My oldest cat is the most annoying, adorable little pile of fur you'd ever want to strangle. Most days she tries every possible way to purr her little body as close to me or my hubs as she can. If she's awake, you can usually hear her purr from the moment you enter the living room to the moment another cat enters her six-foot visual radius. Then the most god-awful growl/yowl emits from her throat, making you think that in seconds she may be torn to shreds.
Damona is fourteen and absolutely hates cats.
I've tried explaining to her that she, herself, is a cat, but she'll have none of that. We've come to a compromise, however. She will tolerate, even play with, the black cats in our house. But any of the others that come anywhere near here - beware. The screech of impending death will emit; interrupting whatever it is anyone in the house was doing, inciting a sliver of panic that she may, in fact, be facing her last moments on Earth. When said cat moves on to whatever it is they were doing in the first place, she will quiet down, hunkering in her cat-cube-of-safety until a cat-free human settles on the couch.
Another part of our truce is her room. Yes. You read that right. My 14-year-old cat has her own human-sized room, and has had this room all to herself for years. She has everything a cat could ever dream of in this room - a pillow snuggled on a shelf under the desk, a window seat, cat scratch post, cat condo, litter box, food, water, and a large dog bed complete with blankets. Each night as I go to bed, I gather her up, trying to avoid her claws as she reaches to cling to me - there may be an evil cat in the room that I didn't see, just waiting for the split second they need to rip her to shreds. I take her over to the hubs and he gives her kisses. We then traverse through the terrifying house, narrowly making it down the hallway of doom into her bedroom. Here I have to let her see the vast open space so she knows that none of the evil creatures have followed us into her sanctuary. Only then can I place her delicately upon her fluffy dog bed so that she can saunter toward her food dish.
Her night-light doubles as a wax-burner, keeping her room smelling like fruit or some random flower she's never seen. Fulfilling my nightly duties, I am dismissed so the delicate princess can nom her food in privacy. I turn off the light, closing the door until it clicks closed.
In the morning I open it and let her out. Usually I have to retrieve her from wherever she decided to curl up and take her back out to her perch in the living room. Lord forbid I leave her to traverse the hallway of doom by herself! Keep in mind, that three feet from her perch is another litter box, food, water, and my couch. (I'm insanely clean and no, you can't smell cat crap when you sit on my couch - that would be beyond disgusting!) Usually the other cats come out for breakfast (which is in the other room, but still visible from her perch) and then go immediately back to the king-sized tempurpedic bed and pass out until we come home from work.
They all have such a hard life.
Over the past couple of months, she's been increasingly annoying in her bedroom, and the hubs has been opening her door when he comes to bed so that he can actually sleep without hearing the song of her people. She's actually gotten to where she doesn't even want to go to her room - she wants to stay out in the living room and sleep on her perch. Rather than argue, we thought that maybe she was getting over her strange paranoia and hatred of cats, so we've been letting her be a "big girl" and rule the house as she sees fit.
I got home today, sat on my spot on the couch, and smelled something I hate - cat pee. The litter box was clean, the couch unsoiled, and I crawled around on hands and knees looking for where she had her "accident." I finally found it on the folded blanket she slept on the previous night. She has now been thrown (figuratively, not actually thrown) into her dungeonous room, where she is meowing, scratching, and whining at the door; and the rest of our house is being scrubbed with bleach - just in case.
Exactly what I wanted to do on my Friday night.
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