So, this is what a near-death experience feels like. It feels pretty … um … furry?
Yes, furry. Not what I expected, but there it is.
Furry, and it screeches with an offended, spine-tingling wail. The sound of a feline who thinks HE has been wronged. That when he plants himself behind me while I’m washing dishes, I’m the one at fault for turning around and nearly toppling over headfirst into the oven, which is on and covered with pots of boiling oil.
Poor critter! That my near-death experience should cause him distress. I woke him from his itty-bitty kitty slumber. Boo-hoo!
“You’re a porch cat,” I cried, trying to slow my racing heart and calm my frayed nerves. “Why are you even in here?”
“Why?”
Such a good question. And one never worth asking, especially when it involves family, your house or something a pet has done. It’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it? Screamed in desperation, and if it garners any kind of answer, it’s never a good one.
Not to mention the cat is deaf.
He just stares at me with long, sad eyes as if saying, “But I was sleepin’ here, mister.”
Sunburst is an adopted porch cat – a former stray who we took in a couple years back. I would describe him as an orange or ginger tabby, only that would be a lie since he is typically covered in cloud-like patches of dirt or streaks of oil from sleeping under the car. Sometimes he shows up at the door resembling a coal miner.
Earlier this year we started letting him in to eat, because other neighborhood cats liked to steal his breakfast. Then we started letting him stay in part of the day, because it was too cold outside or rainy or he was scared of birds. And now I find he pretty much spends the entire day in, no matter what the weather, and late into the night, because … well … we’re a big pack of suckers!
He’s also kind of a kitty con artist.
At night, he’s lured outside with kitty treats, like it’s a reward for doing us a favor. Like giving us our house back deserves a snack. But he’s started getting wise. He realizes if he goes out at 8 o’clock like a good kitty, he can hang around on the porch for about an hour – just to humor us – before he starts caterwauling and banging on the screen door like a dinosaur is coming up the walk to eat him. Someone inevitably lets him back in, and an hour later we’re having to do it all over again with more treats.
We go through a box of them a night!
I’ll be watching TV and then notice an orange dirty cat walking across the living room floor.
“WAIT WHAT?!?” I caterwaul.
“He was scared out there,” someone tells me.
“No, he wasn’t,” I reply. “He just knows some sucker will feel bad for him, let him in and then bribe him with more treats to get him out again. He just conned you! He’s a kitty con!!!”
We’re buying cat treats by the truckload.
He also knows if his front porch scam doesn’t work, he can just crawl under the house and pop up at the backdoor. That way everyone sitting on the sofa watching TV can stare and feel bad and say things like, “Oh, look how sad and lonely the poor kitty looks. Poor kitty! He just wants to be part of the family.”
But he doesn’t want to be part of the family! He’s thinking about treats and how he could really go for the salmon-flavored this time because the chicken-flavored aren’t doing it for him anymore.
And because he’s deaf, he also has absolutely no concept of his volume, nor the intensity and range of his meowing. When I let him in early in the morning, he sounds like a 5-year-old kid who has gotten hold of a fire engine siren and started cutting loose.
“Shut UP! QUIET!” I snap at him, which has exactly zero chance of working on a deaf cat, but doesn’t stop me from adding to the racket.
Maybe I’m too hard on him, reformed street cat that he is. He’s had a rough life, and is pretty civilized considering all that he’s been through. He mostly stays sound asleep in his sun patch by the kitchen sink. He nuzzles with the dog (Luckily, she doesn’t eat him,) and never “deposits” anything vile in the house. He purrs like a little engine (albeit, an asthmatic one) and makes a pretty good houseguest.
And when he looks at you, his eyes aren’t those of a con man. There’s something appreciative there. Warm. Thankful. I’ve never noticed that in a cat before. Sincere and even sweet. Just a little old man trying to live out his years in the best way he can. A far cry from the cats I grew up with who saw me as their personal butler, or a food delivery system. (Plus, they had a tendency to pee on my textbooks!)
Yes, “sweet,” I would call him. Aaaargh! It means I’m getting used to the indoor porch cat. Accepting this is my new reality. That I should stop fighting it, and just put in an order for another 13 tons of kitty treats. Not to mention, get used to those fuzzy near-death experiences.