December daily: Favorite pet

[resonant]

terrio prompts: What is your favorite pet you've ever interacted with (either yours or someone else's) and why?

When we were first married, we went out and got a marmalade kitten. We named him Henry. He lived less than two weeks before crawling into the underside of the recliner and dying of distemper. It was very sad.

It was winter, and -- you know how cat-lovers are always aware of the vast number of homeless strays out there without any hope of a home? -- and yet we could not find a cat. We wanted a cat so badly, and there just were none.

Finally our vet told us about a farm in a town called Good Hope where two sister-cats had both had litters at the same time, so they had ten or twelve kittens between them -- too many even for a farm. So we went out there, and we came home with Alice.



Alice was a black-and-white cat, smallish (classic jellicle), with all her toes black except for one pink one. She was actually kind of an ill-tempered cat. She spent her first two weeks at our house mewing continually at all times except when she was in someone's lap, to the point that it was injurious to our mental health. We tried keeping her out of the bedroom at night (something we've since done successfully with other cats), but she would yowl outside the door for literally hours, with brief breaks during which the spouse said she was going downstairs to gargle.

It got so bad that one day while the spouse was at work, I sat down on the kitchen floor (where she immediately got in my lap) and called him up and said, "I can't bear it any more. We have to give her away."

And immediately she stopped, and never did it again.

But oh, she bossed us around. We would lounge side by side on the couch, reading books, and she'd lie in the spot between us and make a particular ill-tempered yowl if either of us moved too much and jostled her; she'd sleep so long and so well that she'd begin to snore. In our bed, she'd lie under the covers with her head on a pillow. If she wanted to get up and play, she'd jump up on the dresser and knock over a picture frame, then look to see if we were going to get up, then knock over another picture frame. Sometimes, in order to get a full night's sleep, we'd turn the temperature way down so that she'd snuggle instead of getting up.

If we needed to have the outside door open, we'd shut her in the spare room so she wouldn't escape. Once we left her in there for quite a while for some reason. There were some newspapers in there, and they were running a big full-page ad for the Alzheimer's Association, so we opened the door and there was a sheet of newsprint on the floor with shaky letters reading PLEASE HELP ME, and we sort of looked at each other -- for a second it was plausible that the cat had learned to write.

She could predict the weather. In tornado season, sometimes she'd get up from whatever she was doing and go down to the basement, and then we knew to turn the radio on, and usually there was a tornado warning. So we'd go down to the basement, too, and after a while she'd get up and go back upstairs, and sure enough, we'd discover the warning had expired.

I was about four months pregnant with the kidlet when Alice died. She was only nine years old, energetic and playful right up until her final illness (an inexplicable inflammation of the sac around her heart). By now, I've nursed enough cats through weeks and months of confusing, expensive, painful, futile treatments to be grateful that she went from perfectly healthy to impossible-to-save so swiftly, but at the time it was an awful shock, and at that phase of pregnancy, my mucus membranes were so overactive that every time I cried my throat swelled up and I threw up. I was furious. Here was this baby coming, this baby that I hadn't even met, and that was supposed to comfort me for the loss of Alice, whom I'd loved for nine years?

I think you never love any pet again the way you love the ones you have before you have kids. I loved the ladycat as much as I could, and I adored the boycat very much, and I love the bobkitten, but none of them the way I loved Alice.

Comments

[out_there]

I loved the ladycat as much as I could, and I adored the boycat very much, and I love the bobkitten, but none of them the way I loved Alice.

I think it's also a personality thing -- and a right time of your life to fall in love with a pet thing. We've had a variety of pets before we got the current dog, Coco -- for various lengths of time, too, but 4-5 years was probably the longest -- and while I've liked the other pets, it just doesn't compare to how deeply fond I am of Coco.

[resonant]

It's true that sometimes a pet just clicks with you. We had lots of cats when I was a kid (because they went outside at night and got run over, mostly), and this one little light-gray-tabby tomcat named Alexander was my favorite even though I left for college about six months after he arrived.

[terrio]

Alice sounds like an awesome cat, with a ton of character.

Thanks so much for your answer!

[resonant]

She had character, all right!

I've only ever had one boring cat, but she was the most interesting of the bunch.

[lexin]

Alice sounds lovely, and I can tell you still miss her.

[resonant]

Sometimes I do! I don't think she would have coexisted well with a baby, though; she might have given me a pleasant surprise, but I think she might have been the kind of cat who would sulk and occasionally bite.

[riverlight]

Oh, what a wonderful story. I love the notion that it was—however momentarily—plausible that the cat learned to write!

[resonant]

Well, she could predict the weather -- who knew what her limits might be?