Lessons In Stalking: Adjusting to Life With Cats Read online

  Praise for LESSONS IN STALKING

  “Dena Harris has written a cat book even a dog would love.”

  —Tim Bete, director of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop and author of In the Beginning…There Were No Diapers

  “Captures perfectly the nuances of life with cats!”

  —Rita Davis, Editor, Cats & Kittens

  “Clever, witty, and insightful, these stories celebrate everything feline and bring smiles of recognition to anyone who loves cats. The author relates the charming antics of her loving, yet manipulative fur-kids, and shows how their c’attitude impacts humans with predictable—and often hilarious—results. Read one by one or devoured like a catnip toy, the stories in Lessons In Stalking are the purr-fect treat! I am a fan.”

  —Amy Shojai, nationally known authority on pet care and behavior and author of multiple books including PETiquette and coeditor of Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul

  “Never has watching someone else own a cat been this much fun.”

  —Lisa Allmendinger, Editor, I Love Cats!

  “Dena Harris magically captures the humor of sharing our lives with cats in a master storyteller’s style. You catch yourself laughing out loud as you read her words filled with whimsy and wit. She is simply meow-val-lous!”

  —Arden Moore, Catnip Editor and author of The Kitten Owner’s Manual

  “If laughter is the best medicine, there’s no telling how healthy you’ll be after spending time with this hilarious book! Cat people will find echoes of their own experiences with the feline.

  And if you can walk past the refrigerator without a wary glance after reading “The Creature Under the Fridge,” you’re a braver soul than I!”

  —Jean Hofve, DVM, holistic medicine practitioner

  “This is the relationship ‘how-to’ book for cat owners. I recommend this book to any family or couple thinking of being owned by a cat. Nothing is funnier than the truth!”

  —Janet Oquendo, VP Operations, Pet Lover’s Connection, http://www.petloversconnection.com

  “In these charming stories, Dena Harris shares with us her happy discoveries of cat nature in its many guises. This is a sweet book, filled with the author’s delight not only in her two young cats, but also in her husband and her home.”

  —Marion Lane, Special Projects Editor, ASPCA National Programs Office

  “Lessons In Stalking is for all cat lovers! Each story in this collection is a little gem…colored with a multi-faceted understanding of our feline friends…sparkling with the kitty humor that we all recognize and love…and polished with that passionate devotion to cats common to each of us.”

  —Ellen Price, Managing Editor, The World of Professional Pet Sitting

  “Dena Harris is very funny.”

  —Annie, 11 years old, in a letter to the editor of Cats & Kittens magazine

  “Despite what you may have heard, cats are funny. They’re comedians, in fact, beginning in kittenhood with acrobatic slapstick.

  Adult cats enjoy more subtle forms of humor which, as Dena Harris makes as obvious as a toy mouse in a water bowl, promote us mere humans from lowly food servers in the kitty cafeteria to royal fools in the feline court. Harris is a funny lady with a hilarious take on the life of doting cat parents and their band of furry funsters. We may as well laugh at ourselves—our cats certainly do!”

  —Sheila Webster Boneham, Ph.D., Author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting and Owning a Cat

  Lessons in Stalking

  Adjusting to Life With Cats

  By Dena Harris

  Kindle Edition Copyright © 2011 by Dena Harris

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Original Copyright ©2005 by Dena Harris

  Published in the United States of America

  Published by:

  Spotlight Publishing, Inc.

  P. O. Box 621

  Madison, North Carolina 27025-0621

  This book is dedicated to LUCY who started it all.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  PART I: The Cat

  1 Feline Concerns

  2 Never Feed A Cat Grape Benadryl®

  3 Lessons In Stalking

  4 The Big Brown Mouse & Other Toys Our Cat Loathes

  5 Yoga Cat

  6 Kitty Chow

  7 Incoming!

  8 The Great Cat Butt Wiping Adventure

  9 Passion Denied

  10 Kitty Jihad

  PART II: Cat and Kitten

  11 A Second Cat

  12 Kitty Nightingales

  13 Dibbs!

  14 El Toro Gato

  15 Bath Time

  16 Jingle Ball Horrors

  17 The Creature Under the Fridge

  18 Can You See Me?

  19 Tacky Tape Sucks & Other Reasons I Can’t Own Nice Furniture

  20 Morning Revelry

  Credits

  Afterword

  About the author

  About the illustrator

  Acknowledgements

  A big “thumbs up” to the Universe for all the cool cats out there—nicely done.

  Many thanks to all my writer friends who managed to smile through gritted teeth when I asked if they would mind reading “just one more cat story?” Special thanks to Tom Truitt, Betsy O’Brien Harrison, “Maddie,” Sally, Kaptain, Cherie, and all the writers at The Writer’s Way who encouraged me.

  Plus, hats off to all members of the Cat Writer’s Association (CWA) who remind me I’m not alone in my maniacal devotion to cats.

  A big thank you to Rita Davis, editor of Cats & Kittens magazine where many of these stories first appeared. She said she couldn’t hire me as a humor columnist then proceeded to publish my stories in the magazine’s humor column for the next two years. (Ha ha! I win!)

  Love to my family, who remind me daily they think I’m the coolest thing since sliced bread.

  And a tremendous and loving thank you to my husband, the most patient, tolerant, encouraging, and supportive human being on the planet. Thanks for letting me write the stories so it always looks like I’m right.

  Finally, love to my feline babies Lucy & Olivia for providing hours of entertainment and fodder for this book. I know as I write this chances are you’re both doing something really hideous to my chairs, but I love you anyway.

  Preface

  It’s happened. I have become that woman. The one obsessed with cats. Friends no longer put any thought into purchasing gifts for me. If it has a cat on it, they figure (correctly) that I’ll love it. That’s how it starts. People start thinking this way and soon—through no fault of your own—you’re living in a house filled with cat picture frames, cat gloves, cat bookmarks, cat plaques, cat mugs, and yes, even cat underwear.

  How cool is that?

  We couldn’t have cats growing up because my dad was allergic. We discovered this when we actually had a cat for a few months. Notice the few months part. I inherited my love of cats from my mom and for a while it was a tough call on who would have to leave, Dad or the cat. (Dad won by a nose hair because he didn’t shed on the couch.)

  So I couldn’t wait to be an adult and have a cat of my own. But around age 18 I developed allergies. I practically blew up when I was around cats.

  Desperate, I tried allergy shots but my allergist warned me I must “never, ever own a cat.”
r />   Then I met Lucy.

  She was about three months old, a stray, and playing with a leaf outside a building. It was a November night before the first frost and no one would take her home. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her.

  “Hey,” I said, “Do you want to come home with me?”

  She abandoned her leaf, ran to me, put her tiny front paws on my leg, looked up and said, “Mew.”

  Well. I’m only human.

  I packed her in my car and drove home. The look on my husband’s face when I walked in the door was less one of surprise and more one of resignation. He’d seen this day coming.

  “No, no,” I said, cutting him off. “I know I can’t keep her.

  It’s just for a day or two until I find a home for her.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said and left the house without another word. When he returned twenty minutes later it was with litter box, food, dishes, and play toys, which he set up in the special “Lucy corner.”

  He’s a good man.

  And he was right. Lucy never left. Amazingly, I had no allergic reaction to her whatsoever.

  This is not true of all cats. Our kitten Olivia makes me sneeze (but she’s so darn cute, I just suck it up).

  Lucy is special. All cats are special. And it was obviously meant to be that I have cats in my life. I can’t imagine our home without them.

  I hope you have cats in your life. And if you’re so inclined, feel free to send me a cat knick-knack for my home.

  One can never have enough of these things.

  —Dena Harris Madison, NC., April, 2005

  Part I

  The Cat

  -1-

  Feline Concerns

  I’m worried about the cat. She keeps dropping mice into her water dish. I don’t think that’s normal. We wake one morning to find a small, red cotton mouse floating facedown in the dish. We figure she accidentally batted it in there. We set it on the side of the sink to dry out. The next morning, we find another one floating. Then another that evening and two more by morning. I mention my concerns to my husband.

  “Something’s wrong with the cat. I don’t think it’s normal to keep putting mice in a water dish. Do you think she’s acting out? Like an act of aggression?”

  “Maybe she just likes putting mice in her water dish,” he counters.

  I grimace at him. “No, she must be upset about something.

  This is her way of trying to communicate. What do you think she could be upset about?”

  “That we keep taking the mice out of the water dish?” he offers.

  I stop talking to him about it and instead watch the cat for clues.

  She grows bolder in her moves. While she used to wait for us to go to bed or to work before drowning the mice, we now begin finding wet mice where moments before there were none. Walking back to the kitchen on a commercial break, we stop and stare at the water dish.

  “Look, there’s another one,” says my husband.

  “I can see that,” I say. “I told you she was upset.”

  He continued on to the kitchen. “I’m not touching it then.”

  I try talking to her about it. “Sweet-ums, why are you putting your mice in the water?”

  She looks at me with perfectly round eyes.

  “What’s the matter? Tell Mommy.” I reach out to hold her, but she bounds away.

  I’m sure her hostility is directed at us and is no reflection toward the mice themselves. They have always been her favorite. We bring home a bag of five each month, and she goes crazy with delight, batting them around on our hardwood floors.

  And where have all those mice gone? If we calculate bringing home five mice a month for six months, that’s thirty mice somewhere in our home. I can today account for the whereabouts of approximately three. I suspect foul play.

  I speak to my mom who says, “She wants attention. That’s her way of telling you.”

  “But Mom, I already pay her attention! I pet her every morning, and we play when I get home from work, and I pet her at dinner and before we go to bed.”

  “Well then, maybe she’s trying to tell you to leave her alone.”

  I cross Mom off the list of people I will discuss this with.

  Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the wet mice vanish. No more floating cotton corpses. I watch the cat carefully, but nothing seems to have changed. She still likes playing with them, and she still runs from me when I try to pet her. But she is no longer drowning mice.

  I hope this is a good thing. I mention to my husband that I am concerned about the cat because she is no longer drowning her mice. He stares at me in disbelief before throwing up his hands and leaving the room.

  I suppose he’s right.

  Maybe there never was a problem after all?

  -2-

  Never Feed A Cat Grape Benadryl ®

  It’s a horrible feeling of helplessness and responsibility, tending to a sick pet. When examining an ailing animal, it’s vital one be calm, levelheaded, and not concede to overreaction.

  Luckily, I’m one of those rare individuals able to remain composed in the face of any emergency.

  I demonstrated this skill when our cat became ill. We heard her firing off bazooka-rounds of sneezes. My husband and I came on the run. I took charge.

  “Oh my God, she’s dying!” I wailed, flinging myself on the cat and wrapping her in a stifling embrace. “Dying!” I started to cry.

  My husband ran a slow hand down his face. “Maybe she just has a cold,” he offered.

  I raised a bewildered cat to eye level. “Tell Mommy where it hurts.”

  My husband took the cat from me and examined her eyes, ears, and nose. “It’s probably just a cold,” he reassured.

  “We’ll call the vet tomorrow.”

  I remained doubtful but the cat was now hiding under the sofa, consciously suppressing her sneezes.

  I called the vet first thing in the morning.

  “Hello-I-have-an-emergency,” I said.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “It’s my cat. She keeps sneezing.”

  “Yes ma’am,” she said.

  I remained silent, awaiting instructions.

  Finally figuring out I expected her to say something else, the receptionist continued. “Um, is there any vomiting or diarrhea?”

  My God, is this woman stupid? I would have had the cat at the emergency hospital at the first sign of vomiting or diarrhea. I took a deep breath and reminded myself to speak slowly, so she could understand me.

  “No, it’s just sneezing. But it’s a lot of sneezing. She sneezed twenty times in a row. For five minutes straight.”

  I waved away my husband who was trying to take the phone. As an accountant he has this hang-up about accurate numbers. I felt it more important to convey the gravity of the situation.

  Dire possibilities, each worse than the one before, occurred to me. I burst forth with one nightmare scenario.

  “Do you think she might be having an allergic reaction?”

  I asked. “Maybe she has internal hives? I saw her scratching her ear earlier. How exactly would I treat internal cat hives?”

  The receptionist did the only thing she could do, which was to put me on hold. She spoke cautiously when she returned.

  “Ma’am, it sounds like an upper respiratory infection.

  Pick up some alcohol-free liquid Benadryl® and give your cat one milliliter per pound of body weight.* If that doesn’t do the trick in a few days, call us back.”

  “Fine,” I muttered and hung up. No one cared that my cat was at death’s door. Even my husband was useless, tossing balls down the hall for the cat to chase. She was stoic enough to pretend to enjoy the diversion.

  I trudged to the store and came back with the Benadryl®.

  “Grape?” my husband asked, examining the bottle.

  “It was that or bubble-gum. Let’s just get it down her.”

  He scooped up the cat, and I positioned the dropper in her mouth. One hour, three n
ew droppers, and half a bottle of wasted medication later, we managed to get about an eighth of a teaspoon down her throat. She fled as soon as we released her. I went in pursuit to offer my apologies. I don’t care for grape flavor myself.

  When I found the cat, my heart flip-flopped. There was white foam bubbling from her mouth. Even my husband paled.

  “Call the vet,” he said.

  I raced to the phone and dialed with trembling fingers.

  I explained our beloved cat was now foaming at the mouth.

  The receptionist giggled. I mentally planned how I would kill her.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said. “Benadryl® makes a lot of cats foam at the mouth. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Benadryl® makes a lot of cats foam at the mouth, but you didn’t think to mention that to me?” I wanted to be sure I had the facts right for my trial.

  The receptionist sighed. “If it will make you feel better, why don’t you bring the cat in and we’ll take a look at her.”

  I brought the cat in and the vet ran some tests. “Looks like a head cold,” he said. “I’m going to give you a prescription for something a lot like Benadryl®. That ought to knock it out.”

  My husband greeted me at the door as I returned. “What did the vet say?” he asked.

  “He said the cat has a cold,” I said. My husband smiled.

  “Not a word,” I warned.

  He left without saying anything, but I heard him telling the cat it was now safe to sneeze.

  He thinks he’s funny but I’ll have the last laugh.

  The next time he gets a cold, I’m going to feed him the rest of the Grape Benadryl®.

  -3-

  Lessons In Stalking

  She’s stalking us again. It makes me nervous. Not the stalking part, but the fact that she doesn’t seem to be very good at it.