Is that a cat or a beach ball?

I must apologize for having not posted for the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t inspired at all last week, and so far this week it’s been really hectic around here. But I finally decided to use a few minutes to jot a few more words.

For this entry, I have to fast-forward a few years. When daddy shows a picture of Selma, the usual, and most often the only immediate response is “that’s a fat cat!” Selma is one of our older cats, though we brought her home before Butternut, who was the last one to set up his litter box here.

Selma is a cat. At least she’s supposed to be. And she is big. At her biggest she probably weighed something along the order of 20 pounds. She now tips the scales at about 13 or so. Her weight loss was not the result of Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, nor of an exercise program (her legs aren’t long enough to reach the pedals on my recumbent bike). Just part of her aging.

The saga of Selma started at least six months before she came to live here. She was part of a home of what some call a hoarder and some call a collector. Whatever you might call this lady, she had close to a hundred cats when she became physically and mentally unable to care for them. An anonymous tip sent animal control into this woman’s home, where they found 96 cats in varying condition. Those who were still alive were very undernourished.

This collection of poor souls included the cat the pound would refer to as Selma. She was made healthier, fixed (ah, there’s that term again), and put up for adoption. She was skinny as a train rail when she met the other kitties here. Scrawny and scared to death of everything. We did all we could to make her feel comfortable, including a period of getting used to one room without other cats. She would come out of the room from time-to-time, warily so. And when she did it was to grab a few morsels of food and skitter back to her insular world. It was painful to watch, but we did notice progress, so the panic button was not hit. Well, not by Pat, but I had my doubts.

The other cats eventually learned to tolerate Selma, and when the little girl discovered she would be allowed to eat without harassment, she did just that. She ate and ate. I was beginning to wonder if she had somehow become permanently fused to the feed canister.

We have referred to Selma as our bullcat for some years now. In case you wonder why, picture a bulldog with it’s rolling gait, especially as it walks toward you, then you will get a snapshot of Selma.

This is Selma

The photo above was taken at Christmastime some few years ago. It’s hard to get a good look at her impressive girth, but you get an idea. Oh, and the ribbon and the reindeer atop will give you some idea how tolerant Selma is of our foibles.

The walk is not the only thing that makes one compare her to a canine. If you scratch her just right the hind leg starts going. And if she is laying down and wants to be petted, besides being very vocal about it, she will often turn over so you can rub her belly. What can I tell you? She is a feline-challenged cat.

Seeing Selma get onto a platform or a chair a couple of feet off the floor is something to marvel at. And probably cause a huge laugh, too. It’s like watching a repeating frame of film that directors will sometimes use to get a laugh. She starts to jump, runs in reverse, starts again and repeats the process three or four times. She will eventually get onto her perch, not the least bit insulted that she was laughed at. She just lays down and does whatever she does.

Selma has the loudest purr of nearly any cat I’ve ever known. If she’s in my lap while I’ve got the TV on I have to turn the volume on the television up. That’s almost an exaggeration, but not quite. She is loud. Her meow is more like a demand, but it does not sound like any meow I’ve knowledge of. It’s like a guttural version of “Hey!” And yes, it actually sounds like the word “Hey.”

As noted above, our fat cat is very tolerant. You can do almost anything to her as long as she is getting loved on. We’ve never tossed her in the air (I’m not sure she would truly appreciate that), but we have picked her up and rocked her in our arms. She just stretches out and enjoys the ride. She minds her own business but will smack any other animal that invades her space; dog, another cat, it doesn’t matter. Nor does the size of the dog at whom she takes a swipe at. She’s not nasty or mean. She just wants to be left alone in case some human wants to love on her. She wants those goodies all to herself.

Well, there is a ton of other things I could tell about our small bit of kittie tonnage, but suffice it to say she has given us a lot to smile about and just plain laugh about. And dear reader, that does it for this installment. I will try to be more regular and add one or two entries a week. Until next time, keep smiling. It throws people off-base.

This entry was posted on 22. January 2010 at 07:35 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.