expired long ago, I figured, let’s see what happens – and I tried chopping the pills up into quarters and giving them this small dose. Thankfully, for we were at the end of our ropes, it seemed to quiet things down quite a bit. Dr. Jesus agreed to get us some kitty calmante drops – they have to be ordered from Guadalajara and it takes a few days to get them. We can experiment with different dosages and “medication schedules” to see what works best to settle the four of them down. I am hoping that  we won’t have to  keep them doped up for more than a couple of weeks, I suspect, till their little kitty motherboards are reset and hopefully we can all go on about our lives. Better living through chemistry.

Today, we brought  Group 2 in at sundown and gave ‘em two of the four little pill fragments I have left. Stoned kitties means that we don’t have to race up or downstairs, with squirt bottles in hand, to break up altercations when we hear screaming and hissing from some part of the house where someone has been cornered and is about to be pounced upon. I have enough until tomorrow; I’m praying that Dr. Jesus does indeed get the stuff from Guadalajara for us or we will be back at Square One. For now, at least for part of the evening after dinner, thankfully, Luigi and Tabitha just LIE there, right in the middle of everything, sort of like meatloaves. But no stalking, no switching of tails, no narrowing of the eyes followed by chasing and the inevitable attack.  We are so preoccupied over my mother right now that we just don’t need the house to be insane and tense from the cats. As I write this three of them, for the first time, are calmly in the same room. Rosie is still hiding upstairs in a closet, but I’m grateful for what I’ve gotten. The two newcomers are lazing on the dining room table, eyes kind of glazed (anyone who grew up in the ‘sixties knows that look!) but mellowed out, at least for the moment, with Missoni underneath the table perched on a chair. No one is hissing, no one is growling. I decided to make a run for it, put down my weapon (the squirt bottle), and came upstairs to write this. Maybe, just maybe, peace will reign in the land.