THE CHALLENGE THAT FACED KITTIE LEIGH...

This edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap is dedicated to my little cat Deputy Chief Kittie Leigh Johnson, named in honor of Kyra Sedgwick’s Brenda Leigh Johnson character in the TV cop show The Closer. Inquisitive and firm. What every cat oughta be. 
And patient, too. She’s the honoree this week because of her incredible patience.
We’ve had Kittie Leigh since 2011. The first time I saw her not scrambling to avoid capture was the day she decided to crawl back through our traditional Oak Cliff Front Porch Burglar Bars cage. She stopped, turned and came back — not for the food in our twice-daily feral cat buffet, but to meet me.
That photo of a wide-eyed, cross-eyed, tall-eared kitten looking at me is somewhere — somewhere. It’s one of the few photos I’ve managed to misplace through decades of writing about dogs and cats and their people.
 (That pose on the left is a current photo of Kittie Leigh, all grown up and with a hint of a mis-directed eye! On the right you see Kittie Leigh discussing one of her favorite movies, Star Wars -- "Happy cat, I am," she'll sometimes purr.)
Back to the porch: The burglar bars, and the front gate, formed a “protective shield,” creating a porch “plaza” that was perfect for feeding the Feral Cat Colony. 
And, one day, when I opened the door and the five or six other cats and kittens — maybe a raccoon — it was all a blur — dove through the bars and dashed for cover in the yard, this little cross-eyed kitten stopped her flight. 
The reality was this adorable kitten already owned me just by stopping in mid-flight. We made friends on the porch. She stepped back into the dining area and I picked her up and brought her into the house. 
She got along with dogs, other cats and she was healthy. The vet said she might have an eye problem after a few years, but there was nothing that needed to be done at the moment. 
I already had an office cat, The Senator (rest his wonderful soul; that's us mind-melding years ago),but he didn’t mind sharing me and Kittie Leigh became his first Apprentice Office Cat. When The Senator wasn’t on his wooden tv tray observation platform, little Kittie Leigh took his place. It was a wonderful working relationship. She'd leave a note if she was particularly drowsy.
SUDDENLY THERE WAS HASTINGS
AND THEN THERE WAS … OH, MY! 

My funspouse Martha and I have been rescuing cats since before our wedding 30 years and 3 months ago. We were rescuing cats before we even knew each other. Dogs, too.
 In all that time we’d never once rescued a cat with ringworm. Feel free to exclaim, “Ringworm! Yuck!”
 Ah, but on Oct. 4, 2021, while driving in Duncanville, I saw, in the middle of a street, a starving, standing-in-one-spot kitten. Turns out that this little boy, about 5 weeks old, had some hideous blueberry-sized globs of yeccch (no translation needed) attached to his upper eyelids and blinding him. I quickly grabbed him, got him within minutes to the closest vet, Pet Medical Center of Duncanville. Those loving folks cleaned him up and gave him some shots and handed him back to me. [That's his first photo after the vet's magic touch!]   
The next week, when I took him back for his second exam, he was diagnosed with ringworm. The vet treated him, put him on some meds and within about 6 weeks he was a kitten cured and became a member of our family. [That’s the formerly scrawnly little guy wrestling with his tabby cat colleague William Powell, my office cat. You’ll note that the starved formerly tiny kitten is now large and showing off an incredibly fluffy cat tail!]
THEN, SUDDENLY KITTIE LEIGH
IS FACING 2 CHALLENGES!
At some point in February, indoor cat Kittie Leigh (all our cats are indoor dwellers), developed a loss of hair on her forehead and along one ear. It was not ringworm. It was a yeast infection. Her vet, Dr. Robert Norris at Bridge Street Animal Clinic, treated her and the healing began dramatically. But, in about a week, she suddenly had a new ugly outbreak of something else that was destroying her beautiful coat — from between her eyes, past her ears and onto her neck. 
That, ladies and gentlemen, was a mysteriously acquired case of, yes, ringworm.
This was not Dr. Norris’ first ringworm rodeo. He put Kittie Leigh on a sincere treatment that involved once-a-day liquid doses for 7 days, then off 7, then back on 7 and so on until no trace of ringworm remained. We have no idea where old girl Kittie Leigh's ringworm came from: The kitten Hastings had beenhealed a while and they did not mingle. No other cat or dog has evidence of the pesky fungus. 
[LARRY FYI: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says ringworm is official “tinea” or “dermatophytosis” or, if it’s on the feet, “athletes foot.” I’m not kidding. “Tinea Pedis.” Who’da thunk it? Here’s the CDC RINGWORM LINK. And here is a link to a Cleveland Clinic assessment  that labels a certain “itch” as Tinea Cruris — yep, Jock Itch is a type of ringworm, the smart people say.
Kittiie Leigh was suffering from Tinea capitis. Yep, ringworm on the noggin.
AND THE TRIBUTE IS DUE
BECAUSE OF THE PATIENT CAT
Here is why I am writing this as a tribute to my cat Kittie Leigh. She has been the most patient soul we’ve ever had in our family. 
As soon as she was diagnosed, we parked her in a wire crate designed for a couple of German Shepherds — it was large eough to hold her furniture-style litter box, a round cat bed and her water and food dishes.
But she was locked in. And we could’t pet her or cuddle her or nod off with her at night — her entire life changed. (That's her lounging on my unmade side of the bed with the very drowsy Porche Noel. They are pals of the pillow, you know).
That cage was large, but not big enough to soothe the moods of a loving cat accustomed to hugging and cuddling and sleeping on a bed or in a window with a view of yard full of wild climbing squirrel entertainment. 
For about six weeks that little cat patiently waited for human medical knowledge to do the work of beating that darned ringworm.
We humans were careful. 
We made it through Kittie Leigh’s experience without sharing her problem.
What we did share was the anguish she had at not being able to leave the big cage. 
For most of her entire life she’d been a “bedroom cat” — usually sleeping in my arms. That started when she was a kitten and it continues to this day — except for during this medical challenge. 
Kittie Leigh was such a wonderful “patient.” A model patient for all dogs and cats and people, too. Up to a point.
On Monday night and Tuesday night during this past week, Kittie Leigh grew increasingly impatient with life in a cage. She never left that cage except for her treatments or a trip to the vet’s for about two months.
Kittie Leigh began to yowl when I’d enter the room. When it was “lights out” time, she cried in the dark. 

We hoped this poor baby had sensed that she had an appointment on Wednesday morning. That her yowls were inspired by happy anticipation.
 At Bridge Street Animal Clinic, her vet Dr. Norris gave her an extremely thorough exam and mercifully, the light of the ringworm-detecting Woods Lamp, could not find a single tell-tale radiant glow. A Woods Lamp makes even minute traces of ringworm light up like a midnight firecracker in a college dorm hallway. Not that I would know about dorm life.
The joy of an “all clear for Kittie Leigh” was wonderful. It meant that she could go back to her old sleeping habits. She could lay in the window and watch squirrels or lay on the bedroom rocking chair and watch daytime TV.
She was happy to be out of that cage. And on her first night out of it, she couldn’t decide at first where to sleep on the bed. Porche the dog always sleeps between us. Within a few minutes, Deputy Chief Kittie Leigh Johnson, that formerly feral kitten, gently padded across me and slid under the covers and went to sleep while cuddled by my left arm. She was purring, not yowling.
It was wonderful to hear this girl purring again — to feel her settling in on my arm and stirring not a bit when I tickled her tummy. 
The next morning, she used her camera to snap this photo from my right side where she’d settled somewhere during the night. It is a picture that doesn't look good but it's of a situation that felt great. Bless that forgiving cat! That’s me in the very warm flannel shirt. I might have been enjoying morning drowsiness with a hope for the rare gift of "going back to sleep."
What is the lesson? I don’t have a lesson. I just love this darned patient cat. She’s family.
[DEAR READERS: Please forward photos of your slumbering, beloved animals to [email protected] so we can celebrate them by posting their photos and their life stories in Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap. We love showing off your animals. It inspires other people to make room in their homes for loving and beloved animals. And your tales and photos inspire insomniacs to think that they, too, may be able to sleep if they can just avoid panicking every time they feel an itch. Not every itch is a villain. I’m almost sure.]
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