A cat named Goose

If you're a bird, I'm a bird

In mid-May, I began noticing a new stray cat slinking across our yard. There are at least a dozen stray cats in our neighborhood, so this was nothing especially notable. Except for the fact that I had never seen this particular one before, and he was coming quite close to the house.

Most of our cat neighbors keep a healthy distance, only watching us from their perch on a fence, or scurrying away under a car when they see us walking our dog.

This cat would appear walking just a few feet away from the window in the corner of my eye while I was typing an email. I’d jump up to look out and only catch him for a second before he disappeared to wherever the cats go.

I’m not sure of exactly when he became a daily visitor, but at some point in the last two weeks, he began coming by reliably every single day, often peering through our back glass door at Duck, our indoor cat. They would sit side by side, separated by the thick glass of the door, like two best friends. One locked inside and wishing to go explore, the other with all the freedom in the world, looking for something stable and familiar.

Noting their closeness, and this stray cat’s coloring, the name “Goose” came naturally as I began feeling the need for a name for this cat that was the subject of many of our daily conversations. We soon began to offer him some of Duck’s cat food, which he devoured each time and then sat sleepily on the porch watching the robins and cardinals fly in and out of the garden.

Every day, he seemed to grow insatiably curious about what was going on inside our house. Upon closer inspection, we noticed he had a wound on his left side. It was about the size of a pencil eraser, and looked serious.

After he showed up for breakfast and dinner every day for the next three days, we noticed his wound was starting to look worse, not better. We hatched a plan to catch him and bring him to our vet. We would put his food inside of a cat carrier, and then simply shut the door while he was distracted and eating.

We called our vet on Memorial Day to leave a message about trying to bring him in the next day, and she generously returned our call that afternoon.

“What is your plan for Goose?” she asked.

We had to begin to think through this beyond just fixing the wound. Would we adopt Goose? We weren’t looking for another cat, but it seemed that the cat distribution system had different plans.

We agreed that our goal was to welcome Goose to the family in one way or another, if he would be amenable to it.

Our first attempts to catch Goose didn’t go well. Sensing us coming up behind him in the cat carrier, he would turn quicker than human eyes could register, and jump out of the crate before our hands could reach the metal door.

Our next idea was to use our larger dog crate. By putting the food in the back of that crate, he would be just inside far enough that we might be able to close the door faster than he could jump out. On Wednesday morning, he was groggy from sleep as I fed him, and Max simply shut the door.

He wasn’t happy to be captured. His paws jabbed out of the holes in the crate. You could see that he was deep in thought as he paused, inspecting the place, looking for a way to escape. But after a few minutes of meowing and pacing, he settled down and continued to eat his breakfast.

Max took him to the vet that morning, where they generously offered to surgically repair the wound, neuter him, and provide all the basic care he needed (bloodwork, vaccines, etc.) at a discounted price. They would call us later in the day with an update.

The vet called us while Goose was anesthetized and told us we could have 5 minutes to decide what to do, but the news was not good. Goose tested positive for feline immunodeficiency virus. His wound was so deep that it reached from his shoulder down to his elbow. His teeth were damaged. He would need a four-month rabies quarantine, because the vet could not determine that the wound was not an animal bite.

Did we want to pay for the surgery and care, with all of this new knowledge? We decided we had no choice. In just a few days of regularly showing up at our door, he had become part of the family. Of course we would move forward with the treatment.

After a brief recovery, we had to let Goose back outside. Keeping him would have meant four months shut alone in one room: no yard, no birds, no Duck at the glass, no basking in the summer sun in the grass.

We worried we might never see our buddy again, and after about 24 hours of him not showing up for his normal meals, we began to expect the worst. But then one morning, I peered back at the door, and saw him standing in his spot, like he had never left.

Every day we play the same game with him. We wake up and check to see if he’s arrived yet for his continental breakfast. If not, we check the door again every time we pass by to make sure we don’t miss him. Then he’s off for the day, but never fails to come back by 7 PM for his dinner.

The relationship we have with Goose is beautiful in ways that are so different from our pets that live inside our house. Whoever spots him first at the door yells, “Hey everybody! Goose is here!”, and then we all run downstairs to peer at him through the window as he eats his meal. Our behavior is a lot like that of pets whose owner has returned from a mysterious outing. We don’t know what his life is like outside of the fact that he eats two meals a day here, and likes the company of Duck.

We were sitting outside recently drinking piña coladas and talking about Goose, and Max remarked that we would need to call him “gosling”, since we already refer to Duck as “duckling”. I laughed that the word made me think of Ryan Gosling more than a baby bird. And then I quickly pulled up a YouTube video to show Max.

Giggling, I smiled, “It’s perfect,” as Ryan Gosling looked Rachel McAdams in the eyes and said, “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.”

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