Wednesday's Words for October 5, 2011

It’s been two months since we returned from vacation to discover that we’d been claimed by another cat.

You’ll recall that we named this cat “Spooky” because that sounded better than “Creepy”—and because, quite frankly, the entire circumstances of her arrival, and her behaviour were more than a little of both.

I have been unable to discover any previous owner for this lovely black feline. I’m beginning to think my daughter is right. She believes that whoever owned the cat had been an elderly woman who had been moved into a care facility (Spooky isn’t as comfortable around men, you see). Jennifer tells me that some relatives calm “granny” by assuring her that her beloved kitty went to a good home, when in fact they simply either just abandon it on the spot, or dump it out in the country somewhere.

Spooky is not the first homeless animal the Good Lord has directed our way, and something tells me she probably won’t be the last.

In the next couple of weeks we’ll make an appointment with the vet, and have her examined, just to be certain she’s healthy. However, this was no scruffy alley cat that came our way. She wasn’t obviously suffering from hunger, neither was her fur unkempt looking.

But even without the veterinarian’s exam, there are some things I already know about this new familiar of mine.

As I may have told you, she’d been declawed (front claws only), and, we think, neutered. She was more used to women than men, and more used to adults than children. She’d cottoned to my daughter until I got home. I only had to pet her once, and she decided I was hers.

She’s not a young cat. I think she sleeps probably 16 to 18 hours a day, and she has no interest in playing. This tells me she’s more than middle aged. Our Booty kitty began to follow that pattern of behaviour when he was around nine or ten years old.

Spooky clearly is more accustomed to a quieter environment than the one offered here. Just by her mannerisms you can tell that she’s having a bit of difficulty adjusting to the comings and goings in this house. On top of that, just when she was getting used to the way things were, we re-arranged the kitchen, the office, and got a new TV—which I’ll tell you about next week.

Spooky appears to never have been given the opportunity to develop social skills as they apply to other animals. She doesn’t like that we have a dog, but seems to be adapting to the beast. On Sunday last, the dog wandered into the bathroom. Spooky followed and plopped her furry butt down right in front of the open door. Our poor dog—who out-weighs the cat at a ratio of at least 20 to 1—whined and cried until his daddy came and removed the furry predator from blocking his egress.

Our late Crashy kitty tormented the dog from time to time, and so the dog just assumes this cat will, too. Personally, I’m not telling him about her having been declawed.

There is one thing Spooky appears to hate even more than the dog, and that’s the occasional incursion of the MoJo kitty.

MoJo was the kitten my daughter got that caused her dear Crashy kitty to claim alienation of affection and move to granny’s (that’s here). MoJo has turned out to be quite the little con artist. He’s been visiting me off and on since he was old enough to find his way the two and a half city blocks from my daughter’s to here.

Now, however, he apparently has another house in the neighbourhood, and no longer goes back to my daughter’s (in his defence she did get two more kittens when he was young, and while they all got along at the time, they no longer do). He’s only here and at this other home—where, actually, he likely spends most of his time. We only see him once, maybe twice a week. He comes, eats, and goes, arriving and leaving at will, through the kitty window.

I know one more thing about Spooky that I can share with you at this time. She’s a very, very smart feline. She’s taken to sleeping in a highly conspicuous spot—on the shelf beneath the kitty window, thereby effectively blocking ingress for any itinerant cats, in general, and the MoJo, in particular.

If you go to my blog, listed below, you can see a picture of Spooky, taken while she was in one of her favorite places.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
http://wednesdayswordsbymorgan.blogspot.com/