Our youngest cat is awild thing
Wild thing ... I think I love to hate you
I do not like our youngest cat.
Condemn me all you wish for this unkind thought said aloud, but I know it is this grey tabby, which indeed runs our house, and she is a tyrant. Entirely inhuman.
For starters, she waits for me at the top of the stairs, quietly tucked in the shadows, and chooses the moment I start my descent to cut across my path.
Once, such an occurrence could be filed away in my mind and forgotten. However, as regular as my morning coffee, this darting between legs at the place of least likelihood for stability seems like the underpinnings of an evil plan.
She must want to kill me.
I can see it in her eyes. The kids see it, too. She is the only cat who has remained uncharmed by their cat-whispering ways.
She has let them know with the sharp white teeth glinting out from her wide open mouth whenever they pass within arms’ length of her.
And in her ears, always rotating toward ordinary household sounds, and yet, also ready to flatten against her head whenever her gaze settles on one of the others in the household.
She is a wild thing. Brought inside as a wee kitten, rescued from an encroaching winter and feral life, which began under
a summer cottage porch.
Instantly, there was torment. The other animals were put on notice that this new beast was the one to be reckoned with, and it was she who would do the reckoning.
She never seemed to settle in, but she never seemed unsettled. She owned us immediately.
Though she didn’t seem to love us much at all.
Well ... I used to think she loved me just a little. Owing mostly to the food and provisions I’d inevitably provide when the children who promised to be “the best caretakers a cat could ever have” reneged sometime around week three.
Those were the days
she’d find her way to my side of the bed, settling in around my shoulder, purring
But any sudden move — tossing or turning included — she would perceive as a threat and react accordingly.
By cutting me to ribbons in my sleep.
Four years later — after being rudely awakened in the middle of the night for the unknown number of times by a gash across my knuckles that started at my chin — it seems her love for me continues to be something sinister.
Maybe I shouldn’t have chased her out of the room by flailing my left slipper in the air. And perhaps it’s fitting that my right slip- per tripped me on my way back to bed.
I don’t feel bad.
She is not the victim. In two hours her caterwauling will wake me up again as she seeks entrance and maybe a snack to tide her over until breakfast.
Not wanting to sleep with one eye open, I will fill a bowl with kibble before I let her into the room, putting it down and backing away slowing ... hoping she doesn’t bite the hand that feeds her.
Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.