What It Is About Cats

Cats...what is it about them that I relate to so well?  I have many friends and family who are "dog people."  I've tried to be a dog person before.  Sadly though, it always ends in utter disaster.  I simply cannot have dogs.  I suck at being a dog owner.  I also stink at being a "doggie companion;" the P.C. term for dog owner.

Big dogs are the exception, in my house.  Big dogs have a place in my family.  Their place is outside, roaming the property and guarding my family from crazies, nuts, and psychopaths.  I figure that's a fantastic place for them.  We get a security system (in theory anyways) and the dogs are well cared for with plenty of food, water, dog houses and play time with the family.  We even bring them in on cold days and nights.  It might not be everyone's idea of perfect pet care, but it's what works for my family.  Now, there are two minor requirements to be a dog in our family.  First, is potty time.  I truly cannot tolerate a pet using the bathroom indoors.  This sets me off like dynamite and the final outcome is never pretty.  The second requirement is that the four-legged creature must weigh at least 50 pounds.  Anything lighter would be considered a cat, a rat, or road kill.  I refuse to own any 40-pound cats.  I throw poison out for all rodents, caged or not.  And road kill has a prerequisite "deceased" status.

I am a cat person through and through.  Cats fascinate me.  In their youth, they are slender, well-built creatures.  They are phenomenal predators in daylight or darkness and they prey on absolutely everything that moves.  A cat has no concern for the size, strength, or look of her prey.  What sets a cat apart from a dog is that a cat is smart and agile enough to haul ass out of a situation once she realizes she is outmatched.  Our dog would stand there stupidly, wondering whom he can slobber in exchange for a pat on the head.

Even a cat's retreat appeals to me though.  A cat never retreats far and retreating is seldom the end.  She will remove herself from a possibly threatening situation just far enough to be safe, but still close enough to observe everything.  From a safe perch, a cat will sit, observe, ponder, and use her cunning wit to figure out how best to defeat the enemy.  Don't ever doubt that a cat will triumph.  Cats have an amazing ability to focus on total annihilation of foe.  Anyone who thinks elephants have the best memory of the animal world has obviously never pissed off a cat.  I'm fairly certain that black ops military groups have studied the feline in order to better understand self-deprivation and tactics in warfare.  The Marines likely adopted their "swift, silent and deadly" mantra straight from a study of feline abilities.

Despite an underlying need to shed fresh blood, cats are actually quite humble creatures.  Some people may not agree with me here, but this is how I see it.  A cat has no interest in fame or fortune.  She will turn her downy-soft nose up at absolutely everything she does not consider to be crème-de-la-crème.  With a flick of her tail as she pads out of a room she says, "Everyone in the world is below me."  Despite these subtle feline habits, it is not a cat's desire to point out her superiority and rub it in the faces of others.  Victory and fanfare hold no appeal for a cat.  She simply wants everything she desires when she desires it.

As I write all of this, I sit at my computer with none other than a cat, curled up on my lap.  The temperature inside our house is hovering somewhere around the witch's-titty-in-a-tin-bra reading on my thermometer.  My lap is apparently the warmest place this cat has found this morning.  This particular cat, Miss Scarlett, is still a kitten at 10 months old.  She is fairly new to the ways of the world, but she has observed well and studied defeat diligently.  Somewhere along the way Miss Scarlett has even taken the most solemn of kitty oaths: "Though shalt never let a human rule over a cat."

With this in mind, I carefully type so as not to disturb Miss Scarlett.  Why in the hell would I do this, you ask.  Why would I cater to a cat? A cat owner would surely understand my reasons already.  But for the rest of you, I'll do my best to explain.

At first glance, it appears that Miss Scarlett is simply curled up on my lap, cuddling with me out of mutual love, affection and a desire for warmth.  While this may be partially true, this observation is just scratching the surface.  As the person whose flesh is under her, I am keenly aware that Miss Scarlett strategically curled herself in a ball underneath the flap of my sweatshirt.  This move not only brought her closer to the source of warmth and affection, but made my tender stomach easier to reach should her self-preservation instincts kick in.  To remind me of her superiority and my peon status, Miss Scarlett draped a leg across my stomach with four crescent moons peeking out from under her velvet paw.  Their piercing tips glisten in the early morning sunlight.  Quite honestly, they scare the shit out of me.  Their message is sharp and clear: kitty claws are primed and ready to strike with viper-like speed and precision.  Should I make one wrong move to render Miss Scarlett uncomfortable in the least, I will surely regret it within seconds.  My internal organs will dangle from the area where my stomach flesh once was.  It will be my job to hold them in as I attempt to crawl to the medicine cabinet for some antibiotic numbing ointment and a Band-aid.  It might not be enough medical care every time, but it is our staple treatment.  There are really only two reasons we keep ointment and Band-aids in our house.  Reason 1: Kacy.  Reason 2: Cats.

Miss Scarlett is named after Scarlett O'Hara for the unique combination of southern beauty and siren that she represents.  Miss Scarlett is not my cat.  Actually, she belongs to my daughter Kacy, who refers to her as "Scarlett O'Heifer."  I find this relationship both amusing and ironic.  In many ways, Miss Scarlett, the cat, is exactly like Kacy and Miss Scarlett, the character.  Kacy and Scarlett are both kamikaze daredevils who take endless risks and regularly fail to defy gravity, despite repeated attempts.

During Christmas, my parents stayed with us for a couple weeks.  They were so amused by the antics of our kittens that my mom went home wanting a couple kittens of her own.  Aside from Miss Scarlett, we also have another 10-month-old kitten named Claire, an adult Siamese named Slate, and a crotchety old white cat simply named Roy.  Actually, my husband insists that his name is Little Red Roy and that he is aptly named for the little red dot we see every time he stomps off, displeased with us somehow.  Yes, even Tradd has a sick sense of humor about our pets.

For Christmas, my mom bought the cats a kitty playground tree that goes from floor to ceiling.  It has three different mid-air perches on it with a central column and a suspension piece that pushes against the ceiling to hold it in place.  Our beasts swing like rabid monkeys from every piece of it.  In less than a month, I've had to yell, "Cameron get off the cat post!" at least four times.  I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't Kacy I had to yell at, but my image of bliss was shattered a couple days ago.  I once again had to warn Cameron about the dangers of climbing a cat tree.  She was sitting on the lowest mid-air platform, grinning from ear to ear, so I decided to take a picture before I plucked her giggling body off of it.  Kacy, being a tad jealous of her baby sister's share of my attention, informed me that what Cameron was doing wasn't all that special.  She (Kacy) had just been hanging from the second platform all on her own the day before.  Great!  And my mom thought she bought it for the cats.  Actually, I'm pretty sure now that she bought it just for the laughs it would provide.

Aside from the problems with my kids climbing the "cat" tree, I've removed Miss Scarlett twice from a deer head mounted on the wall about a foot away from the post.  This buck happens to be a mount from last year's hunting trip, but Miss Scarlett thinks it is more like a kitty cat circus ride.  I have also had to make it a rule that no cats shall run and leap onto and off of the cat post for at least 15 minutes after eating.  This rule is a throwback to my days growing up in Arizona.  We had a large pool in our backyard.  During the summer, my brother and I were in it from the time we woke up until just before we went to bed each night.  My mom made a 15-minute downtime rule after meals so that she never had to skim vomit out of the pool.  I consider this a logical rule, so I've implemented it in my house too.

Since we don't have a pool our rule applies to the cats, not the kids.  Our cats regularly launch into a game we refer to as their Crazed Monkey routine.  Most cat owners will recognize this routine.  It is marked by distinct fits of spastic energy combined with an arched back and hooked tail.  As our cats partake in this routine they run stiff-legged with claws extended.  This never seems to help their traction on our hardwood floors, but the cats stick to this tried and untrue method anyways.

Cats especially relish having an audience to please and ours are no different.  Miss Scarlett and Claire practice their predator skills in short bursts, hauling fuzzed up kitten ass from one end of the house to the other in mere milliseconds.  They also take great joy in crouching behind pieces of furniture, piles of laundry, or small unsuspecting children to wait for the sound of an approaching enemy.  Upon hearing the enemy, Assault Kitty Number 1 practices Zen with the floor.  She attempts to feel the floor, know the floor, be the floor.  At the slightest trigger, feline rockets launch through the air, retaliatory kitty missile claws lock on a target and engage, and all hell breaks loose in our seldom peaceful house.  With the first blood of war spilled, the smart humans retreat to the outer edges of the room to tend their wounds and stare in awe.

Since the addition of the cat tree to our living room, the kittens use it for all aspects of full-scale warfare during Crazed Monkey time.  They climb it, hang from it, defend it, conquer it, protect it, launch off of it, jump up on it, spy from it, and even sleep on it.  The morning I was forced to implement the 15-minute rule was really no different.

Since Claire and Scarlett had just finished eating and it was a nice warm day, they decided to exercise by playing Crazed Monkey warfare throughout the house.  We humans had a lot to do that morning, so we couldn't take the appropriate time to sit in awe of the kitty antics.  The kittens were feeling neglected.  They regularly tried to engage us by running across our laps, cutting off our escape routes, and even leaping burning candles that had been placed well out of the Kitty Fly Zone on purpose.  After blowing out the candle and slapping a band-aid and ointment on one of the girl's cat scratches, I finally sat down to start school for the day.  Our attention-starved beasts still raced in a blur of spitfire and fur from one end of the house to the other, banking off the mid-air perches for U-turns.

I noticed Miss Scarlett leap from the second ledge and clear the area in a hurry, but thought it odd that she was alone.  Rather than take chase, Claire attempted a different tactic from the safety of the top perch; vomit-bomb Scarlett and the hardwood floor instead.  Claire is our smallest cat, weighing in at about 5 pounds, so I never thought there could be that much vomit.  Claire might have only eaten eight pieces of cat food, but I have an expansion theory to explain the gallon-or-so of ooze that shot out of her.  I'm obviously no Einstein or Pavlov, but I know that when a soda bottle is shaken up, the bubbles fizz and expand and need to go somewhere, right?  Well, the same principle applies here.  All of Claire's stomach contents were dramatically shaken during warfare and needed an escape hatch.  Up and out is the only logical path, seeing as how the other direction takes too long.  Digestion just slows down the exit plan.

Six feet in the air, perched on the edge of the ledge, Claire let loose all of her fizzing food and stomach juices.  Factor in variables such as gravitational pull, height of the perch and the force with which it was expelled to understand why the vomit not only landed, but did so with a sickening "splat!" and a ricochet of backsplash.  It was truly a spectacular display of no-holds-barred feline warfare.

I choked down my own sympathetic stomach acids before I remembered, Claire is not my cat.  She's Storm's cat.  And Storm is old enough to fully care for her, including feeding, watering, scooping poop, and scrubbing vomit splat.  Yeah!  After doing a happy dance, I shouted down the hall to Storm, "Storm!  Your cat just puked from the top of the cat post.  It's all over the floor and some of the walls, but she failed to get Scarlett!"  At this, everyone in the house had to come running in to see the amazing kitty spew all over the living room.  This sent the girls into fits of laughter until Storm realized I called her so she could clean it up.  This, of course, sent me into fits of laughter.  I'm sadistic, I know.

So, despite this hurling heyday, I am left wondering what it is about cats that appeals to me more than dogs.  Probably, it is my sadistic sense of humor.  Cats too are incredibly sadistic.  Anyone who doubts this has never owned a cat.  Maybe sadists seek their own kind for humor and pleasure purposes.  I may never figure this one out for sure, but I'll have to ponder it more later.  Right now, Miss Scarlett's yowls and claws are telling me she wants to be fed three minutes ago.