Trouble with cats

Missy, my now 10 year old female calico cat seemed not to be overly happy either with moving to the jungle or with accepting a new and not neutered male kitten, Fortuno.

I know, he looks so young and so Innocent, nobody would suspect him of any mischief... yeah, right!


He is not neutered, because his (and the casita's) owner does not want him to be. She is under the impression that it will make him a better mouser.

Vet says this is wrong, that he'll only make a nuisance of himself, marking his territory with urine and getting into fights with other cats.

Well, he already started marking his territory, which is a nuisance to me, but he is becoming an even bigger nuisance to all my other cats, because he constantly harasses them sexually, no matter whether they are females or males.

Rascal, my big male tomcat (neutered, of course) is patient with Fortuno, because he is used to being used as a gymnastic instrument by kittens, and Fortuno is too small and too short to be able to reach to Rascal's private parts. When he grabs him by a fold of his neck and tries to mount him, he ends somewhere in the middle of Rascal's back and Rascal shakes him down whenever he looses his patience.

But the females are seriously annoyed. Sweetie is more nimble and quicker than Fortuno, so she outruns him. Besides, she has claws, so she can scratch him, too.

But poor Missy, old and no claws, she is seriously bothered by Fortuno's sexual advances. First she started hiding inside the house, to avoid him, but last Wednesday, when I was away all day, and could not order Fortuno to take a time off by locking him in the guest bedroom, I discovered upon returning, that Missy was missing.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday - not a sight of Missy. I alerted all the neighbors in the barrio, even many visitors to the barrio, stopping every day at the neighborhood bar and chatting about my missing cat both in English and my best Spanish. Finally on Saturday one of the Vegas brothers (the barrio is called Los (not Las) Vegas, because it is inhabited by several Vegas brothers) said he heard a cat at the quebrada, high up on the mountain.
I wanted to go there myself to search for her, but he told me the terrain was too difficult for me and he was going to go there on Sunday and fetch the cat if it was, in fact, Missy.

But come Sunday morning and Missy waltzes in , and, as if she has never been missing, jumps up on the kitchen table and takes her favorite place in the fruit bowl woven from palm leaves. Did not even seem to be hungry.


She did that disappearing act once before: four years ago when I went to Spain and left her and Rascal temporarily with my daughter at her Atlanta condo, Misssy jumped one day from the second floor balcony and was lost for over a year. Then, miraculously, after 13 months! almost to the day, she showed up waiting at the condos garage, in the place I park my car whenever I am living abroad.

Cats... sometimes they can give you more trouble than kids, can't they?