cats

(yes, I'm writing about cats. don't like it? skip it.)

When my last cat, Butch, died, I planned to wait a couple of months - we were close - and then get a kitten. All my cats have been rescued, grown, so I've never had a cat from the kit-go.

Then my friend Lauren told me about Bella, a cat her friend Colleen had rescued. Bella was too aggressive with Colleen's older cat, always wanting to rassle, so she was kept to one room most of the time. Not a good life for a cat.

I went out to Jersey City to meet Bella. The room she lived in was tiny, with food and water bowls and a chair by the window so she could watch the birds. Colleen was doing what she could for Bella - she just didn't have the resources and total (crazy) tenderheartedness of another friend of mine, who basically paid the rent on an apartment for her two cats because the great love of her life was allergic.

The older cat was safely tucked away, so we humans and cat went down to the living room. Colleen demonstrated Bella's enthusiastic response to a cat dancer (long stiff arc of wire with dancing fibrous end for cat to grab at). This was to demonstrate Bella's playfulness, but now it reminds that cat playfulness is always predatory. Colleen also showed me that Bella would eat dry food from one's hand, so far as I know a rare thing for a cat.

When she wanted Bella back in her room, Colleen stood and said "Bella, time to eat," and Bella hurtled back up the steps. That was the moment I knew I had to take her. I couldn't leave an animal so bound to her physicality to live in that little room. I may have also felt sorry for her to be so helpless against her appetite.

Declawing a cat makes life in an apartment so much easier and safe from destruction. But Colleen pressed me not to do so, pointing out that it's like amputating the ends of a human's fingers.

I'm such a soft touch.

(to be continued)