Spinsterhood: the nature vs nurture debate

I think my brother moved out on Friday. One can never be sure of these things; he could just be on an extended sleepover/roadtrip/crime spree with his friends. He didn't exactly say goodbye to me; the only indication that he had possibly moved out was a facebook status update detailing the list of items he was packing (throwing knives, bowie knives, halbards, machetes, video games, no clothes).

Then his tricorner hat mysteriously disappeared from its place on the hallway nule post, which is always a good indication that he's vacated the premises, at least temporarily.

Sleeping with the Monster-Cat

For the last week or so, I've been cat-sitting for some friends of mine. I've hung out at the house often enough, and so I was fairly well-acquainted with Emmerson the Giant, a cat larger than most dogs I know*. I can't remember exactly what breed of cat Emmerson is, but I believe it's a cousin to the Raccuma, a cross between a raccoon and a puma; of course, he's inherited the feral instincts of neither of these wild ancestral creatures. His behaviour most often resembles that of a large space-foam pillow, and I would use him as one on a more regular basis if it weren't for the fact that his fur behaves more like spider-web than any hair I've ever seen. What I'm trying to say here is that this cat is huge and weird. But taking care of a gigantic space-foam pillow cat covered in spiderweb hair, while strange, doesn't actually sound that hard. And it isn't, as long as you don't try to sleep in the house.

Death from Above

I should start a blog just for stories about my cat, the one whom I dislike strongly*. The one I like isn't that interesting. All he does is climb into my bed and curl up at my knees and fall asleep. Capu, on the other hand, is generally either wiping his nose on something or doing something that is new, strange, and beyond the edge of reason.

Today, for instance, he attempted to execute a particularly impressive guerrilla-style attack on everyone's new least-favourite cat, the large brindled beast who has been trying to take over the front yards of most houses on our street for the past few weeks. Today, Mr. Brindle was in our next door neighbour's yard, ensconced amongst the neatly stacked articles of our neighbour's latest building project, yowling insistently at the back door**.

Now, Capu is not the outdoorsy type by any means. However, he has taken a shine to my boat deck (most likely because he doesn't actually have to interact with nature itself, but can observe it from afar and duck back through my window whenever he pleases***), and today we were both sitting out on the boat deck, admiring the garbage-strewn back alley below when Brindle began his yowling.

Capu immediately slithered through the latticework of the deck and slunk over to the edge of the roof that sits nearly directly over our next-door neighbour's fence. Brindle, who has considerably more than one thread of Unflappable written into his genetic makeup, glanced up at the now bristling, 15-pound cat hovering mere meters above him, and went back to yowling at the door.

Capu was not about to be ignored, and readied himself to pounce. At this point I began to get a bit concerned for the wellbeing of this companion whom I dislike so strongly. As I said, he hasn't spent much time outside, and I sometimes wonder if he's entirely aware of the extent to which gravity will act upon an overweight, out-of-shape cat leaping from the kitchen roof onto a large, brindled cat surrounded by concrete blocks. My stupid cat My brother's stupid cat was about to leap to his doom. Not only that, but I was about to let him do it, too, because he was almost certainly going to take Brindle down with him and, while I do believe in the sanctity of the lives of all creatures etcetera, I also believe in seeing Brindle finally get the shit kicked out of him by someone, even if this beating lasts for approximately 1.2 seconds and the main actor in it is not Capu's brute strength, but the impact-force of gravity.

There we were, me perching on the edge of the boat deck, watching Capu, bristling to twice his normal size and fixing to pounce on that idiot Brindle, who was taking no notice of either of us and was pawing insistently at a stranger's front door, when all at once I saved the day without even meaning to. Perched on the ledge as I was, it was only a matter of time before that accursed gravity got the better of me as well, and I suddenly found myself tipping over the edge of my boat. The ensuing racket of me saving myself from rolling down the edge of a roof (undoubtedly taking out both Capu and Brindle in my final downward plunge) was enough to distract Capu from his attack stance and Brindle from his ineffective cuteness scam.


*Yet theoretically probably secretly love.
**This tactic does quite often work if the cat lives in the house at which it is meowing. However, I have this theory that Mr. B is from a different area of town entirely and only comes over to this end to mess with the local wildlife; I've never seen him enter a house he belongs in (though he's tried to come into ours more than once).
***I believe this situation is similar to that of city dwellers who are willing to go into the wilderness as long as they can take a camper with a flushable toilet and a 52" flat-screen tv with them.

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.