Keisa's Door Knocker - and how it came to be

Keisa arrived at her permanent home on November 29, 1993 complete with name, birthdate [May 29, 1989] and health history. She was spayed, had all tests, including rabies shots. She was four and 1/2 years old, came from a good home in which she had been saved from death from a severe infestation of fleas on arrival as a small kitten. Family circumstances made it necessary to find her a new home, this one, occupied by a single lady in her mid-nineties now, and veteran caretaker of three special cats, with Keisa, the fourth.

In her first week in her new residence, Keisa drew attention to herself by giving a visitor a casual clip to one ankle. Next day the visitor phoned to say that she had reported Keisa to the Department of Health. She was surprised to learn that Keisa had had a rabies shot, as cats are supposed to have. [It was the time of the rabies development among wild animals in our locality]. The Department never called.

The next problem was that I had planned to keep Keisa as an indoor cat. Keisa had not been consulted. She tried drama, lying on her side with her nose to the bottom of the door for one breath of fresh air. She tried staring at me. She tried getting cross. She tried everything except mewing. I wondered if she had a voice. Eventually I gave in. She had a full set of claws for defense.

Immediately, peace reigned. She explored her neighborhood, came home at reasonable hours and was cooperative about my sleeping hours and her feeding times. She was perfectly willing to have me in charge of opening and closing the door. If staring at the door and then back at me to go out did not work, she could always rattle the knob. The problem was how to get back in. Her usual pantomime didn't work. She considered taking the door down, beginning with clawing away the rubber weather stripping. Something had to be done.

Keisa was the second cat I had had who was part Siamese and never mewed for ordinary needs. The voice was reserved for times of high emotion, pain, anger, fighting with other cats, and many, many conversational trills and generous loving purrs. So how was I to know when Keisa wanted to come in? It was simple really. After a few false starts with little bells hung on the outside door knob, I was fortunate to find that I had a doughnut-shaped piece of wood just about the size of a very thick doughnut with a hole 1-1/4 inches in diameter. This proved ideal. It was easy to attach it to a long nylon cord and to form the other end into a loop large enough to slip over the inside doorknob and long enough so that one could swing the knocker over the outside knob without detaching it.