Why the Chapter Has to End

     To make sense of the rest of my story, you must know about all the cats. Brown Balls was a beautiful seal-point Siamese mix with amazing blue eyes. I don’t know where he came from or when he came into the park, but he gradually bonded with workcampers Tom and Debbie. It was Tom who named him for the area of his anatomy with the most prominent brown markings. Then Tom and Debbie left, and Brown Balls remained behind. He took up with workcampers Matt and Teri next, and palled around with Pete, their cat. Then Matt and Teri left, taking Pete, and Brown Balls was left behind again. I, of course, started feeding him. Gradually he trusted me, spending most nights inside my RV. I took him to the vet, and he became Brownie. I regularly looked into those amazing, slightly crossed blue eyes and promised I would never abandon him. He followed me everywhere. Then one day in January another workcamper came to tell me “There’s something wrong with Brownie.” I don’t know if he was hit by a car, fell off the motel roof, or fought with a dog, but he died in my arms that night. He finally found his forever home, and all too soon he was gone. I still miss him.

     Last summer there was a little tuxedo kitten living under the café, rummaging for food in the dumpster, dashing across the road, often just missing car tires. The kitten’s bravery convinced us it was a male, and Dan said he looked like Sylvester, and so he was named. Gradually he started showing up regularly to eat cat food, ever wary. Then one day he came across the road with four kittens (Brown Ball’s?), and Sylvester became Sylvia. One kitten was soon killed on the road. Of the remaining kittens, the male kitten, who looks like his mother, is Ditto. The tiniest kitten, all black, is Spooky. And the other, who is black except for a little white under her chin, is Star, They eventually joined their mother for feeding and began following me around the park, climbing trees and chasing butterflies. Spooky and Star have the high cheekbones and angular elegance of their Siamese father, but the tiny stature of their mother. Spooky is especially tiny for nearly a year old, just barely six pounds. I call them my ninja kitties. Ditto, the tamest and most loving, is on the other hand, a hefty 12 pounds.

     Simon still lives beneath my RV. He has mellowed to be a social old boy, walking up to anyone who coaxes him and enjoying neck rubs. He sleeps on a heating pad in the winter.

     Those are my cats, and they are an integral part of my story.

     I hesitated to write about the past few months of my life, because my blog has been totally honest to date, but this is a journey, and I can’t just leave miles out. My overall happiness has been compromised. There was a dark energy in the park this winter season. I was bombarded by ambush attacks I never anticipated and from which there was no protection.

      The first attack was minor; my appearance. I was alerted to a complaint that the clothing I was wearing to work in the café was covered with dog and cat hair (imagine that!). I am the lone soul who opens the café at 6 a.m. six days a week, preparing the beverages (coffee, decaf, hot water for tea, iced tea, stocking soda), setting up the cash drawer, wiping off the tables outside and clearing the porch of leaves, assisting the cook with prep, and waiting on customers as long as I am needed, usually two or three hours. To counter this attack I purchased a hoody at Dollar General specifically for café wear and relegated it to a high hook in my bedroom.

      The next attack was phased. Could I keep the cats off the picnic table closest to the clubhouse, and keep Brownie out of the clubhouse where he sat on a chair and patiently waited for me to work out every morning? I immediately began feeding the cats on my picnic table, and moved my exercise stuff to my RV rather than watch Brownie’s pitiful gaze from outside.

     Then the attack took a new turn—THE CATS HAVE TO GO. The complaints were ridiculous; they defecate in the park (feral cats cover their excrement deeply, instinctively), they smell (there were no intact males except one kitten too young to spray), they get up on “things” (they were afraid of people). So I trapped Sylvia and the kittens one by one, had them neutered or spayed (despite the kittens actually being too young—I lied about their age) and vaccinated at my own expense, and am now keeping four cats inside my RV. The three kittens lounge about on the dash or bed, Sylvia lives behind the couch. I have had brief “escapes”, but managed to corral them quickly. It’s not ideal, but my attempts to find them safe forever homes have been futile, and I will not dump them downtown or let someone take them where they won’t be safe.

     The next attack? The greenhouse and the area around my RV were a mess. I don’t know where the complaint about “around my RV” came from, but the complaint about “around the greenhouse” was misunderstood. I talked to the guest who made the complaint, and he was referring to the area behind the greenhouse down to the canal, which has been a dumping area for many years before I arrived. His wife was afraid there might be snakes (probably correctly). Before I could correct the misunderstanding, Dale, a veteran workcamper, “cleaned up” my greenhouse area, throwing away the coffee grounds I use for compost, moving the worm farm into the sun, dumping plants I had started, moving sun-loving plants to shade and shade-loving plants into full sun, and moving my plant stand too far from the greenhouse to reach with the hose. He did nothing about the plastic with which he had covered the outside walls of the greenhouse the year before that had disintegrated in the Florida sun into raggedy strips. So I straightened up around my RV (all things relating to work projects), cut all the plastic off the greenhouse, and screened the front door of the greenhouse. Dale was thanked for cleaning up the area.

      The next attack was the most ridiculous; the condition of my RV. Because water is piped into the park from eight miles away, it is very expensive, so there is no washing of RVs or cars permitted. I’ve been here three years, parked under trees, so the exterior of my RV was dirty. I contacted a professional to clean it, but aside from the $200 cost, he still would use park water, and the chemicals would affect at least five RVs around me. So I used buckets of water and scrubbed down my RV with brush and ladder. My back, arms and legs (from balancing on the ladder) ached for two days. I didn’t do the roof, but the rest of my RV is now reasonably clean. For good measure, I finally located hubcaps (“wheel simulators”) for the front tires, so it’s blinged out.

     I have been living wondering what’s next?

     I know this feeling. This is like my marriage—trying to make everything right, rectifying imaginary wrongs, never knowing what the next attack will be. I am now very guarded, my trust is limited to a very few, and I am seldom completely at ease. I now have a new definition of “friend.”