Ah! Life in a small house with four indoor cats. I often wonder, What were we thinking? I can remember every step of the way, every logical and well-thought out step, and make sense of them individually. It is the end-result what doesn’t make full sense. Four cats that don’t quite get along; four quirky, at times pesky, smart (when they want to be) and dumber than rolled-up newspapers (also when they want to be), sharing small spaces with us humans and our complex lives. Their foreign lingo is at times clear and unmistakable. Their body language, for example, is like an open book, telling you who is moody, happy, cranky or just out of the litter box with a load off his mind and body (James Brown’s “I Feel Good!” would make a good background song to their run around the house after a good time at the little box). Their vocalizations are diverse and targeted, to each other and to us, like when they are begging for a treat, telling each other off, growling, meowing pitifully, begging, questioning, purring, demanding, angry or simply in pain. We know the calls and the sounds, the moods and the personalities and we feel we know them well. However, at times these cats are puzzling and mind boggling, often funnier than hell, and on occasions maddening. Those of you that know me well may call me The Reluctant Cat Lover, but you would also know that the stories below come from the heart. I feel I could write a book called “All I Needed To Know I learned from Living With Four Cats,” but I’m not that ambitious. All I’ll do is share with you a few of their daily moments, those that have made an impression and stayed the longest in our memory. Here’s to the cats.
Myth # 1: Cats always land right side up
It’s 6 a.m. and I walk out of the bedroom into the kitchen, intent on making some breakfast and relieve the litter boxes of their night deposits. The familiar “thunk” greets me from behind. One of the cats had been sleeping, again, on top of the kitchen cabinets. It is a long way up there for a cat. It takes them through a somewhat tortuous path that starts in front of the cabinet that has the microwave with a jump onto the narrow space before the oven with barely enough space to crouch and take the next leap, to the top of the refrigerator, navigating magnets, notes and a few other obstacles. Up on top of the fridge, there’s a small BBQ lamp, three boxes of cereal, a box of peanuts, one of cashews and a bag of organic prunes. Not a lot of space. But that’s not the final destination. One more jump takes them to the top of the wall-mounted cabinet, where there is a wooden bowl, a strange piece of driftwood and a metal sculpture of a mouse. Between these things, there’s just enough space for a lazy cat to while away the hours.
Austina had the turn for the high-rise perch. Other times I’ve seen Boots up there, and I wonder how he can move so much biomass up that high without making a mess (he’s a 20-lb feline behemoth, our own whiskered Lothario). Well, not making a mess is not completely accurate, because I do find notes, magnets and cards in odd places in the kitchen, no doubt the results of a misplaced paw in his attempts to climb that mountain. So, back at the breakfast moment, I hear the “thunk” that indicates that one of the cats has jumped down from the top of the cabinet onto the refrigerator top. I turn and see Austina, trying to maintain her elegant landing position, starting to slide too far to the front of the refrigerator, carried by the momentum of her sleepy jump. She manages to make a half-turn and stretch all her front claws in an attempt to gain purchase and not fall off. Well, refrigerator surfaces do not yield to cat claws, at least not easily. That darn baked-on paint. So, off over the side goes her butt, which if you can picture Austina in your mind, is the largest, heaviest part of her. No match for the front end, the rear end gives in to the forces of gravity, but her mind is still on salvage. She slides off, clawing madly at anything to hold on. She makes a grab for the cashew box, which being light, just adds to the mass that is starting to spill over down the front of the fridge. Her paws move fast, Ginzu knives on speed, magnets fly, lots of them, the cashew box goes over her head and crashes on the floor, spilling everywhere. On top of this mess, Austina lands, not on her paws, elegantly, cat-like, but on her ass, twisted, wide-eyed, awkwardly, with another, less musical “thunk” punctuated by a “meow-grunt” that was at the same time painful and pathetic. She didn’t waste time. She got up, ran over the cashews (sending a number of them to unreachable places under the stove, fridge and cabinets (I’ll be looking for wayward cashews for days) and climbed into her basket by the window, unhurt except for the feline pride.
Useless and strange information: the words on the little magnets that she threw on the floor were “nipple” “two” “blush” and “could” which, creatively together, form the sentence “two nipples could blush” among other less meaningful possibilities.
Useful information: Don’t eat cashews this week at my house unless you don’t mind a cat hair, or two.
Carlos
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