What is it with women and cats? I have only been with one woman in my life who did not own a cat. She didn’t like cats and she told me she never owned one. But she’s the only woman I’ve ever known who wasn’t a “cat person.”
With a dog, you say, “Here, boy!” and he comes! Try that with a cat. Dogs come running to see you when you’ve been gone all day. A cat can’t be bothered and you know if the cat comes to you, it is only to get food or attention for itself.
Dogs do cool things like chase a stick or a ball and bring it back; they play with you. Cats claw the crap out of your furniture. Dogs bark to let you know they need to go out. Cats mark your recliner to demonstrate to you that it is their territory. Dogs make you laugh by chasing their tail. Cats lick themselves all day and then puke in your slipper. Dogs bark at and will even bite an intruder. Cats puke in your slipper.
My first high school girlfriend had cats. I can’t remember their names or even what they looked like. But she had them and it didn’t take me long at all to discover that I was two or three steps below them in the hierarchy of her priorities in life. Maybe more.
One of my more recent wives had cats. She has cats. She always has cats. When one passes on, she brings in another. There are always two. When we were married, her priorities were:
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- Our son
- The cats
- The house
- Her clients
- General Hospital
- The litter box
- Her wardrobe
- UFO research
- SETI
- The cats’ toys
- Her car
- Getting the cats’ nails cut
- Having a surveillance system installed to make sure I wasn’t drop-kicking cats
- Asking me if I’ve ever seen anything so adorable as a cat sitting on a cushion. Wow! That’s amazing, Dear. No normal cat would sit on a cushion like that!
- About a hundred other things
- Me
Yes, I made it to the list. But I was quite a few pages back.
OK. I need you to raise your right hand and swear to never tell this to another soul. OK? I’m serious.
OK.
One of the cats she had was one that I rescued from the Shelter. Yes. Me. I did it. I brought home a bleeping cat.
It was back in the days when I was a reserve police officer. One of our calls took us to the Shelter to get some expertise in ascertaining the cause of death of a cat a woman had found on her front lawn. To my partner and me, it looked like the work of coyotes. The homeowner was sure it was the work of some Satan worshipers she had a hunch were living nearby. We told her we’d take the cat to the Shelter and get a second opinion.
Once we arrived, we took the deceased cat from the trunk and entered the Shelter. We put the cat onto a metal table and the woman said, “Coyotes.”
“That’s just what we thought,” my partner said to her.
They began chatting about various people they both knew and I wandered off towards the back and soon found myself standing by rows and rows of caged cats. When I entered the room, the meowing grew louder. I knew that if I’d gone into the area with the dogs, the barking would have increased as would have the frantic jumping and howling for attention. I did not expect it from the cats.
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But there was more to it than just increased noise. As I walked along the cages, many of the cats reached out their paws to try to touch me. It was as if they were begging for some little bit of human contact. Not as if. They were. They were living in these tiny cages and were reaching out and screaming loudly for contact. What the heck?! I am this macho dickhead. And I’m even more macho because I am wearing my police uniform so I’m trying to be as studly as possible. Those of you who know me realize what a stretch this is for me… but I tried to keep up my projected image of studliness.
Anyway… I’m here with all of these stupid cats, yet I don’t see them as cats. I see them as God’s little creatures that are desperate for some human contact. Shit. Before I even realized it, I was reaching out to touch some of them. And nearly every one pressed their head against the bars of their cage, begging for me to touch them, to scratch their head, each crying out for contact.
And damn my damn wife for having such an effect on me that I, instantaneously and with no warning, went from someone who sees cats as loathsome vermin who puke in your slipper to someone who felt the anguish of those poor lonely animals.
I wondered what the fuck was wrong with me?! As I tried to shake my head and jar some sense into my formerly functional brain, my eyes came to rest on a cage on a middle shelf. There, sitting in the middle of the litter box within the cage, was a tiny kitten. She was a long hair calico who was small enough to have fit into one hand. She sat in a sphinxlike position and I could clearly see stitches in her head and along her lower jaw. She looked at me and tried to meow, but she was so small and weak that no sound emerged. I couldn’t reach into her cage to pet her and this sad, little kitten pushed me to my breaking point. I turned and left the room.
My partner and I returned to patrol and throughout our shift I kept seeing that little kitten and her pitiful attempt to meow. I worked an early day shift that day and we were finished at 4:30. To this day I do not know what possessed me but I drove from the back lot, straight to the Shelter and asked for the little calico. The woman waived as many fees as she could and I took the little kitten home.
I walked in and my wife was shocked to see me with the little kitten. “Who is this?” she asked.
“I think her name is Tabbitha,” I found myself saying.
She took her from me and fawned over her while having me explain to her how I’d come to find her. I told her how I’d been to the Shelter that day and that the woman told me someone had brought in this kitten. She’d had a gash on top of her head and that her lower jaw bone had been exposed, as if she’d been caught in a small motor or had some other such accident. They’d had her sutured and cleaned up before I got there. My wife was still amazed that I’d shown compassion towards a cat but she set aside her wonder and immediately had me drive her and the kitten to the vet for a checkup and shots.
The kitten was timid to the point of being reclusive. We’d have to look for her under furniture to find her. My wife insisted that the kitten couldn’t find the food bowl on her own and she had to hunt for her a few times a day to hand feed her. She seemed to be doing well, but within a few days all of the fur on her neck fell off and was soon replaced by an open wound. This caused several more trips to the vet to ascertain that it was probably an allergic reaction to the shots. All of this neatly corresponded with the axiom that no good deed ever goes unpunished. The shots and suture removal and the treatments for the open wounds caused by the shots cost me close to $1,000.
For some reason, little Tabbitha never grew to be too big. The majority of her girth was fur. She spent most of her life in the bottom drawer of my armoire. I took out most of the crap I’d thrown down there and put in a comfy towel for her. She was fairly healthy, though, for the rest of her life. I was the first person she allowed to pet her and she rarely went to anyone else. Her meow grew from silent to being barely audible. She only lived to about five or six years of age and died at the Vet while undergoing some procedure or another that my wife and the Vet insisted she needed.
I hate cats. In my opinion they are only a responsibility and offer nothing to me in return. Sure, I’ll clean out a little box when my girlfriend is gone. I’ll make sure they have food and water. But that’s it. You can have all the cats you want. They’re just not for me.
But I do think of little Tabbitha now and then and wonder to where she’s gone. You’d better not ever tell anyone.
