The Cat We Didn’t Want

July 2, 2009

[Note: If you hate, dislike, or have no emotional attachment to cats, run now. I mean it. Shut down your browser window, close the lid on your laptop and flee. Go clean up your dog's mess in the backyard or throw a slobbery wet tennis ball at the doggy park. You have now entered Cat Terra Firma.]

Two years ago my adorable howbeit it manically neurotic TweetyCat died in my arms on the way to the vets. This left us a one cat household with AnnieCat inheriting the reigning position of head feline. In our grieving over Tweety’s death we made a mistake. We assumed AnnieCat was grieving too and would be ever indebted to us for bringing a subordinate cat in the house, if for no other reason than to do her bidding and serve her as a living chew toy. We have come over the past two years to accept this was in fact not what she wanted. We know this because months later she continues to climb onto our faces at 3:00 a.m. waking us from a dead sleep with kitty paws on our eyelids to re-emphasize her displeasure at our decision to bring another cat into the house. But that’s AnnieCat’s story to tell and if she has more to say about it then she knows where the laptop is kept and she can start her own blog which would give her something a little more productive to do at say, 3 in the morning.

As for D and I we’re a two cat household and so a few weeks after TweetyCat returned home enshrined in a little wood box to join the feline ashes of the most furry Sophie and the certifiably emotionally disturbed Sarah, we began visiting nearby animal rescue centers for a new cat. D and I clearly knew what we wanted and did not want in a cat. We had a list. We did not want a male cat. We did not want a grown cat. We did not want a black cat. We wanted a fluffy little calico kitty with a pink bow tied behind her ear. We wanted a little princess to complete our house and since we were just entering May, the season when baby kittens are in bloom we felt the odds were stacked in our favor of getting just what we wanted and so on a Saturday afternoon we stopped in at the nearby pet store where the local animal shelter provided dog and cat adoptions every weekend afternoon from 1-4 p.m.

Let’s go over this again. For weeks D and I had discussed and agreed upon what we were looking for and just in case you already forgot or skimmed over the previous paragraph and missed it altogether, let me review. We wanted

• A kitten.
• A girl kitten.
• A calico girl kitten.

In other words, we were not looking for him. He was the antithesis of everything we wanted in a cat but there he was, a boy cat, the equivalent in age to a pimply teenaged sass-you-back-as soon-as-look-at-you boy and black as midnight in a sandstorm during an eclipse of the moon. His wire cage was situated between two other cages on a table and there he was, stretched out on the cage floor with one long arm reaching through the wires of the cage next to him with his paw lightly resting on the head of the cat napping there. That’s what did it. There was something so tender and sweet about seeing that little guy reaching out to touch another cat that it melted us. We watched him for the longest time, and then reminding ourselves what kind of cat we were looking for and that he wasn’t it, we left the store.

I was back in five minutes, having left D at the check out stand at The Container Store with the words, “I’ll be right back. I just want to go ask if the animal rescue will be having adoptions tomorrow.” Fifteen minutes later and tired of waiting for me to return, D found me in the pet store holding the cat we didn’t want who was hanging like dripping jelly in my arms. “We’re taking him home, aren’t we?” she asked. “Hold him,” I answered. “Just hold him.”

For the past two years, not a single day has come and gone that our little black cat, officially dubbed Simbakitty, has failed to make us laugh out loud and just as often scratch our heads. There are days when he acts so much like a rambunctious, curious little boy I fight the urge to dress him in overalls and stick a baseball cap on his head. He chases spiders that aren’t there. He walks around the house unaware that dangling from his pitch back face is a full white beard acquired in a wrestling match with AnnieCat that remains wedged between his teeth. He dashes through the house like a madman until he’s running so fast he slides out of control across the wood floor coming to a sudden and loud stop against the wall. He meows like his shorts are on fire every time either one of us gets out of the bath because at some point in his formative years one of us made the mistake of getting out of the bathtub and giving him a kitty treat and now and forever he feels compelled to remind us that baths, showers, the flushing of the toilet, the running of the faucet, or a bath towel in our hands must naturally lead to the immediate dispensing of kitty treats.

And he cuddles. Every night. All night. I come to bed and within five minutes, never more and often less, he stands up in his kitty bed, stretches and then ambles up beside me, waiting patiently until I throw back the covers far enough for him to crawl in (I lack all power to say no) and drop against my side like a furry rock. Once settled there and having licked my arm with his sandpaper tongue four licks short of blood shed he rests his chin on my arm and stretching one front arm acroos the bed his paw comes to rest on D. This is how we go to sleep every night.

We did not want this adolescent male cat with black fur. We knew exactly what we wanted and he was not it and yet here we are a couple years later and this guy owns us, heart, soul, and kitty treats. He’s the perfect cat for us. Silly, loving, sweet, affectionate, crazy. He’s our furry little knucklehead of a boy cat.

He was the cat we didn’t want.

What else in my life have I been convinced I didn’t want that ended up being the very thing that brought me the greatest joy? Too many things and moments and events to even count.

Posted in Storytelling