“I NEVER thought I’d see the day,” my friend Joy told me over lunch, after listening to me rattle on enthusiastically about my rescued three-legged cat Yoongi for 20 minutes.
She was talking about my becoming a cat mama, after being a dog mama for as long we had known each other, some 30 years. During that time, I had lived with a Belgian Malinois named Muffin and a beloved chunky Labrador Retriever, Banana, before I rescued my first asPin (asong Pinoy) at my gate, Kikay. I have since vowed to only take in rescues.
Kikay, who passed away at almost 14 years of age in 2023, would be followed by the three more rescues in my current pack: Kiko, found by my friend Nice Rodriguez as part of an abandoned litter under a car in Sta. Ana, Manila; Frankie, who was rescued by the Animal Kingdom Foundation from the Taal Volcano eruption in 2020, my pandemic baby and unica hija; and Sergio, who my friend and super animal rescuer Rina Ortiz had found on the grounds of the National Mental Hospital, and said was perfect for me (a backhanded compliment, if I ever heard one). I let my househelp and sidekick, Dang, name him; of course, she departed from the St. Francis of Assisi pattern and called him Sergio, after Marimar’s boyfriend. Go figure.
For years before that, however, I had had a growing envy of people I knew whose dogs and cats co-existed peacefully, proving that such harmony is possible. I think of my friend Dana, whose huge and much-missed Bernese mountain dog, Rusty, would cuddle with her kick-ass British shorthair cat Pierre. It was a sight to behold. Dang’s son, Ronnel, also has a dog and a cat living together, with the cat dominating, of course. So I said, why not? Maybe it was time to discover what cat people were talking about.
I’ve already written about how the opportunity came up, when I headed to the annual Valentine’s Day fundraiser of the Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), “Furst Date,” where you make a donation, get coffee and a snack, and spend time with a shelter animal in totally Instagrammable surroundings.
Well, I think my friends at PAWS, including executive director Atty. Anna Cabrera, were pretty surprised that I wanted a cat. It was she who suggested I meet the resident tripod, then named Ginger, who had been run over, rescued, treated, and neutered. Unfortunately, the rescuer had to leave the country, and left him at PAWS. By the time Anna put Ginger in my arms and he proceeded to fall asleep, I knew I was in trouble.
First meeting, February 2024
I returned after about a month, and begged for guidance because I knew nothing about caring for a cat. I renamed the cat Yoongi, after my favorite BTS member, Min Yoongi, aka Suga, who has a cat as his spirit animal.
That was in April 2024. I was astounded at how Yoongi eventually, well, took over our lives. While dogs take about three months to be completely housebroken—and even then, accidents can happen, albeit rarely, when they get rattled by a change in schedule, as dogs are creatures of habit—Yoongi was heading for the litter in two days. PAWS gets adopters to answer a questionnaire, and one of the questions is how the adopter feels about dealing with cat feces—a question I found amusing, until I realized that, because of the higher protein in their diet, cat poo has a stronger smell than that of dogs. My solution? Putting the litter box in a smaller storage room with no door, and lighting incense after every episode, which works just fine.
With his best friend, Sergio. You can clearly see that his right hind leg is missing.
So what’s the difference between loving—and being loved, I daresay—by a cat? While my dogs are expressive, noisy, and go crazy when I arrive, Yoongi is the epitome of chill. He sits—or just stretches out—in the middle of the room, a soft 6-kg creature oblivious to the chaos of bigger animals around him; Sergio is all of 20 kg, after all. Yet this overgrown puppy of a four-year-old dog, whom I was most worried about because of his strong prey drive—he chases anything that moves on regular walks—has become Yoongi’s best friend, cuddling him and playing with him. Sergio is even easily evicted from his own dog bed by the cat that’s less than a third of the dog’s own weight—if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
Yoongi my cat has taught me that nothing good comes out of too much drama
I have diligently been studying how to communicate with Yoongi. I learned that cats like to “make cookies,” that interesting habit of massaging you with their front paws, or head bunt, rubbing the sides of their head against you, as a sign of affection, or to mark you with their scent as their human. I had thought those two slightly bald strips on the sides of his head were because of early malnutrition, but I learned they carried his scent. Since Yoongi has bad balance because of the missing rear leg, he bunts instead. His favorite time for the bunting (pardon the excessive information) is when I’m sitting on the toilet; he winds around my legs, rubs his head against my calves, and then proceeds to lie on the bathroom mat and show me his belly—another sign of trust, apparently.
Over time, he has allowed me and Dang to cut his nails, give him a monthly sponge bath with no complaints, and clean his ears and teeth. Our latest accomplishment: wiping his butt after every poop so the dirt doesn’t accumulate, which he quietly allows. (Believe me, dog and cat people find very few things icky.) In fact, by all accounts from other cat people, just the fact that Yoongi allows us to cuddle and carry him any time we want is already a huge sign of trust.
I learned that cats who turn their backs to you while lying near you are also confident that you won’t hurt them. Apparently these little furballs have retained more of their predatory instincts than dogs. Thus, they stay awake at night, and have excellent night vision.
I thoroughly enjoy exchanging looks of love with Yoongi, slow blinks that reassure this animal that I will take care of him forever—and his way of expressing affection, as well. He also decides when he wants to join me and his Kuya Kiko in my bed (I have a ramp for all my animals to climb easily). Once I woke up to find him quietly nestled against my armpit, laying a paw on my arm, and slow-blinking at me in the morning light. Of late, he has taken to crawling into my lap while I sit in bed to meditate. I guess he finds comfort in my quiet breaths.
I am most contented when I have all my four furbabies around me. There’s a catch, however: Yoongi, as a former street cat, is positive for the feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), a double whammy of incurable diseases that might mean a shorter existence. Thus, he must live out his life indoors and not share the house with other cats. As Anna told me, she is just happy that Yoongi will have a family “until it’s time to go home,” which broke my heart. It was Dean Koontz who wrote about the pain of losing a beloved dog, which applies to all pets, I guess: “There’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price.”
Still, I’m doing everything I can; Yoongi gets regular medicines, blood tests, vaccines, quality food, and regular check-ups, as do the three dogs. (#furparentpoverty!) He is estimated to be four years old now, and his wonderful vet, Dr. Alay Paz-Leynes, who always says he is thriving for a supposedly sick cat, is confident the care will give him a decent lifespan.
When I decided to adopt Yoongi, Yaya Dang had worried that we may have difficulty managing a three-legged cat. Over the last two years, however, while never neglecting the dogs, we have both become smitten with our “boss,” who is a daily reminder that missing a leg is no reason to be diminished: He actually runs, eats well, plays, and fills my life with so much joy.
Yoongi has taught me that nothing good comes out of too much drama. He lives with his disability with his little head held high, and relates to his humans and his fur siblings on his own terms. Thus, when he does choose to show his love and trust—a quiet, gentle kind of love—it’s one of the biggest rewards of my life as an animal lover. It only makes me promise all over again that I will take care of our tough little boss for as long as we will have him, however long or short that may be.
