Relative Something

It’s the cat. I’m generally of a mind not to go on and on about our cat, Kitty. I’m not really a cat guy. Many people have come to believe I’m not a pet guy at all. Not true. Well, not accurate. I’m not a pet guy of the suburban house, pet on a leash, critters in cages type. If we lived in a rural area, I’m pretty sure we would have had dogs. But the issue I’m not wanting to go on and on about is all about Kitty.

Kitty was certainly not my idea. She was a Valentine present to the kids from my wife. I just allowed it to not be a battle I would wage. For the sake of the family, I would tolerate living with a cat for a while. How long is a while?

Now the kids are grown and gone, yet the cat remains. She must be growing lonely as heck. All day long there is no one to play with. By the time I get home in the evening, she is starved for attention and loiters underfoot wherever I turn. And she meows. A lot. It is as if there might be a way to annoy a person who is not a cat type. Welcome to my world. I was clueless about all the details that Berkeley Breathed’s character creation, “Bill the Cat,” embodied, in the comic “Bloom County”,  but I really, really loved it. Aack! Now I understand it to a whole new depth.

Turns out that our Kitty happens to be one of those classic vomiting felines. We get the full range from coughing up a fur ball to emptying the contents of her stomach for no apparent reason. Ack.

I recall a time when the cat was in her early years with us,  Kitty would sometimes climb under the covers and sleep with Elysa. For the most part, Kitty has never been a lap cat. She never generally tolerated much in the way of extended contact with a person. Now, that has changed again. For whatever reason, Kitty now has a persistent urge to climb in bed with me, under the covers to sleep against my body. It was quite a surprise the first time, and then a little cute the second time. I never got around to plying the art of discouraging the behavior and now it seems to be her compulsion every night. If I fail to provide easy access, I get the meow cries, any time of the night she decides she wants in. One night when I was too tired to bother acknowledging her, she added pawing at me while she meowed. Just what I always wanted!

I am contemplating what level I would need to raise the reward to for the first child that finds the cat a new home. It’s becoming an increasingly likely ploy for me since the morning last weekend when I discovered some pieces of cat litter in our bed after one of her midnight rambles to and fro while I had tried to sleep. Lovely. Ack.