My apartment is full of cats. I can’t walk anywhere when I’m home (including out the door), without tripping over at least one cat, and seeing their little cat eyes stare up at me with that mix of confusion, indignance, and curiosity that is pure cat.
We have five cats inside, and at least as many that frequent the front steps.
I love cats, because cats are, I believe, some of the most imperfect creatures ever created. I base this on the fact that a cat’s primary goal in life is not procreation, or even, I think, survival, but dignity. I don’t know if this is a learned trait or an instinct, but every cat I’ve ever met has been trying his or her little heart out to be the most dignified creature in the room.
The problem is that cats, while well equipped for protection with large, pointy teeth and retractable claws, are not actually all that dignified. For one thing, when they’re hunting they wiggle their butt around in the air, shifting from one paw to another. There is nothing threatening or dignified about that but wiggle, it is pure cute and nothing else.
Similarly, cats’ tails are not actually attached to their brain stem. Like the dinosaurs, I believe that cats actually have a sort of secondary brain in their butt, right by the tail. This is not to help deliver pain messages due to their monstrous size; this is their tail’s brain. It doesn’t communicate much to the main brain. A cat’s tail is almost always going to betray the cat.
The best part about this search for dignity and inability to maintain it is that a cat’s first instinct when they have embarrassed themselves (which happens quite often) is to clean the indignity from them. This is why cats clean themselves so often. It’s also why they get hairballs: that much indignity is hard to digest.
One of the cats in the house is mine. Her name is Alice, and she is not a smart kitty. While cats are able to maintain a level of independence and keen wit that will never be matched by a dog (all you dog people out there, note the word “wit” being used, not “intelligence”. Intelligence is a word we humans use to measure how smart something is. Wit is something more insidious, and qualitative), they are quite capable of being dumb. Alice is dumb. If a door is cracked, she can’t tell its open, and will sit and whine in her chirpy little voice until you open it some more for her to squeeze through. She is next to impossible to train, due to the fact that she doesn’t remember her lessons from one moment to the next. She is continually moving her tail in order to “mark her territory” (she was spayed, but the behavior remained), because she can’t remember if she’s already claimed that particular vertical surface yet or not. I rescued Alice from my ex-boyfriend when he couldn’t keep her any more. He used to smoke a lot in his room, where Alice spent all of her time. The lack of oxygen, I believe, has killed off many of her brain cells.
I love Alice, she’s a sweetheart of a kitty, but she’s not all there.
When I first got Alice, I noticed two habits I had never before observed in cats. I grew up surrounded by them, and thought I had learned all their tricks. I realize now that I had, because these behaviors are not tricks of Alice’s. That would require more preplanning.
Firstly, she has a disconcerting habit of staring up at the ceiling for prolonged periods of time (we’re talking a half an hour or more) with big, surprised, wide kitty eyes. When she’s doing this, it is best not to interrupt her if you don’t want to risk her wrath. Whatever it is up there that has caught her attention in this trippy state has her paranoid enough that she’ll take even the fondest petting as a dire threat.
Secondly, Alice chases her tail. She really does. She’ll spend a good fifteen minutes leaping around in a circle after that tail. This is part of what makes me think that she has a second brain in there, as it never quite occurs to her that it is in fact her tail, and not evidence of some malicious creature out to get her butt. What is really fascinating about this process is that Alice does not just chase her tail, she’ll actually stop to clean herself, and lull her tail into a false sense of security. You can see her staring at it out of the corner of her eye, waiting for it to stop twitching and lie still so that she can catch it. She hasn’t yet, but I’m sure one day I’m going to have to take her to the vet when she managed to bite the end off her own tail.
In the house we have one other female cat: Bella. Bella was rescued as a kitten by one of my roommates, but decided she loved the other roommate better. This is because Bella is a masochist, and Monica had absolutely no problem with torturing her on occasion. Bella now gets quite annoyed with Monica whenever she is kicked out of her room, and will instead try and sneak into mine.
Alice is always lying in wait for Bella. It’s fascinating to watch. Bella will creep in with her head held forward, peering around the room for the threat of the other kitty. Alice will then notice her, and sneak around the corner of the trunk, just out of Bella’s view. Once Bella gets far enough into the room, Alice will wiggle her butt and pounce, sending Bella screeching out the door like a little orange cannon ball. They both seem to think that this is great fun, and will often repeat the process several times in the night.
The other three cats are male: There’s Fred, the newest addition, a five year old black cat that we rescued from outside when he was bit on the foot by a snake. Fred is the proverbial scaredy cat. He spends all day underneath Anne’s bed, only coming out when Anne herself is in the room to protect him. Interestingly enough, Fred is technically Monica’s cat, not Anne’s. He and Bella have decided to switch owners. Fred and Alice’s archnemesis in the house is Bounty. Bounty is our sole white, long haired cat (other than Bella and Bounty, all of our cats are black). He is an adolescent. His favorite thing to do is lie down on a girl’s boobs and purr like he’s just discovered heaven on Earth. He also drools, and angsts. He is the only cat I’ve ever known who could angst like a teenager. He loves to chase Bella around the house as much as Alice does, but when all three get into the chase, it always results in a fight, because Bounty hates Alice. I don’t know why, except that Alice gets my boobs more often than he does.
Finally, there’s our very own old man cat, Blue, aka Boo. Boo is fifteen years young. He still chases anything that moves, and goes nutso over catnip. He also takes care of the other cats, and was the one to teach Bella and Fred how to use the litter box. He is currently teaching Fred how to talk.
Yes, Boo talks. All the time, and at high volume. His main words are “no”, “now”, “out”, and “down”. “Now” is his current favorite, because Anne has taken to going on vacation out of the home and leaving him behind. Of the five cats, Boo is the only one who has managed to maintain a sense of dignity for a prolonged amount of time. He’s a whiny old man, and if things don’t go his way, he will yell and scream until they do. Even when Anne decides its time to cuddle him, he does it with dignity. Bella could take a few lessons from him. Maybe that way Boo wouldn’t have to be cleaning her all the time.
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