The Cat Front is a lot like a weather front without the heat, moisture, winds and barometric pressures, and with more paws, claws, fur and teeth. The Cat Front is more similar to the front lines of other challenges, like war, pestilence and disease.

On my Cat Front, our cats have been battling an illness. It’s gone from one to another. It seems like a type of flu. Boo Radley developed it first, refusing to eat for several days, vomiting and hiding out to sleep. I was doing everything to comfort him. This struck on a Thursday. Being a passive person, I tracked him through Friday and into Saturday, confirming, no, he’s not eating. No, he’s not injured anywhere. Yes, something is wrong.

But I kept trying to get him to eat. BR is a big boy so he had the chubbiness to endure a few days without eating. By late Sunday, he finally started up, and was his normal eating fellow by Monday.

I went through the same with Quinn, a small cat, whose diminished caloric intake was much more worrisome. Perhaps because he’s younger, he pulled through faster. Then it struck Tucker. Tucker, though, has a love affair with food ,so despite his sickness, he always attempted to eat. He usually eats about four and a half ounces twice a day. During this sickness, he was below one ounce.

But he, too, was only down for three days (perhaps assisted by a recent antibiotics injection to cope with his gingivitis stomatitis). Pepper, the neighbor’s cat who begs me for food and sleeps on my front porch, went down while Tucker was down. She’s a chunky girl and came back after two days, just a little lighter.

The worse was Meep.

He is the youngest of our ad hoc clowder. Meep is another neighbor’s cat. Strangely, he isn’t permitted into their home, so we take him in to shelter him during cold or poor weather. We ensure he gets fed at least twice a day, and that he has fresh water available. Not surprisingly, he hangs around our house, mostly in the back yard.

There are complications. These are cats. Boo and Meep fight. Boo and Tucker fight. Tucker and Meep fight. Those fights involving Tucker are of the “I am going to eradicate you” variety. The other cats tread warily around him. We’re working on it but meanwhile, separate but equal rules. This segregation is about as satisfying as the SCOTUS ruling regarding education.

Meep went down several days ago. And disappeared. We spent hours searching for him. After two days, he showed up again. Skinny. I tried feeding him. He made a lot of high pitched, growling, “I’m pissed off noises”, accompanied by feline demonstrations that he wasn’t in the mood.

He left, disappearing again. Two more days. The daytime temps dropped from the low nineties into the high seventies, which was a break, and humidity rose, but smoke from wildfires was filling our valley, causing breathing issues, and nocturnal temps descended to the low forties. I thought the worse about Meep and continued my searching.

He reappeared, sleeping in his bed on the back patio Friday. After drinking water and disdaining food, he ran at my approach and became scarce again. He returned last night. This time, I coaxed him into the house. He’d been enduring his illness longer than the others. I figured being outdoors probably contributed to that so I wanted to keep him in. He didn’t want that, but he did drink water. Determined that he needed food, I cradled him and force fed him.

He wasn’t happy. Again he demanded, “Freedom!” Again, I acquiesced. This time, he stayed on the porch overnight.

This morning, he approached our door in his old way. He wasn’t quite ready to eat. I offered food. He licked a little. I offered more. He licked a little. So this continued through the morning, until he finally ate several tablespoons of food on his own. Then he came by me and rubbed against my leg before wandering off to wash and sleep.

It can get tense, on the Cat Front, but I think the worse has passed.