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| Casper |
What are they? Cats, of course. Who are they? Casper and Boo, in this instance, and they are not our cats, beyond the truth that cats never really belong to anyone, but also because they are our younger son's cats, temporarily relocated to our home while he travels doing important legal stuff.
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| Natasha |
Casper is pure black with a patch of white on his chest. He is a high trajectory cat, shooting through the house, pinballing from room to room, up the walls, across the ceiling. Or so it seems.
Boo is the opposite. Stasis in feline form. Lassitude. Inertia. Boo will spend hours in my son's closet. Just ... being ... Boo. She looks like a cow that's been transformed into a cat form by a witch's curse — a tiny head, the size of a ping pong ball, on an enormous body. No tail, which we originally thought of was due to some mishap, but now seems to be a quality of the breed, though I'm not sure which one that is: the Mini-Holstein Hippocat, perhaps.
Boo actually cares for us very much — for me anyway. A quality I admire in any creature. I'll be writing away and she'll pad into my office and hurl herself onto my lap, sometimes with the help of her needle claws. Which complexifies the writing process, having to reach over and/or around this dozen-pound lump of thrumming fur. What choice have I? It isn't as if I can move her — that would be ungrateful, maybe even bad form. So I stop writing and stroke her. I like the affection. In fact, when the cats were delivered, I couldn't help informing my future-daughter-in-law that dropping Boo off was a lot easier than getting her back will be. She might need a court order.
In the past — yes, we've done this before — we insisted on claw covers, or their nails being trimmed. There was no time for that this visit. The cats were nearly flung at us. I reacted to the change in my typical fashion — by complaining, pointing out the claw-sized divots in the edge of the Shaker hutch — Casper's work. Boo would sooner sink into the ground and vanish than climb anywhere. Though even as I complain part of me realizes that someday these claw marks will be valued souvenirs of their sojourn here.
My wife, using that Actually-Do-Something-About-The-Problem superpower of hers, ordered the above scratching post. Assembling it, I noted that it was impossibly high — showing I can be as slow to process information as anybody, since I've seen Casper leap atop refrigerators — and that Casper would never access its topmost portion. Which he did immediately, as soon as I set the thing out, as a reproach, the "Hey Idiot Look at This!" being unvoiced. At least I had the presence of mind to snap a photo.
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| Boo |
I let my cats claw wherever they wanted. It’s inhumane to have them declawed and I’m not about to try to clip their nails! They do provide hours of sneaky enjoyment!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun column! Having catsat my daughter’s, I know the annoyance of her fighting with herself in the bedroom mirror at 3:00 am, and having most of my jigsaw puzzle ending up on the floor. But how calming, the lap-purring, the scrunching. Thinking of it now makes me smile. Thanks, Neil, for your word-smithing and an entertaining start to the day.
ReplyDeleteYour description of the beloved felines in our lives is so true, Neil! All beloved, each so different in personality and behavior! I always smeared dried Catnip into the scratching posts and pads that I brought for my cats! They are drawn to it like a magnet! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThe post came with a little package of catnip that was supposed to be poured into a little holder. The cat of course knocked the scratching post over and got the catnip all over the floor.
DeleteI just sneezed.
ReplyDeleteHow are the visiting cats reacting with the dog?
ReplyDeleteSee below.
DeleteHahahahahaha, she says as she wipes tears (or is that tears) of laughter from her cheeks.
ReplyDeleteThought you also have a pup named Kitty (of course). What does he/she/they think of the new house guests?
ReplyDeleteKitty is all good-natured love and curiosity. She lets Casper sleep in her bed, eat out of her bowl, looking at me with a kind of bewildered indignation. But to her the whole thing is a party.
Deletecats, meh
ReplyDeletecats know everything...and care about nothing
ReplyDeleteMy old man grew up with dogs, and my sister wanted to blow off college and train seeing-eye dogs (turned down...too young at 17), so I grew up with dogs. I was the only one in my family who wanted a cat. I'm a kitty guy, and have had feline companionship for decades, so I love your cat tales, Mr. S. Your eulogy for Gizmo, three years ago, nearly brought me to tears.
ReplyDeleteYour kitties sound so similar to some of the ones I have known and loved. Onyx is also 14, all-black with a white heart on her underside. But in the sunlight, you can see that's she's really a sort of dark-chocolate brown. She merely tolerates our other female, Gingee, a tortoiseshell of indeterminate age who wants to play. Onyx will have none of it. Other than the occasional hiss-off, they have learned to simply co-exist.
Boo sounds very much like our Schmutzik (AKA Schmootz and The Shmoo), who was a big stocky boy with a sweet and soulful face. He, too, looked like a little Holstein. He slept with us and groomed other cats at night and would lick our flesh (mostly arms) as we drifted off to sleep.
“Schmutzik” (“dirty” in both Yiddish and German) sounds way cooler than “Smudge”…which was what he had on his face-- a lot like a Hitler moustache. Cats that have them are called Kitlers. There are countless pictures of Kitlers online. He came from Cleveland's Italian neighborhood...which made him our Little Italy Kittaly. Even after a decade, The Shmoo is still missed.
A famous cat quote by Jean Cocteau: “I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul." So true. A catless house? Almost unthinkable. And Albert Schweitzer famously said: “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life — music and cats." Bingo. Nailed it.
"and they are not our cats, beyond the truth that cats never really belong to anyone"
DeleteAs the old saying goes, "Dogs have owners. Cats have staff." I grew up with cats, and beyond their noticing that we were kind enough to provide food, for which they were suitably grateful, brushing up and curling around our shins as we operated the can opener, I long suspected that they would cheerfully eat us if they were bigger and we were smaller.
I have to say also, at the risk of sounding mean, that Boo looks simply obese. I'll defer to your veterinarian on that.
I had a cat much like Casper in both looks and temperament. A friend agreed to watch the cat when I was out of town, and gave the cat a new nickname. This was years ago, when the nickname was in common usage : he renamed the cat "InkJet".
ReplyDeleteI saw a comic strip once perfectly describing the dog/cat difference.
ReplyDeleteDog being fed with thought bubble reading “You must be a god.”
Cat being fed with thought bubble reading “I must be a god.”
Love this piece-so perfect. Always had dogs growing up, our son too. But then he got a kitten and I fell in love with that little fur ball. So affectionate, loved being rubbed-not at all like the reputation of being stand offish.
ReplyDeleteLet’s admit one simple fact: cats rule.
ReplyDelete