Killer Kitty Comes to Visit
January, 1995
For the first time in
a decade and a half, I have adopted a kitten with whom I intend to
share the next decade and a half. Truth be told, I am an unrepentant
"cat person," and always have been. The reason why I haven't cohabited
with any cats in so long has a lot to do with the fact that pets do
tend to take on some of the characteristics of their owners. In other
words, I have been somewhat scared of sharing my belongings with a
wildly neurotic cat, nor do I care to be reminded of the
implications.
Still, I felt that I'd gotten much better, so when a classmate told me that she was thinking of getting rid of a kitten, after a mere two weeks of ownership (she had some rather naive assumptions as to who owns who), I graciously volunteered to take the little beast off her hands. It gave me a sense of settling into my new life as a starving graduate student, providing at least one piece of frenzied stability in an otherwise frightening and uncertain existence. Besides, I thought, if this one turns out to be neurotic, I can blame in on the cat's previous keeper.
When I went over to my classmate's to consummate the adoption, I was just a little worried about what I was getting myself into. When I actually saw the kitten for the first time, I knew I'd made the right choice. What I found was a tiny little creature that had been given two too many dollops of cuteness when she was built. She's a short-hair, white all over, except for a little patch of grey on top of her head, and a smaller patch of grey at the end of her tail (which everyone agrees is two inches too long). She looked at me with two little kitten eyes that had a fire that will never go out.
We hit it off right away, starting with my falling madly in love with her passionate abandon as she set about tearing me to shreds while I tried to drive her to her new home. As close as I can tell, she's a mixed breed, although not very mixed. Judging from her overall features and the amount of noise she makes, I can speculate with some certainty that she's 50% Siamese and 50% adorable). But, as much as I love her, I must confess that it's been so long since I've cared for a cat that I'd forgotten what the experience is like.
To use the words "domesticated" and "cat" in the same sentence would be to contradict one's self. To use the words "feral" and "cat" in the same sentence would be to understate the true nature of the universe. Using the words "cat" and "harsh mistress" in the same sentence would probably just begin to approximate a description of the relationship we've been having. This cat knows no orders, nor does she understand (or care about) consequences. She has a typically feline wild spirit that makes me feel like a nearly superfluous blood spurting pin cushion, doubling as a can-opener. All of this, of course, just makes me love her even more.
They say
that cats spend an average of 20 hours a day sleeping. My cat makes
these such quality hours that I at times, I find myself wishing it were
21 hours. She divides her time between five basic activities, in
roughly equal proportions. She tears everything I own to shreds,
stomps around the apartment screaming her head off at every inanimate
object she encounters, stares wistfully out the windows (no doubt
dreaming of all those wild things she could be killing), she interrupts
(and eats) virtually everything I try to do (leaving me in the rather
cliched position of having to apologize to a student "My cat ate your
homework") and she lays in my lap and purrs. She does all these things
with the same maniacal, untamed intensity that I am only now
remembering to be characteristic of her type. She may only be conscious
for four hours a day, but I'm not sure I could achieve what she manages
to do in those four hours, even if I had two weeks to work on it.
Naming her proved to be almost as difficult as owning her. I'm not one to just slap a name on a cat, because cats are very particular about what you call them. I spent a couple of weeks calling her "cat," "pretty kitty," "STOP IT" and "NO!" before I finally settled down on what seemed like a reasonable name. I decided to call her "Streak" (and the nicknames "Streaker," "Squeaker," "Streakly," "STOP IT" and "NO!"), named both for the patch on the top of her head and her overall demeanor. It has proven to be an adequate name for her, and one that she'll even answer to... occasionally. Having lived with her for a few months now, I do think that perhaps "Siren" would have been an even better name, given that it describes both how she sounds, and her ability to seduce strangers.
These characteristics became particularly obvious to me on her second excursion into the great outdoors (the first that I know about being the ride to my apartment, this second one to the vet for her shots). Despite all her longing for the outdoors, this second outing proved to be even more terrifying for her than the first. She sang me a song of terror that I'd never thought any animal capable of. Her cries conveyed to me both a level of transcendental suffering that I could only hope to appreciate, and the promise that she'd do her best to share that experience with me as soon as I got her home. Nevertheless, as soon as I got her to the Kuddly Kitty Kastration Klinik, she stopped her yowling long enough to cause every employee there (and most of the other patrons) to fall in love with her.
Unfortunately, she tested positive for Feline Leukemia Virus. From what I know about FeLV, I know that she may not even be there to congratulate me when I finish graduate school. (From what I know about cats, I also know that even if she was there, she couldn't care less anyway.) I got this news while I was at school. I felt so horrible that all I could think to do was rush home, cuddle her, and try to assure her that everything is going to be OK.
This fairly well describes what I did. Ever since I got this news, I try to spend more time with her, hugging her, and trying to will my good health into her body. Of course, Streak is (thankfully) totally oblivious to her condition, although she is acutely aware of just how little she likes being cuddled. I have quite the collection of scratches and scars that bear testimony to this aversion. As if to remind me of how unimportant I am to her, she just tears away from me and resumes her apartment demolition project.
It's just that the other day, when I was pulling my car out of its parking spot, heading for school, I happened to notice her sitting in the window, staring outside. This time, she wasn't staring wistfully at the outside world; she was staring directly at me. And, she didn't look happy. And when I returned that evening, she was sitting in the same window, shouting at me at I approached the door.
If I didn't know better, I'd say she might like me after all.
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