Cats: Part I

I live with a cat named Romulus.  He’s an 11-year-old tuxedo, who is always dressed up to go with nowhere to go.  He is quite handsome in his tux and has the softest, most luxuriant fur to stroke.  I was going to say I own a cat, but anyone who knows cats knows that’s a dubious assertion, and that when it comes to cats and the question of ownership, it is a fair question to ask who owns whom. The best way to describe our relationship is to call us roommates — two individuals with separate interests occupying the same living space.  So I have a roommate.  

I like dogs but prefer cats because they live longer — sometimes twice as long as dogs — and you don’t have to walk them outside two or three times a day.  Cats walk themselves.  I also prefer cats over dogs because they are more mysterious and interesting than dogs.  Dogs are pack animals, and as such always obey, and are therefore boring in their predictability.  Cats are solitary predators, and as such almost never obey, and are therefore fascinating in their unpredictability.  Getting a cat to obey is a tricky art to master at best, and often a hopeless cause, but because of their unpredictability and mysterious nature, sometimes they do the funniest things.

When I first brought Romulus home from the nursery he was 6 or 7 weeks old and a true scaredy cat. Upon alighting upon the floor, he scooted under the bed, where he remained until hunger got the better of his fear.  Over the next two or three weeks, as we got to know one another better, and as he became more comfortable with his surroundings, he started acting more like a cat.  I had left him in the living room to prepare dinner in the kitchen, when I started hearing this bang . . . bang . . . noise from the living room.  I had this large, heavy upholstered chair ensconced in the corner against the wall with a medium-sized framed picture hanging above it.  And when I rushed back to see what the heck was going on, I found him hanging from the bottom of the frame pushing off against the wall with his hind legs, he and picture swinging into the air only to slam back into the wall . . . bang . . bang.  He thought this was hilarious, but I ended the fun before he, picture, and plaster came tumbling down.  “Hey! Get down from there,” only to have him stare at me with that mischievous look cats give you when they know they are doing wrong but don’t care and dare you to do something about it . . . bang . . . bang.  So I had to retrieve him, and it is always a dangerous venture to pull a cat away from something he doesn’t want to be pulled away from.  Kitten claws and teeth are very sharp, and both curve inward, so you impale yourself if you pull away.

I am convinced this mischievousness is part of the predator’s nature.  They mess with you, and sometimes, when in one of their moods, and cats are moody, they look up at you as if to say, “if I was only a little bigger, or you a little smaller, you would be fun to eat.”  Most of the time this mischievousness is good fun to watch, like the time my other cat Romulus — I name all my cats Romulus — discovered how entertaining the vertical blinds hanging from the sliding glass door on the far side of the kitchen could be.  

When you enter my house from the front door it is a direct line from entryway through the living room to the kitchen to the blinds.  One day after returning from an outside expedition and knocking on the door to get back in — he always knocked on the door, never scratched it — he noticed the blinds and took off full speed across the carpet in the living room throwing his butt onto the kitchen tile sliding all the way across the kitchen with front paws raised into the blinds making them clatter and shake.  Then he got back up, returned to the entryway, and did it again.  He just thought this was the most fun, like a child, who the first time he or she plays in a sandbox thinks it's the most fun.  This went on for several weeks, until he tired of it.  Funny and harmless, although noisy.

Cats are always finding ways to mess with you, like right now.  As I put pen to paper, and I always use pen and paper first, my cat is lying on my writing table becoming more and more annoyed as I devote all my attention to writing and none to him.  So every once in a while he lays his paw across the line on which I'm writing, then turns his head to pretend it is all an innocent accident.  Then when I remove paw from page, he stares at me and places it back on the line.  To his way of thinking -- to the predator's way of thinking -- I've challenged him, so it becomes a battle of wills, a dare.  After 4 or 5 times of this he stops and waits for me to go back to doing what I was doing, then does it again.  So why don't I remove him from the table?  That would appear to be the sensible thing to do, wouldn't it?  Well the truth is I've become accustomed to his interruptions, and as strange as it may seem, I think I have become a better writer for it.  No time for daydreaming.  Have to complete my thought before paws start flying.  He's become an annoying muse.

This may amuse you, as it does me, but sometimes their mischievous behavior is not so harmless or funny, and this is never more obvious than when they feel they aren’t being treated fairly.  

You can read about that tomorrow in Cats: Part II