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| A Pair of Cute Kittens |
What makes some cats lap cats and others standoffish?
I’ve had cats around me most of my life. As a teen, we had a family cat that
would sleep at the bottom of my sleeping bag in the family travel-trailer that
my parents purchased and parked in the Poconos. I hate the Poconos. All summer
long almost every weekend when I wanted to be down the Jersey shore, we were in
the Poconos. Of course, we brought the animals, yes, my younger siblings, but
also the cat and dog. I mean, if I had to suffer through the family vacations
and weekends, they had to too. As with cats, this one was a female, she went
into heat one summer day and her constant howling drove my father crazy. So, he let her loose outside. Of course, she came home pregnant. I can tell you the man didn’t understand birth control. After all he sired five children. This cat later that summer gave birth to a litter of
six. We gave Mom and five kittens away and kept the male calico. For those who
are unfamiliar with cats, a male calico is very rare. But prior to the giving
away the kittens, they would be schlepped to the Poconos with the rest of us.
You can’t leave them home alone. (They wouldn't do that for me either.) No one was going to feed or care for them at home. And as kitties are
playful and nocturnal, they would wake up and play in the middle of the night
running back and forth in the cabin slamming into the bunks, etc. It was a joy
to watch. Cats are very entertaining. Dogs are too, but this is about CATS. Dang-it!
A
time came when the family was moving to Florida. We piled into the family wagon
and headed south. At a stop somewhere in the Carolinas, my mother went into the
camper-travel trailer we were towing behind us. And at that point, Calico sneaked out the door and into the nearby woods. Never to be seen again. With my
parents, it was a wonder they didn’t lose a few kids over the years. However,
as Mom-cat was a lap cat, liking the close proximity to me. Her calico son
was not. He tolerated being held and carried but preferred to be free to roam.
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| An Internet Cute Kitten |
As an adult, I have acquired many cats. With ex-wife #1, we
had first her one cat that was an all white male. We took in a second
little fireball fluff head. Why? Who knows why women do the things they do. Neither cat was a lap cat. Generally, they did their own
thing and avoided human contact. I recall the white one’s name was Dinky. More
like stinky. He eventually was donated to the Animal Rescue league because he
started to show unacceptable behavior. And I was not having any of that. A sore spot I'm sure with my Ex to this day. The second one, whose name I don’t
recall, moved with us when we moved to Long Island. A move I regret to this
day. You know they almost never get snow in Southern Florida or very cold for
that matter. But New York? Long Island? For two years until the marriage thankfully broke up, every winter, I froze my ass. I don’t know
whatever happened to kitty. I escaped that marriage with what little belongings and money I had left. She got the cat and everything else.
Then, there was Mr. Jinx, which I did not name. It’s a
terrible name. He too was a white male that my ex-wife #2 had brought home for
her two preschool aged kids. While Jinxy did not favor my Ex, he totally
abhorred my stepson because tail-pulling has never been on any cat’s top ten
lists of favorite things to do. He liked my step daughter I know this because he would take
nightly residence on her bed. But, he adored me. Many days I would get home
from work before the three stooges, after a while that’s how I referred to
them. Jinx would crawl out from under my bed where he hid most of the days to
avoid contact with the other three. He would jump on the bed to join me, where
I would be laying out resting after a long day of annoying interaction with coworkers. He’d climb up onto my chest, lay down and rub his face against mine
purring away and getting his kitty drool all over my glasses. Like me, he was
trapped in a cacophonous domain. As the Grinch would exclaim, “All the noise,
noise, noise, NOISE,” so would we. We both wished for peace and quiet. The marriage broke up as all marriages do...or
at least, mine. I maintain, not my fault. I did not take the cat with me. I
should have. The poor little fellow died from a burst bladder a few months after my departure because my Ex did
not heed the cat’s cries of pain and get him immediately to a Vet. I was
heartbroken. He was a kind, gentle little guy who deserved better, as I did.
To help get over my grieving, a female coworker suggested getting another cat. I guess nothing says everything is great when
you substitute a new cat for a dead one. I don’t know or understand that
logic, but I did follow her advice. I got me an all-black inbred short haired
kitten from a Mennonite farmer, which was playful and fun, until she wasn’t. I named her Magic, as in
black Magic kitty. I’m bad at naming things too. It appears. Good thing I never
had kids. I’m sure I would be estranged from my daughter, McGillicuddy and my
son, Ezekiel. Anyway, she was no lap cat. She would allow me to brush her, but
be damned if I would go to pick her up. Claws, claws, claws. Then I removed
those claws and they were replaced with hissing, pissing and teeth. We went on that
way for 15 and a half years until she became so sickly that I had to put her down.
In spite of our history, I was heartbroken because I loved that little hissy
fur ball. Toward the end, she welcomed being held. Go ferking figure. Of
course, by then, I had acquired Potter, my current cat. The love of my life. He
is the epitome of a lap cat.
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| Ugly Old Dad and Potter |
I have written over 100 blogs and can’t recall whether I
told the story of Potter. I was living in Northeast Philadelphia in Mayfair,
down the street from the Home of the Bambies, St. Hubert’s High School for Girls. It was
a cold, dreary November morning. It had rained the night before. I was preparing to go to work. I had just
stepped out into the alley behind my house where I had to access my garage to
get to the car. At that moment, trotting down the alley a tiny
orangey-tan kitten came mewing toward me. And if you had a heart as big as the
sun, you would have stopped and picked him up too. The poor little guy was
shivering and no doubt hungry. There was no telling how long he had been out there.
I took him into the garage. I laid out a blanket, some food, water and a
litter box, because I can whip together just about anything when needed in a
moment’s notice. I went to work leaving him safe and snug in the garage. When I
got home, he was there happy and purring in my ear. I took him inside even though I knew Magic was not going to like this. She was a one female cat house. No males
allowed except for the big dummy that feeds her and cleans her poop box.
It was true. She was none too happy. I spent the next few
days looking for Potter's owner (I had named him. I had to call him something.), but no one stepped up, so I kept him. Magic spent the next five years hiding. Potter wanted to play. Magic did not. I had to keep him. The
former idiot owners had put on a non-breakaway collar. A breakaway collar
protects kitty from getting caught on something and choking to death. And I’m
not a fan of choker leashes for dogs either. Also, the same dumb-ass owners had
a flea collar on him. In November! On a kitten! WTF?!?! So, he became the
newest addition to my one cat, now two cats, and one man family.
If you are Facebook friend of mine, you have seen many a pic
posted of my cat. He’s my most favorite photo subject and often in the picture
laying across my chest in my profile pic. He’s 13 years old and still going
strong, sort of. He’s been losing weight over the last few years. He may have
some terminal tummy thing. I’ve spent a king’s ransom on him in Vet bills. And they know nothing. A$$holes. But
I’m not ready to throw in the towel. He has a funny, odd, strange personality.
JUST. LIKE. ME. We were meant to be in each other’s company.
He’s the only cat I have ever known to suffer from separation
anxiety. One spring day I was driving up the shared driveway of my Mayfair
home. My car windows were down. The main floor dining room window was up. I
could hear from the end of the drive a cat howling as if he was being tortured. I was
thinking whose cat is that. Answer: Mine. As I got closer, lo and behold, Potter was in the
dining room window crying his heart out for me. He either knew the sound of my SUV or his
internal clock knew that I was due home. To this day, he sits in the window
waiting to see me and when he does he starts his aria. It’s funny and
disturbing.
He sleeps with me just about every night. I wake up in the
morning; he’s laying next to me. He’s not a large cat, but when he stretches out he takes up half the bed easily. Another of his peculiarities is he likes to be
held. When I get up and stand next to the bed, he comes to the edge of the bed and
stands on his hind feet stretching his body to place his front paws on my belly. This is cat body language for pick me up and hold him like a child. My youngest sister,
who was living with me at the time, witnessed me carrying this cat down the
stairs to feed him. She was amazed at this behavior. She had had many cats in her
life and none behaved anything like this one.
Also, he’s a chow hound. He used to eat his breakfast or
dinner and then nudge his sister cat out of the way to eat her food. Magic was
a grazer. Potter is a gobbler. And with many gobblers, he’d overeat and then
barf it all up usually on the carpet.
He’s also a liar. When my sister was living with me, she’d
wake first and come downstairs first and feed Potter. Potter would then come upstairs and
wake me. I’d carry him down knowing that he was trying to get a second meal out
of me. It’s sort of like the first one didn’t count to him because I didn’t feed it to
him.
Let’s paws…I mean, pause for a moment and discuss my
girlfriend’s three million cats. There’s only three but it seems everywhere I
turn…There’s a cat. There’s a cat. There’s a cat. There’s a cat. Goddamn. How
many cats are in here? Thirty? And they’re all black and all male. They move around so fast you can’t tell if
the one you saw in the living room is the same one you just saw in her bedroom.
Her first one, Smokey, she rescued from the parking lot at
the hospital where she works. It’s the hospital where they check in but check
out with an additional body. She works in maternity. I’ve known this cat for
ten years. He has only recently allowed me to pet him. He even has sat in my
lap. The one thing I thought that would never happen. For years this cat would run
and hide or cower from me. He had been abused by the hospital maintenance staff
who didn’t appreciate paw prints on the hoods of their vehicles. (I’m not even
sure these guys bathe themselves. Why should paw prints get their Fruit of the
Looms in a twist?) Smokey loves sitting in my girlfriend’s lap receiving
scratches and kisses. He tends to follow her from room to room like a dog. He’s showing signs of age but is still mischievous and playful. He’s a
very lovable character. A definite lap cat.
The second cat she rescued was a joint effort by her and her
next door neighbor. Nicky was the kitten of a Mom cat that was living in her
next door neighbor’s shed. Her next door neighbor treated them like her own
feeding them every day. One day Mom cat came out of the shed and promptly keeled
over dead. We didn’t know what happened. Had someone poisoned her? We
didn’t know. We knew mother and son roamed the neighborhood at night. Anything
could have happened. Maybe she was just sickly. Bad ticker or something. So my girlfriend decided to adopt kitty #2. Nicky and Smokey became instant BFFs. Something that Potter and Magic never did. Nicky allowed my girlfriend to pick him up and hold him, but never Smokey. He was in charge and only he would say when he would be touched.
After a while you would not want to pick up
Nicky unless you were wearing a weightlifter's belt because this cat had grown to 16 pounds or more. He’s this fat cat with a
little cat meow, like a big fat man with a falsetto voice. It just doesn’t
match. For years, he’d come to me and let me scratch him, but for the last two
years or so, he has been skittish. Of course, moving twice in two years could
upset a cat. Long story short: She sold her house and moved into an apartment
while waiting for her new condo to be built. She’s not a totally crazy cat
lady, yet. You know like the crazy cat lady on the Simpsons. He’s beginning to
come around again accepting petting but still no lap cat.
Well, not long either after she moved into the condo or
leaving the apartment, I don’t recall, because there was a third rescued
addition, Cinders. I had no hand in naming these cats. I might have named him
Shadow or something mysterious. Well, the happy addition was not at all
welcomed by the other two. No entrance into the all-black feline boys club. And
to boot, he was HIV positive according to the traveling Vet. This means he
needed to be segregated from the other two less you want to infect them.
However, she’s had him several years and he appears to be healthy, happy and
purrs like a motorboat at full speed. He’s almost as big as Nicky and walks
with a gait like a bulldog. But his appearance is deceiving. He loves to be held,
scratched, trips you up when you’re not watching as he rubs and winds his body
between your legs. Receiving concussions from falling has become a norm for us. Someday, the coroner will write down - Cause of death: Cat tripping and too much lovin’.
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| Not my Girlfriend...yet? |
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| Here's one for the road for ya. Isn't he handsome? |
Cats have been in my life for 50 years. This brought me to
pondering why some cats are lovable and cuddly and others are not. I searched
the internet. Here’s what I found.
Cats have personalities like humans. Some are more
affectionate than others. I once worked with a woman who cringed anytime
someone touched her. And I mean something as simple as placing your hand or a
finger on her arm to get her attention. While other people welcome you to a public groping. I know these are opposite ends of the spectrum, but you get the
point. Some cats can be picked up and flipped upside down to play spider-cat
on the ceiling or be held like a baby; while other cats will claw your eyes out
if you try any of those shenanigans.
Here is a list of cat behaviors to help you
to identify your cat’s moods.
- The obvious one first is your cat jumps into your lap purring and doing any of the following.
- Purring is a sign of contentment and happiness.
- Slow eye blinks and heat bunting (head butts), also known as allorubbing are signs of affection.
- Face rubbing against your face, arm, etc. is also a sign of affection and/or a desire for attention or comforting.
- If his tail is swishing back and forth violently like that carnival ride, The Whip, you’ve annoyed him. Back down or prepare to be bit, swatted at or claws dug into your thighs when he leaps to the floor turning around long enough to give you the “stink-eye” and walk away.
- Persistent mewing is an attempt to get your attention. He’s either hungry, or his poo box is not to his liking, or he just wants to be noticed, especially when you are on the phone.
- Side swiping
- Licking
- Laying against you
- Running to see you when you arrive and being “all over” you when you’ve been away
- He eats your tuna fish sandwich. (He may have just been acting the glutton.)
- When his hand licking turns to biting while you're petting him. You've done it wrong.
- When you are holding him and he's doing everything in his power including leaving six inch long two inch deep scratches in your belly. He no longer wanted your attention.
- He takes a dump in your favorite shoes. You did something really wrong.
Here are some of the many sites you can investigate to
become a better cat owner/lover. Click 'em. Go ahead. No one is watching. You've already been knocking off work to read this.
As you can tell, this was a fluff piece. Get it? TTFN.
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