Black cats long associated with witches and such are people friendly cats. If a black cat likes you it will follow you around everywhere. Part of the reason why black cats were associated with witches because they were always around them. And if you are living alone why not have a basically self-sufficient animal that likes to hang with you. Solitary living women with companionable felines living in the Dark Ages were not exposed to the fleas that transmitted the Plague, because there were no living rats living near a self-respecting cat. Not affected by Plague, you must be a witch.
Tortoiseshell cats are almost all female. Fae is a tortoiseshell and she is a force to be reckoned with. She is a murderer. She kills all summer long. She starts killing in the spring and doesn't stop until the winter snows drive everything away, then she sits under any local bird feeder and continues killing. What she will kill depends only on its size. Baby rabbits, through insects, but with preference for birds and flying squirrels, which she kills and rodents which she practises a catch-and-release program— she catches them brings them inside to the bathtub and releases them. Bathtub releases have a life expectancy of a minute to hours, but it always ends the same way, dismemberment, blood everywhere and nothing eaten. Mice, miles, squirrels, and chipmunks. In the winter she just beats on the other cats to relieve stress.
Carol is a long haired black cat. She is a killer as well, but she practises a different sort of catch and release program. She catches a rodent brings it inside and and then goes away and hunts it later at night. Sometimes she gets it, sometimes one of the other cats gets it and sometimes it reaches some hidden local and dies of its original injuries, quietly terrified.
Peter is a beautiful, docile, short-haired grey cat. He, like all of these cats were strays, but he was abused. Probably kicked in the stomach repeatedly and regularly. He is scared a lot. He is very well brow beaten by Fae and Carol, but it was the damage that occurred before her came to this house that most affects his personality. He is overly shy and runs from new things and loud noises. He is a glutton, he eats when ever there is food present, perhaps because food was so sparingly put out when he was young and he is especially frightable at meal times, perhaps that was when he was frequently abused. Oddly he is a low eater, but he also will eat everything he can get too. Despite being the youngest he has the least amount of kitten in him and plays the least. Partially it is due to his neutered status, but mostly the abuse. The longer he stays in the safe place where he lives the more he comes out of his shell.
That is the cats I am living with bite there is more; there are their idosyncracies. Cats are all to one degree to another crazy. Just like humans. It might be that house cats had a sever genetic bottleneck in the distant past. All house cats can trace their family trees back to a plains cat that lives in Egypt. While dogs are all technically wolves, cats have a less wild ancestor, with a less oppositional history with humans. As I said, they are all crazy. Carol is a light weight, her long hair makes her look bigger than she is and her personality is big too. When she walks down the floor she practically stomps making more noise than her weight should do. And she is affectionate and constantly tries to make Peter her boyfriend, but when Fae beats on him, she joins in.
Fae is truly insane. She likes to get beaten. No really. And she has a ritual that goes along with it. She waits for you in the bathroom. She will then pull the floor towel from the tub and sit on it. She wants you to put the towel over her head and body and pet her, pat her body hard. If you don't hit hard enough she will meow at you to encourage you. She can leave at any time, but she stays and she keeps coming back for more. She will hiss and bite and scratch if you are doing it correctly, but she won't run away. She wants to be beaten before you shower and afterwards, when you enter the bathroom for any reason actually, but she likes it around shower time especially. After you leave the bathroom after a shower she will wait a bit and then she will climb on to the bathtub edge and lick up the water droplets; she will crawl along the lip of the bathtub against the wall licking up the left over water. Early this morning I was using the bathroom, I closed the door and there was no cat visible. I began to pee and I thought that I felt some pee on my leg. After I finished I started to get things to clean the floor but I found everything dry and a cat off in her usual spot waiting for me to beat her. I figured out that she was siting behind the toilet waiting for me to come in all night. Sometimes she asks to have other carpets rolled over her and to be beaten. Reminds me of some people I know.
My mother says, "If you have a rodent problem, two spayed female cats will fix your house and neighbourhood." it is the exception that proves the rule, as they say. Growing up we had cats, as I have previously already said. Our first was a stray going on its rounds after being relocated into the area. It would stop at our place and get petted and fed then head on to another house before going home. It lasted for a few months until its real owners came to pick it up from the place that was taking care of it while the owners were traveling the world. It was named Muffin at one house, because it ate a muffin–so original, and we called it Tough Tom, because he was scarred from many fights and he was not neutered. He was a short haired Tabby.
When he went home, another cat came and visited itself on us. I got to name it and I liked to name things appropriately, so I called him Felix, because I thought it meant cat. It doesn't but it was similar to feline that I thought it did. I did not know there was a comic called Felix the Cat at the time. Felix became ours and we became his, mostly my parents took care of the vet bills and his supplemental feedings and his neutering. He proves the rule. As a rule, female cats are mousers, Felix was too. He was a Bird Cat actually. He was a Long-Haired Tabby. He was a killer. He roamed and killed, killed and roamed. The neighbour to the East warned us that they would shoot him as they were bird lovers, a different sort of bird lover than Felix was. So my mom, belled the cat, first with round Christmas bells then with a larger clapper "cow bell" type as the smaller ones could be muffled in his fur. None of these measures worked. Next in an attempt to stop the death and distruction he was put on a leash and staked to a spot and given a shelter so at he could have some shade. Still the bodies began to build up and litter the small swath that his leash could reach. At this point it became clear that the difference in intelligence between a cat and a bird was a dozen orders of magnitude different; the birds deserved to be culled if they were going to be killed by a cat on a leash with a big bell around its neck.
He next went to live with my mother at work, because the neighbours were upset by the mound of bird corpses piling up. At my mother's work he could wander in her shop garden and illicit scratches and belly rubs from customers during the day, but close to closing time he learned not to be around so that he did not have to spend the night inside and could instead pretend to be a homeless cat accepting food for companionship at ten or so different stops during each night. When we moved, he came with us and then when we moved again he came also came with us to a land where he could roam and no one got upset with him for killing birds and he did not have to wear a bell either. There were many Felix stories. He met a common end that most outdoor cats end with an anonymous death far from home while roaming. A fisher or a bird of prey, we like to say an owl got him, revenge for all the birds that he killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment