My Cat Kneads Me

Scamper was our first cat. As so many felines are, Scamper was abandoned as a tyke. He not only was barely weaned, but was torn from his mother before he was completely able to eat solid food. Pat, having worked in that pet supply store (since I have nothing good to say about this major chain, as it treats its employees not quite as well as cattle on a ranch, and has as much contempt for it’s customers, though it fawns to them like a court jester, they shall remain unnamed), voted herself as most likely to take him home. And she did.

Being my first up-close and personal experience with a cat, I was fascinated by this little guy. And little he was; in fact, tiny would not be incorrect. He literally fit inside a beer six-pack container, which is what he came home in. I don’t know if he drank all the beer, but the case was empty aside from this “defenseless” creature. Now, you’ll notice I put the word defenseless in brackets. There is a reason for this. You cannot walk around naked with a kitten in the same house. Especially if you’re a guy. If you’ve never been in the presence of a very young cat, you’ve never known the sheer delight of their claws. And they like to bat at things with their paws. All the more so if they dangle. Gentlemen, are you starting to get the picture? I can see some of you running to get your drawers on, so I think I’ve said enough to forewarn you. A kitten is precious, but they will tenderize any meat that comes near them.

Another thing I noticed about cats is it takes very little to keep them entertained. If you have your clothes on (which, as indicated above, I highly recommend), all you have to do is throw a balled-up piece of paper, and they’ll be on it like sailors seeing their first woman after six-months at sea. (Okay, so I could have described that differently, but what fun would that be? I am not writing this from a priest’s perspective.)

During the first few days with Scamper, I continued to learn a lot about felines. For instance, when a cat plays, it’s genetically not possible for them to not attack the object of their playing. A hand gets clawed, scored and bitten, albeit gently in the case of Scamper. I began to understand why they like mice so well. His head fit into Pat’s hand, and like any cat, he loved to have his head scruffed. Being still small, we tried to be as gentle as possible with him. It would have been nice had he returned the favor. Even being gentle, Scamper still had razors in his paws, and he hadn’t yet figured out how to control them.

Fast-forward to his adulthood. This tiny creature grew into a domestic cat that obviously had quite a few big-cat genes. He developed a dimpled nose and a pouch on him that would make a lion envious. But despite his largess, there was not an ounce of fat that didn’t need to be there. He was active, but as we added more cats, his stature as our elder states-cat never changed. He rarely got into tiffs with the other cats, nor was he challenged by anyone else. The only one with whom he ever had an argument was Princess, our second-in-command.

Princess got her name because she acted like one. She was a beautifully marked ring-tail patch siamese, and she knew she was gorgeous. In fact, were she human she would be the exact kind of woman that would turn me off because I hate that attitude, even if she was the perfect eye-candy, But Princess had claimed me as her person, and all it took was her curling up in a tight little ball on my lap and I was hooked. This beautiful little kitty, who, while weaned when she came home a couple of weeks after Scamper’s triumphant arrival, was not very much larger than Scamper was when he came to live with us, had me hook, line and sinker. I absolutely fell in love with cats. I’ve been a cat person ever since. In fact, I have seen a mug in a catalogue which had the imprint “ask me about the cute thing my cat did, because I’ll tell you anyway”, or words to that effect. Truer words were never spoken. A person smitten by a cat is worse than a first-time father. I could blather on about Princess for hours. Eventually people would see me coming and remember they had an appointment in another county they had to attend to.

The last thing I’ll mention about Princess was her agility. I know all cats are agile to the nth degree, but Princess was remarkable. At one time we had a pile of boxes in the living room at 6 feet high. I could see her calculate how much distance she would have to leap to get to the top of the boxes. In my mind’s eye she was figuring out wind-speed, azimuth and translating that into effort. And all this without having to build a computer. Princess cost us nothing to bring home. How much did it cost NASA to build a calculator to figure this out? Now, who’s smarter?

Both Scamper and Princess have since gone on to their eternal reward, but I will forever be grateful to my Princess for teaching me that one of the most rewarding things in the world is being owned by a cat. And believe me, they own you. Just ask them.

Ciao for now dear reader. Until next time, may you be affectionately stared at by a cat. And yes, the cat is wondering if you’re all there. It’s what they do.

This entry was posted on 3. February 2010 at 21:38 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.