Cat v. human psychology

I’m starving my cats.

Not to kill them, you understand.  I’m just making a point.

Sometimes you have to hang tough with the kitties.  If you let them rule the roost, well then, there you are with the chickens.

Pardon my barnyard logic but I’ve pretty well had it with these two telling me when to go the store and what to buy.  I am the adult human here!  I will assert my authority.

It all began when they were tiny, fuzzy babies.  I went through an extensive process to find the perfect wet food for my precious, but persnickety companions.  It involved sampling, observation, label saving, note taking and cataloging all the brands and varieties they rejected out of paw. 

I had begun to despair when, at last!  “I (Heart) My Cat!”  – Yes, that’s the real name – met their high epicurean standards.  We had a winner. 

I relaxed and bought it by the case.  These fine felines snarfed it up and life was very good indeed.

But one day, one fateful day, my male kitty, I’ll call him “Frick,” left some tidbits in his dish.  Then he hovered over it and worked carefully around the edges, scraping the floor as though to cover it.  Ignorant, I laughed. 

Oh look, I said to my unsuspecting self, Frick is hiding his leftovers from the hyenas and jackals.  Hahaha!  These kitties are so much fun!  I just love watching them behave like miniature versions of big cats in the wild!

Next day, his buddy, little Frack, did the same thing, methodically scraping imaginary brush over the carcass of I (Heart) My Cat shredded chicken morsels. 

Within a few days, Frick and Frack were asking for lunch then turning from their bowls after a quick sniff, as though repulsed by the high-end meal I’d laid out for them.

Ack!  I thought.  Oh no!  Whatever will I do? 

At mealtime, my beloved Flotsam and Jetsam wound themselves around my ankles, particularly on the staircase, ostensibly showing affection, but not-so-subtly reminding me that they would commit the perfect crime if I didn’t find the perfect food for them, again, soon.

My husband was unmoved.  He reminded me of how he quit climbing trees, after the first two, to save little Jetsam from the heights.  “She’ll come down eventually,” he said.  “You never see cat skeletons up in trees, do you?”

“Put their food down.  When they’re hungry, they’ll eat!”

It reminded me of the time our son was about ten.  He’d persuaded us to add a pet rat to our menagerie, which at the time consisted of only a dog, two cats, a turtle and 10 goldfish.
 
All the adages about kids learning responsibility with pets swam in the murk with the turtle and the fish.  It was on me, of course, to tend to them all.  To my surprise, I even learned to love the rat.

And that rat lived a long, long time.  A long time.  He grew to be an elderly rat.  Splinter. 

Then one evening, finding Splinter hungry and unfed again, I told the kid he also would have to go without dinner. 

Not to kill him.  Just to make a point.

It didn’t work with him either, though we got a chuckle that evening on hearing our only son moaning behind his bedroom door, identifying with Splinter at last, “Just one little crumb…!”

But my furry Leopold and Loeb are unmoved by psychology.  They have a serenity about them.  A certain calm that comes from the confidence of knowing they’ve already won.  “Only he who struggles, loses,” they seem to be saying with their clear gaze.  “We can wait.”

It’s unnerving.  I don’t think I can take much more of it.  The passivity.  The nonchalance.  Aren’t they hungry, for God’s sake?!?

Of course they are.  I found myself scanning the documentation of our first foray into the realm of kitty cuisine.  What had they spurned and what was left to explore?    

Now at the pet food store, seeking samples whose labels they wouldn’t recognize.  Two of each in case the first taste extends to a second helping.

Arms laden, I head home, anxious, hopeful. 

Here kitties!  Mmmm!  Try this!  Here you go! 


At least I made my point.

Who's Calling Who "Creepy"?

My cats are creeping me out. 

Twice now, when my husband was out of town, I’ve awakened to the sound of running water.

OK, it didn’t wake me up.  I got up for another reason and heard the water running.  Or, maybe I heard the water running in my sleep, which in turn made me want to get up for that other reason…but never mind!   

The point is, it’s creepy to be alone in the house, hear a sound you can’t quite identify, follow it down the stairs and into the bathroom on the first floor in your bare feet just like in scary movies, doing everything as though it had an ominous soundtrack, to find the water running full force in the tub!  Not funny!  Creepy. 

In their weird nocturnal shenanigans the cats must have mistaken the hot and cold levers for a spider or a bug, jumped up and pulled them down, turning on the water.  That probably was pretty funny before the creepy part about the water running in an empty house in the middle of the night with the bare feet and all. 

And the kitties?  Where were they?  Not to be found.  Far away from the scene of the crime, coiled together, sleeping sweetly.  The only evidence of their involvement, tiny paw prints and tufts of feline fur, could have been left any time.  Not enough for a court of law or peace of mind. 

I know.  They’re just kittens, less than a year old.  But I had a long stretch of civilized life with a mature, dignified, well-mannered, sedentary cat: Susan, my gentle companion.   

Last July, at 21 years old, she passed on to that sunny window seat in the sky.  New kittens made the perfect salve for my broken heart.  I took my own advice and got two.  They’ll keep each other company, I always said.  

No…they’ll split up and out flank you. 

I’m like a grandmother raising her own grandchildren.  They are way smarter and much more nimble than I am.  I underestimated the focus and determination of the kitty mind.   

To wit:  They flipped the faucet again in the middle of the night!  This time in the kitchen sink.  You have to investigate, right?  You can’t just wake up and say, ‘Oh, that sounds like running water again,’ and go back to sleep.  It’s dumb to get dressed at 2am just to go downstairs; so there you are again, barefoot in your nighty.  A most vulnerable feeling.  And when I turned to go back to bed, there they stood, eyes wide, saying nothing.   

Spooky. 

Susan hadn’t fought me for a drumstick in a couple of decades.  Now Jesse lurches at me with the single-mindedness of that alien creature in… “Alien.”  Make no mistake: He will have chicken.  Uma, his sidekick, gazes pointedly with amber eyes.  It’s unnerving.  She commands a sense of fairness.  If he gets chicken, so will she.   

So, now I’m obliged to steal into the kitchen for my lunch.  I just want a few bites of my chicken sandwich without having to keep moving and throw elbows.  Like a ridiculous loser, an alcoholic surreptitiously sneaking a drink, I chose the moment to make my move.   

If there were music to this scene, it would be plucking on the strings of a harp.  Tink, tink.  Tink, tink, tink.  Maybe those are piano keys at the extreme right end of the keyboard.  Tippy toeing through the hallway, past the door where the cats sleep.  Did they raise their heads?  Turn an ear?  No.  I’m safe.  

Down the stairs.  A breath.  OK.  Straighten up.  More confident now, to the refrigerator.  Tug on the handle and it opens with that sucking sound, the sound of a galosh (single for galoshes) being freed from mucky muck. 

Pause.  What was that?  A thump?   

Oh no.   

A jingle.  Trotting.  Their turn to tink – needle-pointed claws on the hardwood of the staircase. 

I scan the kitchen frantically.  With only seconds to spare, I bolt into the pantry.  Yes!  I’m standing in the pantry, eating my sandwich, clutching the milk carton, and staring at my cats through the leaded glass door.   

They stand and stare back, oh-so-mature, wide-eyed, shocked at my subterfuge.  All this to avoid sharing?  An adult in the pantry…!  Really. 

“Now that,” they seemed to be saying, “is creepy.”

Who's Putting Whom Out of Bed?

A new study out of the University of California, Berkeley, says that we should put our pets out of the bed. They’re germ-laden and will cause us more illness. So says the UC.

Not only do I protest this weak science, my cat does.

My cat will be 21 years old in June: Susan. That’s almost 140 in people years. Though she eats well, she’s thin and demanding. She spends her days on the deck in the sun, and her nights under the covers, cozied up to the small of my back.

She works the system and gets pretty well whatever she wants---unlimited petting, space on the lap, love, admiration, and amazement.

Susan’s always been small. She peaked at about 6 pounds when she was five or six years old, long ago. She’s tiny now, barely 5 pounds. When people first see her, they invariably think she’s a kitten.

Once, when she was young, I saw her whip a big white fluffy cat who dared to look comfortable in our back yard. She watched him with her head low. She growled long and steady to give fair warning. At this, he turned and gave her a lazy look, underestimating the force of her will.

In a flash, Susan leapt on him and they had a cartoon cat fight. A frenzied cloud rose before my eyes with only the occasional paw or ear identifiable as they screeched and yowled in a wild, wild scramble. Then they separated, landing face to face for an instant before the white cat broke and ran for the fence.

Susan watched him for a moment, then decided he wasn’t exiting fast enough to suit her. She lit into him again, catching him on the haunches just before he bounded up and over the enclosure with one last howl.

She sauntered back to sit at my feet, smoothing her coat and pulling tufts of white fur from between her toes, never looking in the direction of the interloper.

In her prime, she killed a bird every day, quite disconcerting for a bird lover like me. I used to come home to the scene of the crime. She brought the slow and the weak to my bedside time after time, dismembering them, eating bones, feathers and all. Mostly I would find feet, beaks, a smudge of blood, and the occasional entrail. Now she watches birds from the windows, occasionally chattering at them, more often showing only detached interest.

She killed a squirrel once, leaving him stretched out in the center of our bedroom with only a hind leg missing. We discovered him after an appraiser had surveyed the entire house, including the bedroom, without mentioning the gruesome scene. (In spite of this, the house appraised well, and we refinanced successfully.)

Back in the day, Susan had a favorite toy, a catnip mouse with pink ears and a leopard-print body. She played with him daily, crouching behind chair legs to ambush him in the hall, sliding across the kitchen floor with him in her jaws, tossing him in the air. She traded that mouse once for what she seemed to perceive as my favorite toy, a furry trinket from Alaska she saw me fawning over after our first trip there. I came home from school to find her leopard-print mouse sitting on the shelf where the souvenir had been, and later found the trinket in the kitchen next to her dish.

Susan rode with us in our big black Chevy Blazer when we moved here from Oklahoma, adjusted to two more changes in residence, supervised two Labrador retrievers, and still travels with us when we go for weekends on the coast or a week in Oregon. She’s a wise old friend and respected confidant.  

And not once, in all these years, has she made me sick.

Put her out of the bed? I don’t think so. I prefer to rely on the long-standing, well-established research that says human contact with cats (and dogs) enhances our lives, reduces our stress, diminishes the blues, and brings us joy. That matches my experience with the venerable Susan. 

Besides, I’m a little intimidated. If she knew about the research, she might put us out of the bed!