Lessons In Stalking: Adjusting to Life With Cats Read online

  She stalks us right out in the open, inching toward us on her stomach in the middle of the hallway.

  “What’s she doing?” my husband asks, looking over his shoulder. “Is she sick?”

  “Shhhh!” I reprimand. “She’s stalking us. Be supportive.”

  “But I don’t want to be stalked,” he whines.

  “She needs to learn. Now act surprised when she pounces.”

  Attacks are generally mild. A quick paw to the foot, a snatch at a pants leg and she’s off.

  Sometimes she’ll stalk us from behind the sofa. It’s not a bad ploy, except we can see her tail sticking out. I draw her attention, while my husband sneaks up behind her.

  “BOO!” he yells, jabbing at her hindquarters.

  It may seem harsh, but she has to learn.

  We’re not her only prey. She also stalks the plaid cotton mice we procure for her. She’ll spy one resting in the hall.

  Every muscle tenses as she flattens herself on the floor, tail flicking. Body rigid, she’s a tightly wound coil.

  When the moment comes—did the mouse twitch?—she leaps into the air. We watch her descend, fangs and claws bared in case of counterattack.

  Then she’s on top of the mouse, spearing it with her teeth, viciously shaking her head. She notices us watching her and freezes. Snatching the mouse, she bounds away.

  “Well done sweetheart! ” I cheer. I elbow my husband.

  “Uh, way to go,” he stammers. “You the cat.” He glares at me.

  “She’s not going to improve unless she’s told what she’s doing right,” I explain calmly. “It’s called positive reinforcement.”

  He walks away mumbling under his breath.

  Although the cotton mice are fun, we find the cat truly enjoys moving targets. We discover this when a fly gets into our home.

  The cat is all business. Darting eyes, shortness of breath, bushy tail—as she stalks the fly I think that she’s finally coming in to her own.

  But then, “Click-aaack-aaack-claaack.” Dolphin-like sounds emanate from her throat as she sits with arched back, staring at the fly buzzing above her.

  My husband races in. “What was that?”

  “That’s the cat.”

  “What’s she doing? ”he asks. “Is she sick?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  I question whether our cat will ever get the hang of this stalking business. My husband and I grow weary of acting surprised every time we’re attacked. The fly went on to lead a long and happy life. My hopes center again on the cotton mice. And I just saw several of them lying, almost hidden, behind the couch.

  I think they’re waiting to jump out and yell “BOO!”

  -4-

  The Big Brown Mouse & Other Toys Our Cat Loathes

  We sat the big brown mouse in the middle of the kitchen floor. The cat looked on disinterestedly. The mouse was a gift from our pet sitter; a sweet elderly woman who I’m sure had no idea the trauma her gift was about to induce.

  “The mouse has a little switch in its back,” the pet sitter informed us. Flipping the switch caused the mouse to move about in motorized circles on the floor.

  “Your cat will love it,” she assured us. “All cats love it.”

  Our cat most certainly did not love it. When we flipped the switch, a great tremor enveloped the room as the mouse’s internal gaskets roared to life. We set the mouse on the floor and it raced about in jerky circles. Fast jerky circles. In fact, the mouse appeared to have overdosed on some form of an illegal substance.

  Not that the cat would know this. She disappeared from the room at the first sign of life from the mouse. We found her an hour later, trembling under an upstairs bed.

  We decided the motor and the presence of a big brown mouse was too much to take in all at once. We agreed we needed to “introduce” the cat to the mouse—as if they might agree to meet later for drinks if they hit it off.

  The next night at dinner my husband retrieved the mouse and placed it again in the center of the kitchen floor, where it stayed for several hours.

  The cat wouldn’t come near it.

  I tried getting down on the floor and petting the mouse, to show the cat there was no danger. She looked even more alarmed at these actions. Perhaps she thought I was thinking of trading her in.

  On the second night she acquiesced, somewhat, and agreed to be in the same room with the mouse. She sat atop a chair and didn’t take her eyes off the brown monstrosity.

  Out of pity, I hid the mouse before we went to bed.

  I don’t think the cat would have slept otherwise.

  Night three was the same. The mouse was on the floor; the cat was on the chair. She left briefly to use the facilities, as my husband insists on referring to the litter box.

  “This is stupid,” he said after she left the room. “She obviously hates that thing. Let’s get rid of it.”

  I balked at giving up on yet another toy. After all, I had been the one to throw out the parrot on a suction cup that stuck to doors and “soared lifelike about your cat’s head,” promising hours of fun.

  The cat never looked up.

  I took back the catnip filled Garfield toys, the cat spa, and toys with random glitter and feathers stuck to them, all purchased in the hopes of enticing my feline to play.

  She sniffed them once and walked away.

  And let’s not forget the eighty-five dollar kitty jungle gym with carpet more plush than is to be found anywhere in my home, that was a “must” for indoor cats.

  The cat climbed it once to prove she could and now won’t go near it except to occasionally sharpen her claws.

  We use it as a plant holder.

  But even I, who had envisioned hours of fun for the cat that didn’t involve me having to stand in one place and swat around a plastic fishing pole with rubber-fly lure attached, had to agree. The cat was just not getting into the spirit of things. I got up and threw the mouse away.

  The cat walked into the kitchen to rejoin us and froze.

  Eyes darting, her body language spoke as plainly as words:

  Where the heck did that thing go?

  She was obviously terrified. She crouched low and peered under the table, searching for the mouse. Nothing.

  She slowly raised her head and examined what she could see of the table and chairs. Nothing. A bird chirped outside and the cat leaped, hissing.

  “I feel bad,” I told my husband. “She’s still freaked out.”

  “Yeah, maybe we should buy her a new toy,” he said.

  “You know, something to distract her. I’ll see what I can find.”

  The toy he came back with looked harmless enough— a musical ball that played various songs from the musical “Cats” every time it was nudged. The cat adores it, if only because she knows we’re slowly going insane.

  She has us living on edge. We’re at the point where she was when she was freaked out about the brown mouse.

  We cling to the edge of our chairs, bleary-eyed from lack of The Big Brown Mouse & Other Toys Our Cat Loathes 32

  Lessons in Stalking sleep, swatting at shadows, afraid everything that moves might start to play “Mr. Mistoffolees.”

  And the cat is laughing. She even goes so far as to occasionally hide the ball so we may experience the fear of never knowing exactly when we might be attacked by a bright blue orb winging down the hall screeching “Memory” at full volume.

  But we’ll have the last laugh. We’re going out of town again and invited the pet sitter back. And we made sure to tell her how much the cat loved her gift and to please bring another.

  Between the musical orb and the motorized brown mouse, I’ll take the mouse.

  I have to.

  My nerves can’t take any more.

  -5-

  Yoga Cat

  I took up yoga two years ago, around the same time we got our cat. Having read that owning a cat and practicing yoga were both fail-safe methods to soothe troubled nerves, I envisioned a life filled w
ith peace and inner reflection.

  Now two years wiser, I know that people who own cats do yoga simply to release the stress in their lives that exists because they own a cat.

  My cat mocks me while I do yoga. As I sit on my padded blue mat, tangled up in a pose the human body, or at least my body, was not meant to perform, she’ll sit beside me and perform the same pose flawlessly.

  “Now, raise your right leg, keeping your left leg fully extended,” coos my video yoga instructor. “Balance on your sitting bones, and raise the leg over your head.”

  Puffing and grunting, I try to extend my leg. Without breaking a sweat, the cat plops herself down beside me and raises her right leg over her head, making sure her back leg remains fully extended. I look over at her. She looks back and, pointedly, bends down and licks herself without lowering the leg.

  I find this insulting.

  I decide I need more personalized instruction and sign up at our local Y, paying $75 to have a certified yoga instructor twist me into painful and humiliating poses. But the cat is not there, executing a better version of “Downward Facing Dog” than me, so it’s bearable.

  “You’re doing very well,” encourages my instructor.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’m trying to impress my cat.”

  The instructor backs away, and avoids me for the rest of the class. But I don’t mind. I am raising and extending my legs at an advanced rate. I can’t wait to show the cat.

  I return home and pull out my mat. The cat looks pleased. It’s been a few days since she’s humiliated me.

  “Ha! That’s only what you think is going to happen,” I say. “Watch this!” I proceed to execute a flawless “Dead-bug” pose. The cat looks amused.

  “That’s not all,” I say. “I can also do this!” I move into Downward Facing Dog, remembering to breathe, as my instructor said.

  The cat ambles over, takes a seat next to my head, and stares at me. My arms begin to tremble, but I refuse to give up the pose. The cat continues to stare, glancing significantly at my now shaking torso. I am no longer breathing properly.

  In fact, I think I am close to hyperventilating. The cat begins to purr.

  I can’t go any further. I collapse onto the mat. I’m pretty sure I’ve strained something. I can’t locate exactly where at the moment, because my entire body is trembling.

  Now that I’m on the floor, the cat yawns and stretches, fully extending her front legs and arching her back. She holds the pose. And holds it. And holds it. And darn it all, she’s breathing. Releasing the pose, she takes a deep cleansing breath. Her final word on the subject is to claw at my yoga mat before exiting the room.

  The phone rings. It’s my yoga instructor.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to sign up for our next series of classes,” she said. “You were making such good progress.”

  I think about the physical anguish, and sweat, of the yoga class. Then I ponder the money spent to experience this pain. I tell the instructor I will not be returning to class.

  If it’s pain I’m after, I can get that at home for free.

  I’ll just do yoga with my cat.

  -6-

  Kitty Chow

  I am engaged in a battle of will against my cat. The upsetting part is that I’m losing.

  Here’s the scenario. While batting her food around one day (because apparently we can’t eat it until first we’ve stalked it), the cat accidentally swatted a kibble into her water dish. That was good for about three minutes of fun as she sprayed water all over the kitchen floor in an attempt to remove the food. When she tired of seeing me on my hands and knees with a towel, she finally used her paw to scoop the food out of the dish and onto her mat. Then she ate it.

  Of course “she ate it” is an understatement. Could she speak, the cat would say the skies opened and the heavens sang. We don’t feed our cats moist food because I don’t want to deal with half-used cans of smelly cat food in my fridge.

  (They might overpower the odor of the half-used cans of smelly human food we keep in there). But having discovered the joys of moistened food, there was no going back.

  In fact, the cat liked the wet food so much, she now refuses to eat her food until we pour it into her water bowl, let it soak for about 20 seconds, and then dump it…where?

  Back into the food dish? Oh no, too easy.

  No, the watery mess must be poured onto the food mat, in the exact place where she first discovered the delightful delicacy of kitty-chow con aqua.

  If we pour it back in the dish, she won’t eat it. If she doesn’t see us dump the food in the water (I tried to save time and just wet the food at the sink), she won’t eat it. Her Highness is very particular. And though I try to resist, I can’t stand to see her not eat so I give in.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve caved. Early on, the cat insisted on stalking her food. This wouldn’t have been so bad if she were an outdoor or barn cat with an ample supply of field mice and squirrels to keep her busy. What made the situation awkward is that she is an indoor cat, and the food she was stalking was IAMS® Indoor Cat Formula at almost fifteen dollars per two-pound bag.

  She refused to eat the food unless we threw it across the floor, allowing her the opportunity to leap and pounce before savagely ripping the kibble to pieces. Sometimes she’d bat the kibbles across the floor and chase them. Other times, she’d run and hide beneath a kitchen chair, tail flinching to and fro, planning the moment of her attack.

  My husband has no patience for this sort of behavior. If I dare complain that I am tired of throwing food across the 41 floor or staring at wet cat chow on the mat, I am harassed with, “Well, what do you expect? You baby her way too much.

  If you just leave the food in the dish she’ll eventually get hungry and eat it.”

  And he has a point. I mean, what’s wrong with me that I bend so easily to the will of a fifteen-pound cat?

  The answer is simple. I do it because she’s cute. And she purrs really loud when I dump the food in the water, and even louder when she sees me scoop it onto the mat.

  Seriously, how many chances in life do you get to make someone that happy?

  When I point this out my husband just stares at me.

  “You’re nuts,” is the only counterargument I receive. From this I conclude I have won our war of verbal sparring. In triumph, I toss the cat a kibble across the floor.

  Still, I admit I’d like to be able to just pour the cat food in the bowl and move on with life. My husband insists he can help me wean the cat toward accepting our feeding rules; those being that the cat food goes in the bowl, dry, and stays there. Needless to say, the cat is not pleased with these new rules, which she vocalizes loudly.

  “Mrow?” (Translation: What’s going on? Why is the food in my dish?)

  “Mrow? Rowr? Mrow?” (Hello? Anyone? Hello?)

  “Mrow? Rowr, meow. Mo-ow??” (Lady, get it in gear. I don’t eat out of a dish. Re-mem-ber??)

  Receiving no response she resorts to bad language.

  “ROWR-FSST?!?”

  At this I throw a pleading glance at my husband. He doesn’t even look up from his paper. “Ignore it,” he says, turning the page.

  I do ignore it. At least until he leaves the house. The cat and I both watch him pull his car down the drive. She looks at me.

  “Wait for it,” I say. My husband honks his horn goodbye.

  The cat looks at me again, ears perked. I give her the nod. “Yup, we’re clear,” I say. “Let’s go for it.”

  And so I spend the next ten minutes feeding a deliriously happy cat a combination of wet cat food and hallway dust bunnies. The dust bunnies are an unintentional side effect of eating off the hardwood floors. My cleaning needs some work.

  But I’m not going to dust my floors just for a cat.

  I have to take a stand somewhere.

  -7-

  Incoming!

  The cat has discovered a love of pasta. She prefers Mueller’s® pasta shells, uncooked, of the med
ium-sized variety.

  I inadvertently began her love affair with pasta by reaching into the kitchen cabinet for some soup. My elbow bumped an open box and dry pasta shells went scattering and bouncing across the tile floor.

  I started, the cat jumped, and then we looked across the room at one another. Our eyes narrowed to slits. We both knew exactly what the other wanted. Without a word we went racing in opposite directions—me for the broom, the cat directly for the pile of shells.

  It was no contest. By the time I arrived with the broom, she was in the middle of what appeared to be a free-for-all hockey shoot-out where, instead of a black puck, the cat was lobbing Mueller’s® shells. She went down the line like a professional, nailing shot after shot.

  ZAP! There went one into the dining room.

  ZING! There went one under the stove (Add it to the list of things she’s batted under there never to be retrieved).

  POW! She was bouncing them off the fridge. She turned towards me, armed and ready, and I knew I must regain control.

  “Hold it!” I command. “These are not toys! This is food your father and I require for our daily survival.” I dangle one of her pom-pom balls in front of me. “Here, sweetie. Do you want to play with this?”

  BAM! The cat wings a shell past my left ear.

  That’s it. No more Mrs. Nice Guy. I scoop up a yowling cat and deposit her in the bathroom, door closed. I go back and sweep up all the pasta now scattered throughout the house that I can find. It’s really hard to reach the ones that went all the way under the couch.

  Once finished, I let a very miffed cat out of her cell. She sniffs the floor where the pasta had been and turns toward me. I watch her consider her options. She decides to play the cuteness card.

  Perfectly round eyes of innocence follow my every move. I was just having fun. Is that so wrong? After all, I never even get to leave the house.

  I cross my arms over my chest. Seeing I am not to be moved, she heaves a theatrical sigh, drops her tail, and meanders away.