Considering that
our Tonkinese cat Moby sleeps about 22 hours a day, he still manages
to get himself into an awful lot of trouble (during those remaining 2
hours of the day). This is a cat who hides under the blankets or in a
closet when strange people come to the house. All it takes for both
cats to scatter into the nooks and crannies of the house is a ring of
the doorbell. The difference between Moby and his sister Cookie, is
that Cookie is ruled by her stomach. She'll come out to inform us
that it's meal time regardless of who's in the house when she gets
hungry enough (which seems to be every few minutes). Then there's no
ignoring her until she gets her bowl of chicken and liver Fancy
Feast.
Moby, on the other
hand, does not come out to request food or a lap if he hears people
who don't live in the house. As my father likes to say, “Moby only
sees people by appointment.” So Moby tends to get into little fixes
when he's alone and bored- and there's no one to save him from
himself.
A few days ago we
got a knock on the door from the guy who lives downstairs.
“Do you have a
brown cat at home?”
“... Er, yes.”
“Are you sure
he's actually at home?”
My parents just looked at each other, and then back at the neighbor.
“Why?”
“Because there's a big brown cat on my balcony.”
My mother looked out the window and found Moby staring at her from
the balcony below us. We don't know how he got there, whether he
jumped or fell but my feeling is that he was discombobulated by the
presence of the sukkah on our balcony. “I don't understand what
this strange hut is doing out here! I will jump up on the wall to
investigaaaaaaaaaah!”
So my mother had to go down and rescue the big dumb ball of fluff.
She picked him up and carried him out of the neighbors' apartment but
he freaked out in the hallway and ran downstairs to the lower level
and then back up when he realized his mistake.
He was obviously somewhat traumatized by the whole incident. The next
morning, we couldn't find him. He had last been seen sitting on the
edge of the bed at 6:00 am and by 11:00 we had all 3 of us torn the
house apart looking for him and had gone over to all the neighbors to
ask if they had by any chance noticed a big brown cat on their
balcony or in their house. Who knows, maybe Moby had gotten a taste
for adventure? Maybe he had fallen off the wall again? A few years
ago our next door neighbor had found him roaming around their
apartment, sniffing at the laundry. But alas, no one had seen or
heard a cat. My mother was panicking, thinking he had wandered off to
die. I pointed out to her that even if he had, his body would still
not have disappeared into thin air. That's against the laws of
physics and biology.
I had even started making up flyers to hang in the building with his
picture and our apartment and phone numbers when my father found him.
He'd heard rustling in a box on a shelf and found Moby napping inside
it. After all that, he'd been hiding in a box for 5 hours.
We called my mother to inform her that the big lug had been located
so she'd stop worrying. She was still worried though that he was
behaving strangely. Maybe she hasn't yet figured out that Moby is
just a weird cat to begin with. This is the cat we found hanging by
his front claws from a coat on the coat rack, and the cat that got
one of his claws stuck in his own mouth (we had to call the vet in
for that one). We once watched him get his paw stuck to the underside
of the living room chair while trying to extract his toy mouse from
underneath it. While trying to free himself, he got his second front
paw stuck to the chair. By the time we were able to pick ourselves up
off the floor and stop laughing at him, he had gotten all 4 paws
stuck to the chair. His mouse was still underneath it and was
probably laughing at him too.
One day, Cookie was howling at us and running around the house
looking distraught. She finally ran up to the front door and sat
there yowling until we opened it and found Moby sitting on the door
mat waiting to come in.
Owning cats is a trip. Any cat owner will tell you that there's no
such thing as a normal cat. All cats are weird. It's part of their
nature. Why does Moby like to sleep on my dad's underwear? We'll
probably never know. My dad claims that it's to prevent underwear
thieves from running off with all his clean underwear. Why does Moby
prefer to play with necklaces rather than string? Maybe it's best not
to conjecture on that particular issue. Why does Cookie treat the
humans like furniture? Because she can. Why did she walk into my room
early in the morning, cough until I woke up, and then leave? Because
she's a jerk. Why does Cookie aim when she pukes to get the maximum
amount of splatter? Maybe it amuses her. Maybe she thinks she's
somehow doing us a favor in her warped, pea-sized, kitty brain. She
likes to stand on the stairs and see how many steps she can puke on
at once, while getting the vomit in between the rungs to hit the coat
rack and as much area as possible underneath the stairs as well.
Maybe this is the cat version of ring toss- 'Puke Toss'.
So why does my mother worry when the cats are acting weird? I don't
know. Living with cats is always an adventure. The real question we
cat lovers have to ask ourselves is, even though they abuse us, try
to steal our dinner, poop on our history notebooks (thank you Mimi),
treat us like furniture and food machines, and make general nuisances
of themselves- why do we still love 'em?
Well, for reasons such as these:
That is all.