Pattern, "If A Cat Could Talk" I’ve been on cat duty. Shane and Ashley spent a week in Mexico so I promised to look after his two girls. He asked if we would not only feed his kitties, but play with them for a bit so they wouldn’t be lonely. No problem.
Molly, a sleek, short haired brindle coat, is outgoing, curious and extremely agile. Shane has beams in his kitchen ceiling that she can jump too and swing like a monkey. Zoey is a tubby, black and white hissing snake. The first day there she let me hold her and actually played with a stick that had tantalizing, string ends. I thought, “off to a promising start”.
Day two I think she was annoyed to have to look at us again and swatted me like a fly. Those swipes came with lethal weapons at the end of the paw and the guttural sound of a beast from down under and I don’t mean Australia. Every time we stepped too close to her personal space she powered up and hissed. Whatever tied her knickers in a knot wasn’t going to be fixed in an hour long visit so we didn’t make any attempts to be friends. Her loss for sure. She has the silkiest fur imaginable and I would have loved to caress her, scratch her ears. Every day she perched on the back of a living room chair, a position in which she could laser stare us with sour eyes. Picture Grumpy Cat from the internet....there’s definitely a resemblance.
Molly certainly made up for the unwelcoming Zoey. She purred and rubbed against us for as long as we stayed, reveling in the attention and she got a daily scratching for anything that might have itched. She was waiting for us by the door every visit and greeted us with a sweet meow. Friday evening we stayed a couple of hours, falling asleep on the sofas and Molly lay on my belly, it felt like old times.
I used to be a cat person. That doesn’t mean I can’t be both a dog and a cat lover, it’s just that once I found dogs, they filled a deeper need and I never looked back although I rather enjoyed spending time with my son’s little feline family. Growing up, we always had a house cat, Sandy I,II,III and so on. Every time one passed on we replaced her/him with the same colour cat and they inherited the same name. Maybe it was a ploy to pretend the new was still the old or maybe we lacked imagination. I don’t know why my poor mother allowed us to keep getting cats. She did a lot of complaining that she had to do all the work while we had all the fun. She would threaten “no more pets!” pretty much weekly”. They say, fool you once shame on me, fool you twice shame on you. I remember begging for a replacement cat; promising the moon and she fell for it. Did she secretly love cats despite the fault-finding or did she do it to please me? I will never know…..but I begged like a panhandler on a street corner with please, please, please until the no’s became a yes. I’ll feed it, I promise....please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, I fibbed through well meaning teeth! She must have known they were empty words after each new pussycat landed on our doorstep and nothing changed. She was left to open the cans and scoop out the food, wash the dish, letting the beasts in and out as they were always on the wrong side of the door. I don’t know how she really felt about the cats; there was some serious respecting each others space going on during the daylight hours, hopefully there was a bit of cuddling on the sly once we were in bed.
The last cat in my life was my father’s. A promise I made before he died. It was the first cat I ever had that used litter. It was quite ill on arrival, riddled with a bladder infection and peeing problems, was spraying the house yellow and howled in the nights keeping me awake. She had been spayed, a call to the vet confirmed it, but I was told there might have been a bit of ovary remaining causing the poor thing to go into heat. They fixed the urinary tract infection and said they could open her up and have a look around. Dad’s estate paid for the operation and they found enough ovary remaining to be causing the problem. After that she kept her urine to herself and was quiet at night. We slowly trained her to go outside and she seemed to appreciate having a good sniff of nature, but did her business and then wanted to come back inside.
She was a sweet girl, a beautiful calico angora that was undeserving of a name like Pax so we renamed her Princess to fit her royal demeanor. She acted a bit like a dog in that she would greet you at the door and follow you from room to room. She was very affectionate and cuddled with us on the sofa. She was a bit demanding in that she fully expected us to retire early and would head to the staircase around 11:00 pm and start meowing as if to say, you stupid humans get to bed!
She had a vindictive streak, if a cat can be calculating and vengeful. Hubby would go away for work and while he was away, I let the cat play. She could sleep on our bed in the nights. So when hubby came home he would chase her off the bed. He wasn’t being mean; he had a light allergy to cat hair so it made for uncomfortable nights….sneezing interrupted the snoring too much. One time he caught her on the bed and shoed her off. She waited three days for exact her revenge. He came home from racing and left his sailing bag by the backdoor. She crawled inside and peed all over his gear. It was a spite pee because she moved around and squirted over all the contents of the bag, not just in one spot as a regular emptying of the bladder would be.
The only way to successfully get the smell of cat urine out of anything is with a pair of scissors. I washed his gear and duffel bag in the machine four times and hung it outside for two days and I could still detect a faint whiff of her acidic pong. Any residual odor would mean a future awakening in a summer’s heat and humidity. Considering up to this point, she had never had an accident in the house, it was a pee bomb, a direct hit for not being allowed on the bed and to let him know she was pissed, pardon the pong…...
One day I got detained at work and didn’t get home until 7:00 in the evening and she’d been in the house all day. I worried on the way home that she would be bursting and felt really bad that she was forced to hold it. Well....she didn’t and decided to go on the newly covered armchair we only recently picked up from the upholsterer. Maybe the chair reeked of their cats because they had several and he worked out of his home so I’m sure they crawled all over the chair and fabric. Maybe the smell was unfamiliar; hadn’t been broken in by our family and house smells and she wanted to help that along. Who knows, but she added insult to injury and pinched a well-placed loaf between the cushion and the arm of the chair that created quite the smear.
I smelled urine as soon as I opened the door. It was winter so the heat was on causing the stench to rise and permeate the entire house. It stung my eyes as I followed the acrid trail into the living room and around the corner of our L shaped room. The stain was large, spreading until most of the cushion was damp. I lost it. I have said many times I like nice things and keep them in top order…this was definitely a wart. Knowing how hard it was to get the smell out of hubby’s sailing gear, how in hell was I going to get it out of a cushion? I burst into tears and continued to cry throughout the entire cleaning process. You would have thought someone died by the way I carried on hubby looked like a deer caught in the headlights, didn’t know if he should run or hide. I unzipped and removed the wet cover and started soaking it in the kitchen sink. Over and over I washed and rinsed it all the while bawling and moaning. I got out the vinegar and soaked the fabric and then rinsed and rinsed again and I could still smell it. Maybe the stench was burned into the olfactory walls because it haunted me for days.
Then the foam cushion had to be washed and rinsed, the soap lathering it up until it looked like a ski hill at Wentworth. So much soap and my hands were pruned and raw when I finished. I was sick but it was my fault, I’d been gone too long. I didn’t blame the cat but wondered why she couldn’t have peed on the back door mat or someplace less of a burden to clean? She watched me the entire time from the arm of the sofa and I wonder what she was thinking…possibly “That’ll teach you to be late Missy Chrissy”.
That was the extent of our bad times. Life with Princess was good and she was a connection to my dad. We bonded and I loved pampering her with all the affection she could stand. Unfortunately, about two years after she moved in she stopped peeing and the vet told us that her kidneys were in rough shape and she would not last long. They said I could extend her life with an IV drip, injecting fluid under her skin to be absorbed and flush her system. I did that for several months. We got into a routine and she didn’t like being forced to stay on my lap for fifteen minutes every day but the alternative wasn’t great. She wasn’t in any pain and I didn’t mind treating her at all. As long as she was happy we both were. This wasn’t a permanent solution and I could see when she began to fail and had to make the tough decision.
Once alone, I made a conscious decision not to have any more cats. Working so much it was best not to have any pets and I was without a furry kid until I found my little Honey, the first of my toy poodles. It was love at first sight and at that moment I realized how lonely I had been for a four legged baby.
Once I got to know dogs, they fit my personality better. You can’t make a cat do anything and are too independent for my liking. I have strong maternal instincts that need something to fuss over and dogs like attention. The experts say that dogs have the mentality of a two year old and that’s right up my alley. I so love the loyalty factor and how they make me the center of their universe. I like feeling special and in their eyes I'm the cat's meow!
Molly, a sleek, short haired brindle coat, is outgoing, curious and extremely agile. Shane has beams in his kitchen ceiling that she can jump too and swing like a monkey. Zoey is a tubby, black and white hissing snake. The first day there she let me hold her and actually played with a stick that had tantalizing, string ends. I thought, “off to a promising start”.
Day two I think she was annoyed to have to look at us again and swatted me like a fly. Those swipes came with lethal weapons at the end of the paw and the guttural sound of a beast from down under and I don’t mean Australia. Every time we stepped too close to her personal space she powered up and hissed. Whatever tied her knickers in a knot wasn’t going to be fixed in an hour long visit so we didn’t make any attempts to be friends. Her loss for sure. She has the silkiest fur imaginable and I would have loved to caress her, scratch her ears. Every day she perched on the back of a living room chair, a position in which she could laser stare us with sour eyes. Picture Grumpy Cat from the internet....there’s definitely a resemblance.
Molly certainly made up for the unwelcoming Zoey. She purred and rubbed against us for as long as we stayed, reveling in the attention and she got a daily scratching for anything that might have itched. She was waiting for us by the door every visit and greeted us with a sweet meow. Friday evening we stayed a couple of hours, falling asleep on the sofas and Molly lay on my belly, it felt like old times.
I used to be a cat person. That doesn’t mean I can’t be both a dog and a cat lover, it’s just that once I found dogs, they filled a deeper need and I never looked back although I rather enjoyed spending time with my son’s little feline family. Growing up, we always had a house cat, Sandy I,II,III and so on. Every time one passed on we replaced her/him with the same colour cat and they inherited the same name. Maybe it was a ploy to pretend the new was still the old or maybe we lacked imagination. I don’t know why my poor mother allowed us to keep getting cats. She did a lot of complaining that she had to do all the work while we had all the fun. She would threaten “no more pets!” pretty much weekly”. They say, fool you once shame on me, fool you twice shame on you. I remember begging for a replacement cat; promising the moon and she fell for it. Did she secretly love cats despite the fault-finding or did she do it to please me? I will never know…..but I begged like a panhandler on a street corner with please, please, please until the no’s became a yes. I’ll feed it, I promise....please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, I fibbed through well meaning teeth! She must have known they were empty words after each new pussycat landed on our doorstep and nothing changed. She was left to open the cans and scoop out the food, wash the dish, letting the beasts in and out as they were always on the wrong side of the door. I don’t know how she really felt about the cats; there was some serious respecting each others space going on during the daylight hours, hopefully there was a bit of cuddling on the sly once we were in bed.
The last cat in my life was my father’s. A promise I made before he died. It was the first cat I ever had that used litter. It was quite ill on arrival, riddled with a bladder infection and peeing problems, was spraying the house yellow and howled in the nights keeping me awake. She had been spayed, a call to the vet confirmed it, but I was told there might have been a bit of ovary remaining causing the poor thing to go into heat. They fixed the urinary tract infection and said they could open her up and have a look around. Dad’s estate paid for the operation and they found enough ovary remaining to be causing the problem. After that she kept her urine to herself and was quiet at night. We slowly trained her to go outside and she seemed to appreciate having a good sniff of nature, but did her business and then wanted to come back inside.
She was a sweet girl, a beautiful calico angora that was undeserving of a name like Pax so we renamed her Princess to fit her royal demeanor. She acted a bit like a dog in that she would greet you at the door and follow you from room to room. She was very affectionate and cuddled with us on the sofa. She was a bit demanding in that she fully expected us to retire early and would head to the staircase around 11:00 pm and start meowing as if to say, you stupid humans get to bed!
She had a vindictive streak, if a cat can be calculating and vengeful. Hubby would go away for work and while he was away, I let the cat play. She could sleep on our bed in the nights. So when hubby came home he would chase her off the bed. He wasn’t being mean; he had a light allergy to cat hair so it made for uncomfortable nights….sneezing interrupted the snoring too much. One time he caught her on the bed and shoed her off. She waited three days for exact her revenge. He came home from racing and left his sailing bag by the backdoor. She crawled inside and peed all over his gear. It was a spite pee because she moved around and squirted over all the contents of the bag, not just in one spot as a regular emptying of the bladder would be.
The only way to successfully get the smell of cat urine out of anything is with a pair of scissors. I washed his gear and duffel bag in the machine four times and hung it outside for two days and I could still detect a faint whiff of her acidic pong. Any residual odor would mean a future awakening in a summer’s heat and humidity. Considering up to this point, she had never had an accident in the house, it was a pee bomb, a direct hit for not being allowed on the bed and to let him know she was pissed, pardon the pong…...
One day I got detained at work and didn’t get home until 7:00 in the evening and she’d been in the house all day. I worried on the way home that she would be bursting and felt really bad that she was forced to hold it. Well....she didn’t and decided to go on the newly covered armchair we only recently picked up from the upholsterer. Maybe the chair reeked of their cats because they had several and he worked out of his home so I’m sure they crawled all over the chair and fabric. Maybe the smell was unfamiliar; hadn’t been broken in by our family and house smells and she wanted to help that along. Who knows, but she added insult to injury and pinched a well-placed loaf between the cushion and the arm of the chair that created quite the smear.
I smelled urine as soon as I opened the door. It was winter so the heat was on causing the stench to rise and permeate the entire house. It stung my eyes as I followed the acrid trail into the living room and around the corner of our L shaped room. The stain was large, spreading until most of the cushion was damp. I lost it. I have said many times I like nice things and keep them in top order…this was definitely a wart. Knowing how hard it was to get the smell out of hubby’s sailing gear, how in hell was I going to get it out of a cushion? I burst into tears and continued to cry throughout the entire cleaning process. You would have thought someone died by the way I carried on hubby looked like a deer caught in the headlights, didn’t know if he should run or hide. I unzipped and removed the wet cover and started soaking it in the kitchen sink. Over and over I washed and rinsed it all the while bawling and moaning. I got out the vinegar and soaked the fabric and then rinsed and rinsed again and I could still smell it. Maybe the stench was burned into the olfactory walls because it haunted me for days.
Then the foam cushion had to be washed and rinsed, the soap lathering it up until it looked like a ski hill at Wentworth. So much soap and my hands were pruned and raw when I finished. I was sick but it was my fault, I’d been gone too long. I didn’t blame the cat but wondered why she couldn’t have peed on the back door mat or someplace less of a burden to clean? She watched me the entire time from the arm of the sofa and I wonder what she was thinking…possibly “That’ll teach you to be late Missy Chrissy”.
That was the extent of our bad times. Life with Princess was good and she was a connection to my dad. We bonded and I loved pampering her with all the affection she could stand. Unfortunately, about two years after she moved in she stopped peeing and the vet told us that her kidneys were in rough shape and she would not last long. They said I could extend her life with an IV drip, injecting fluid under her skin to be absorbed and flush her system. I did that for several months. We got into a routine and she didn’t like being forced to stay on my lap for fifteen minutes every day but the alternative wasn’t great. She wasn’t in any pain and I didn’t mind treating her at all. As long as she was happy we both were. This wasn’t a permanent solution and I could see when she began to fail and had to make the tough decision.
Once alone, I made a conscious decision not to have any more cats. Working so much it was best not to have any pets and I was without a furry kid until I found my little Honey, the first of my toy poodles. It was love at first sight and at that moment I realized how lonely I had been for a four legged baby.
Once I got to know dogs, they fit my personality better. You can’t make a cat do anything and are too independent for my liking. I have strong maternal instincts that need something to fuss over and dogs like attention. The experts say that dogs have the mentality of a two year old and that’s right up my alley. I so love the loyalty factor and how they make me the center of their universe. I like feeling special and in their eyes I'm the cat's meow!
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