Many writers have cats. I’m one of them. Still,
sometimes, I wish I'd never gotten hooked on the furry little tyrants when they do things like stand in front of the monitor (butt in your face), or lie on the keyboard, or step on it--unfailingly when you have 5 windows open and are in the middle of filling out some life-and-death form. Or they decide to recline on your forearms while you are typing.
(There's worse pictures, but I spared us.)
These boss-you-around-stories are the ones that people who love cats most enjoy telling. They are also
the ones that make those who aren’t under the spell of Felis Sylvestris Catus wonder
if we’ve lost our collective minds.
Supplication to the Goddess
You are the
Great Cat, the avenger of the gods, the judge of words ,the sovereign and governor of the Holy Circle; You are indeed
The Great Cat!
The Great Cat!
Sometimes as I stand, holding the door watching metaphoric
dollar bills fly out into February, I believe this is truly how the cat sees
himself. I mean, what could I do that is more important than hold the door for
my tiger cat, while he makes up his mind about whether he was, after all, mistaken in his burning desire to go out and harass the winged visitors of the
birdfeeder?
It's still cold and icy out there, even after ten whole minutes inside this boring house...
It's still cold and icy out there, even after ten whole minutes inside this boring house...
Boot in the rear, you think? Well, you could do that, but
just as in human relationships, treating a cat with disrespect will only lower
you in his estimation. What goes around comes around. The return message will be clear, often written in poop. Back in the '60's, I knew a person who
thought he could ignore cleaning the cat box. His cat, of course, soon
registered his opinion by pooping upon his most precious possession—an expensive set of headphones, left on the sofa where the “owner”
reclined for hours engrossed by the latest rock’n’roll. Now, that was a perfectly symmetrical revenge.
All of us who share sleeping quarters with felines know that
while they can be great cuddlers, they can also be disturbing, mostly because they are sticklers for routine. We’ve all slept
beyond the cat-appointed time—only to be awakened by claws
gently scraping along our face—or, delicately along our eyelids—or, maybe, worst of all—a
single claw hooked inside a nostril, an ever-increasing pressure applied in some feline version of the death by a thousand cuts—to speed our sluggish getting up.
A friend shared yet another story about this same long-ago Siamese -- probably the bossiest of all breeds -- who would noisily climb the door molding in her bedroom and then slowly slide down, creating a sound like chalk on a blackboard, while she lay, pillow over her head, desperately trying to collect a few more seconds of shut eye. This alarm clock behavior is prevalent Saturday/Sunday when cat owning working stiffs are trying to sleep in. In fact, for most of my own 9-5, the cat--using one of the above methods--would awaken me exactly two minutes before the dream-shattering beeping could begin. Maybe they just hated that sound as much as I did.
To end, I'll just say that all of my historical novels have feline characters. With such a lifestyle, How could they not?
A friend shared yet another story about this same long-ago Siamese -- probably the bossiest of all breeds -- who would noisily climb the door molding in her bedroom and then slowly slide down, creating a sound like chalk on a blackboard, while she lay, pillow over her head, desperately trying to collect a few more seconds of shut eye. This alarm clock behavior is prevalent Saturday/Sunday when cat owning working stiffs are trying to sleep in. In fact, for most of my own 9-5, the cat--using one of the above methods--would awaken me exactly two minutes before the dream-shattering beeping could begin. Maybe they just hated that sound as much as I did.
To end, I'll just say that all of my historical novels have feline characters. With such a lifestyle, How could they not?
~~Juliet Waldron
