That Darn Cat

Like all felines, my cat Charlie is independent. When I call, “Here, kitty!” he looks over his shoulder at me and walks away in the opposite direction. Yet when I sit in the recliner, he jumps up on my lap and lays there purring while I pet him.

I wonder about what goes on in that animal mind, just as I am curious about people. Okay, I am nosey. Most people are willing to talk to me, and I try to understand why they act and think the way they do. But the cat can’t talk to me.

Charlie simply doesn’t understand English. Maybe he is a Hungarian cat.

On my 70th birthday my son David took me to the shelter in Albuquerque, where this big white cat put his paws up on the door of his cage and begged me to adopt him. The cat had been picked up as a stray, scrawny and with his long hair dirty and matted. He was neutered, so I only paid the shelter $5 for this beautiful cat. I took him to the vet, and it cost $100 for the shots and to have him bathed and groomed.

I had a friend named Charles White, so my white cat had to be Charlie. Charles called him, “my godson.”

I can only guess what Charlie’s life was like before he came to live with me. At one time he must have been someone’s dear pet, for he immediately moved into the house as if he owned it. He liked to go outside to play early in the morning, but after a few minutes came to the back door begging to be let in again.

I offered him canned food as a treat, but after sniffing at it, he turned up his nose and walked away. He only ate dry cat food. I put water in a bowl beside his food bowl. The only place he would drink was the running water in the bathroom faucet. It was quite a feat for him to jump from the tile floor onto the bathroom counter (like me jumping onto the porch roof). He is getting older. He can no longer jump that high. He figured out to jump onto the edge of the tub, step onto the toilet, and then step onto the counter and put his head down under the faucet for his drink.

If I go out for an hour or more, to the grocery store or to dinner with a friend, when I put my key into the lock, he is waiting just inside the door. I would step on him if I didn’t know he was always there. After I had been away on trip, for a few days after I came home he followed me around like a dog.

After I fall asleep each night he climbs on the bed and lays on top of the covers. I wake in the night and reach out my hand; in the dark I feel his soft fur. When he stretches out full length it is like having a child next to me.

For years he was afraid of men. When the doorbell rang, Charlie retreated to the hall doorway and watched to see who was standing in the door. If it was my neighbor Leroy, a big burly man, Charlie ran as fast as his little legs would carry him and hid under the bed.

I wondered, “Did some man abuse him and turn hm out to starve in the New Mexico desert?”

Eventually he felt safe. After five or six years, he let Leroy touch him. Now when anyone comes to see me, he cautiously approaches and sniffs them out. If he likes the way the stranger smells, he lets her/him pet him.

He loves children. When my grandchildren first came to visit when they were five and seven years old, he went to them immediately and stayed with them the entire time, sitting on the floor next to them when they played and forsaking me to sleep next to them at night.

Today Charlie was stretched out on the coffee table when the woman who cleans my apartment (her name is India) brought her son, Zion, to see me. Charlie jumped off the table and went to the three-year-old. The little boy, unaccustomed to cats, clung, terrified, to his mother. Charlie waited until India convinced the child that the animal wanted to be friends. Zion put out a tentative hand and felt Charlie’s soft white fur.

A little later I was in the recliner eating my supper of tuna and macaroni salad when the UPS man knocked on the door. The man had to wait while I put my shoes on. I set my bowl on the table and got up to answer. I took in the package. As I closed the door, I heard the click of Charlie’s tag against the stoneware bowl. I turned, aghast. Charlie had his nose in my tuna!

This was a cat who NEVER ate anything but dry food!

“Charlie! That’s mine!”

I hit him with a pillow to make take his nose out of my bowl and get down off the table.

He gave me a look which said, “How dare you treat to me like that?” Then he sat on the carpet in the middle of the living room and calmly licked the tuna off his paws.

Old cats learn new tricks. Old people learn new tricks, too. Maybe there is even hope for those old men in Congress.