“Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.”
Kitty eats only frequent snacks of her cat chow. Lily gobbles her kibbles with a couple of slurps. She lies at the entrance to the kitchen, hoping for a crumb to fall. I say that she vacuums the kitchen, then mops it. One day I gave her a piece of carrot peel. She spat it out and looked at me with her expressive face as if to say, “How could any decent human possibly treat me like this?” Sure she’d like it, she begged Vicki for a piece of lemon with the same result.
Lily knows that she’s not to touch Kitty’s food. Daily Bill puts three little cat yummies on his footstool. One day Tom and I guffawed when Lily walked past the footstool, shifted her eyes to the side, stuck her tongue out sideways and slurped up the tiny treats without breaking stride.
Another time, when Grandson Tony visited with his Japanese Shiba Inu, he put down food for her. Vicki, Tom and Lily arrived a little later, and Lily started to eat Kana’s food. Oh my goodness! Kana was about half the size of Lily, but she literally screamed and jumped on Lily, snapping and snarling. Tony was bitten during the melee.
I was charmed by a video on Facebook of a cat and a sort of Jack-in-the-box bank. Vicki bought one for me. When the trigger spot is pressed, a portion of the lid swings up, and a high-pitched voice says, “Hello” and “Goodbye.” There’s the head of a little cat inside whose a paw comes out and sweeps a coin into the box. The cat on the video repeatedly smacked the trigger.
It took several weeks before Pusscatkin accidently hit the trigger with her chin. Then she learned to use a paw. Bop . . . bop . . . bop . . . ! She tries to hold the trapdoor open and bite that creature inside. Sometimes when I’m in another room, I hear “Hello” and know that she’s playing.
Lily and Ms. Kitty are extremely jealous of each other. Lily craves constant affection and thinks that she’s also a Pusscatkin. When I call, “Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” she comes running from wherever she is in the house to be petted — much to Kitty’s disgust. Vicki and I laughed one evening when Lily walked behind Kitty and startled her. Kitty’s tail swelled up and she arched her back like a Halloween cat and hopped stiff-legged clear across the family room.
Vicky is Lily’s goddess, and she also loves Tom who even lets her sit on his lap. Some people are prejudiced against cats. No dog could love me more than does Ms. Kitty who is a lap cat. She purrs loudly, puts a paw on either side of my neck and almost nose-to-nose looks deep into my eyes as if to say, “Oh, Mistress, I do love you so!” She follows Bill around and often sleeps against his feet at night. We call her the “snoopervisor” because she constantly watches us.
I think about how fortunate Ms Kitty and Lily are to have ended up where they are cherished. Sadly, many innocent, loving animals are abandoned or abused by cruel or insensitive people. Recent news stories: A kitten was doused with gasoline and set afire. A man across the road rescued it. A 19-year-old young man has turned himself in. A few weeks ago, an Indianapolis policeman saved a litter of puppies that he heard crying in a dumpster. There was account about starving horses on a farm. I had a relation who took the family dog “for a ride,” as he put it. I lost a lot of respect for him when I pictured that dog — wandering, lonely, cold and hungry.
A Shaker poem warns that a higher being hears the cries of suffering beasts and punishes those who mistreat them. Wclarke@comcast.net