Subject: Kali. Species: Cat (successfully verified--finally)

There are three animals that live in this house: two humans, and a small, furry creature that has seven sets of claws and meows a lot. At first glance, I thought Kali was a cat. But soon my conviction gave way to doubt. She didn't behave like any cat I had met before. I could sit in her favourite chair for hours and she wouldn't
a) sit on my lap, thus sharing the chair with me
b) stand on my lap with her head and/or tail in my face, thus encouraging me to vacate the premises
c) sit on the back of the chair with her claws in my hair until I left the room.
Similarly, if I was sitting at the table with a pile of papers spread out around me, she wouldn't come and sit on the most crucial document that I was reading.
If I was wearing a white shirt, she wouldn't immediately come up to me and demand to be picked up in order to leave a cloud of black and tan cat hairs clinging to my new outfit.
She didn't insist on jumping on the counters, table, and any other place that was cat-forbidden.
While she did enjoy lying on my white duvet cover, she somehow managed to do this without shedding all over it*.
She didn't even scratch the furniture.
Other than wandering around and meowing incessantly, she wasn't very cat-like at all.

All this changed when DB (human roommate) brought out The Chair.
The Chair used to be in DB's room. It is of a beautiful puke-coloured fabric covered in vaguely floral designs in brown, green, and gold, of a style popularized in the Home Decor Dark Ages of the 1970's. It is so attractive that DB insists on keeping it covered in a sheet of brown cloth at all times.

For some reason, this chair brings out the cat in Kali. She cannot resist sneaking up behind the chair and raking it with her claws. I have a theory that if anyone ever felt inclined to sit on the chair, Kali would sit on this person's lap, face, and head all at the same time--this is how cattish Kali is around the chair.

I thought that Kali's feline tendencies began and ended with the chair. Not so. Apparently the chair was just the beginning. The chair was inspiration. The chair infected Kali like a disease. Which is why, today, I came into my room to find this once unfeline cat lazing on my white comforter in a cloud of dark cat hair, spread out in such a manner so as to cover my laptop, my binder, and my cellphone simultaneously, purring with that self-satisfied catlike rapture that only comes from knowing one has successfully made onesself a complete and utter nuisance. Kali is now officially a cat.



*As most people know, cats have such precise control over their individual hair follicles that they can choose exactly how many hairs to release and from which body part at what time. For example, if there is a black cat lying on a black-and-white striped shirt, the cat will only shed from parts of his body that are touching the white stripes of the shirt.