Eccentric Flower:199901/the tale of one bad cat

nineteen january

the tale of one bad cat

I like dogs well enough, and I'd keep one if I had a nice big yard (since I favor the kind of dogs that can knock you over if they jump on you). Dogs do not provoke any strong sentiment in me one way or another; they're nice to have, but not essential.

On the other hand, I have never lived without the presence of cats. All my life, there have been one or two of them around the house - barring a few unexplained dry spells.

I can't imagine not having a cat. Yet cats are frequently some of the most annoying beasts around. They don't obey, they don't even listen, they want attention when you don't want to give it to them and vice versa. They alternate between an apathy so profound it makes you want to shake them, and running around psychotically shredding the furniture. They rarely get along with other types of pets, each other, humans, plants, or assorted wildlife.

There's something wrong with this picture.

Furthermore, cats cause divisions in humans the way no other pets do. All right, your lover may not like the dog jumping on him, or may hate the way the hamster cage smells, but I know far fewer cases of lifelong emnity over dog-ownership than I do over cat-ownership. You can have a mild, "take it or leave it" attitude about dogs, but with cats, the tangle of emotions is strong and usually strongly biased.

Cat owners: Did you ever look around your house and think, "I am keeping small animals in my house! Whatever has possessed me to keep livestock in my home? What are we humans thinking?" I do it all the time.

Dogs don't inspire that kind of thinking, because properly trained, a dog is a member of the family. A cat is like a permanent houseguest - one for whom "properly trained" is an oxymoron.

"500 channels and nothin' but cats."
- The Simpsons

I try not to talk about cats here. I have a lot of cat anecdotes from my years of cat ownership, it's true, and some of them are very entertaining, because many of my cats have been highly eccentric, even by cat standards.

But I've noticed that online journallers, as a whole, tend to be pro-cat ... they own cats, and they love to tell cat stories. Why this should be, I do not know. I merely report my observations from the field.

I don't feel like I should add any of mine, in short; there are enough cat stories online already.

But ... today I am going to bend my rules a little bit and tell you about the Other Cat.

- - -

As you may know, we have two cats. One of them, although she eats like a dog, is catlike in most other respects. Her name is Inu, and she has already had plenty of attention on this website in the past. Spoiled beast. She even has an email address ... but even though I read all her mail to her, she never writes anyone back.

Inu gets all the publicity because, like Zsa Zsa, she knows that fame is her due. The other cat is camera- and publicity-shy. His name is Mr. Peterson. (He is named after a little black cat in a strange cartoon called Jim's Journal, a sort of existentialist cartoon which, like cats, you either love or you hate. Its author, Scott Dikkers, is also the man in charge of The Onion, which everyone on the web but me seems to read regularly.)

I don't have a photo of Mr. P to show you, but Rob made a little graphic the other day which not only matches the cat's appearance pretty closely, but also his personality. I have reproduced it here with Rob's kind permission:

Mr. P spent a lot of time in the closet - figuratively and literally - before I moved into this apartment. (Both cats precede me by some years.) He was classically paranoid and seldom seen by human eyes. But for some reason, he decided that he was completely in love with me, my scent, and anything that spent a lot of time in contact with me, like my clothes and my blanket. Within a year, the cat had become my groupie. And no, I didn't encourage this. In fact, I may have made a mistake in trying to discourage it, because the cat is a born masochist.

If you scold him for something, he very clearly cops an attitude of, "You're right. I've been extremely bad. I think you should punish me some more. Pleeeease?" If you pick him up off whatever surface he's not supposed to be climbing on, and drop him unceremoniously on the ground, he gets back up and begs you to toss him around some more. I'm not saying I abuse this cat, mind you - I'm saying he'd probably love it if I did.

This behavior is very odd in a cat. Cats are supposed to look at you, sniff haughtily, and ignore you. Right?

So I have one cat that acts like a dog, except he eats like a cat - and another that is exactly the reverse. Welcome to our house.

He also gets bored easily. He is the shredder, the scratcher, the leaper, the fight-picker, the eater-of-dustballs, the carrier-off of odd junk (which will always be deposited in his favorite, most secure spot - the center of my side of the bed). All of these things happen when he's bored. And the only time he's not bored is when he's about three inches from me.

If I were going to have a groupie, couldn't it have been some good-looking human?

Anyway, that's the story of the Other Cat. Although I seldom mention him, you can always assume he's around. Usually hollering at me while I type (he's also very verbose). Both cats resent the computer tremendously; it gets more attention than they do.

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