Welcome to the hugest cliché you have ever seen; a 20-something girl blogging about her cat. Whatever, s my d.

The beginning:

Anyone who has ever known me also knows that I have always had a deep and consuming desire to become a dog owner. The craigslist pet section was my homepage, ‘It’s me or the dog’ was my favorite TV show, and I’ve been collecting dog toys in secret for over five years. Not to mention that just the sight of a dog on the street causes me embarrassing fits of jubilation.

So I guess it surprised everyone as much as me when I suddenly had a cat.

Backing up a little bit more, last summer, a human (evidently displaying greater forethought than I) dumped this prego kitten off at our local (and infamously shitty) kill-shelter. They called me, and I drove out the next day to get her and her four new hamster-sized offspring.

Keeping five cats in a room roughly the size of a small walk-in closet is a hair-brained (pun indented) scheme if ever there was one, but I like to think that it may not have been so disastrous with any creature other than the one I had just brought home. 

When you take home a nursing cat, the foster coordinators will (occasionally) doll out some old wives tale cat advice like ‘give the nursing mom a tin of warm milk every night’ (don’t ever do that) or ‘get rid of the fleas by submerging the newborn kittens in a bucket of dish soap’ (uh, no. just no.)  So when I got home I immediately googled the crap out of “nursing mother cat care.” One of the very first things the internet will tell you, over and over again, is that a nursing cat will need a quiet, safe place in which to care for her offspring, such as a box in a closet in a quiet room. I lived in a closet, so I made a nice box with a warm side and a cool side and lots of fuzzy blankets. I gently placed the squirmy cat-larvae inside, and left the room to let mom do her thing.

Ten minutes later I peeked inside to discover that teen-mom had neatly carried each kitten out of the box and up into the corner at the head of my bed. Alright, weirdo, I thought, this will obviously not do. They have fleas, they are blind and wiggly, and I will roll over on top of them in the night and wake up covered in squished dead baby cat. So, I carefully placed them back into the nursing box, explained to the cat about my bed and my boundaries, and assumed we could call it good.

The next morning, I woke up with a pile of cats inches from my face, and she had this expression like “oh hey! This is my bed now. Problem?”

My roommates started calling her Francis because she looked ridiculously fancy for a Medford (aka methford, deathford) street cat. Back then she sort-of resembled an emaciated and balding squirrel. She was all tail, outrageously fluffy, and pathetically thin and scrawny.  She was missing all the hair on her ears from infections and ear mites, and had enough fleas to start her own circus. But her tail was full and fluffy, and she always carried it perfectly perpendicular to her body and was constantly twitching it haughtily in the manor of cheerleaders with pom poms.

I made several more attempts to return Francis to the nursing box, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Each time she returned the kittens to my bed in the night, and I started to realize that this was just the place she belonged, and she knew it. Or she’s just a wacko.  Whatever the reason, I suddenly had a great motivation for curing the fleas. I would sit and watch movies and just pick and squish fleas like a monkey, and it became a kind of therapeutic activity, kind of like what I assume knitting is like for non-crazy people.

Francis created a place for herself in the house pretty quickly. My roommates were entertained by her insane rumpus-room spazz attacks. She would gallop careering into every corner of the house at top speed, going in loops until she collapsed exhausted and panting on the kitchen linoleum. It was like she needed to explode in fits of crazy because being a mother meant long periods of normal.

But she was a surprisingly great mom, aside from never once even attempting to wean her children. At three months old, they looked like perversions of nature still nursing everyday. (The human equivalent I guess is a breastfeeding teenager.)

Long story still pretty long, the kittens had to go back to the shelter to get adopted, and for some reason I just couldn’t take Francis back with them. Then she got depressed, and I couldn’t take a depressed cat to the shelter. Then she got mastitis, and I couldn’t take her back until that got better. Then she got spayed, and I had to let her recover. It was about six months into it when I finally realized she wasn’t going anywhere, and I had a cat.

Maybe it’s that I wanted a dog all along, or this cat is just a freak, but Francis is more canine than most golden retrievers. She fetches, obsessively, annoyingly, and will bite you if you don’t throw the poof ball quickly enough.  And she’s more single-mindedly destructive than any dog I’ve ever known.  She eats paper, yesterday she completely destroyed my headphones, all of my boots have claw holes, it goes on and on ad infinitum. Other habits are less dog-like and just plain weird. I haven’t been able to have a cup of coffee on the floor in years, because the second she spies it she will select one of her grossest, slimiest, most mildew-filled toys and deposit it straight into my cup. Every single time, without fail.  Also, she’s a biter. She sinks her claws into my knees. She eats toes. She is a flailing bundle of claws and teeth.

Some of her awful habits are my fault. I’ve trained her to sharpen her claws on the couch, because I derive some weird aggressive satisfaction from knowing it would drive its former owner bonkers. I really have created the worst cat ever.

She drives me insane, but I couldn’t imagine my life without her.  That’s why cats are one of the most evolutionary successful creatures on the planet- they have perfected the art of worming their way into your life, until you need them there before you realize it. When I get home she’s always waiting with her trilly mews and pom pom tail. At night she wakes me up burrowing into the crook of my arm. When I take a shower, she waits concernedly by the door and bites my legs when I come out.

I always wanted a dog, and now I have Francis. But somehow, that has worked out completely perfectly. She’s the worst and she’s mine and we were meant for each other, and I’ll love her to pieces for the rest of her fluffy existence. 

An open letter because this is how I process feelings;

It’s so weird to me that I ever thought I had anything in common with a person who considered my dietary choices a personal attack, who was scornful of the homeless and disadvantaged, and viewed me as a hateful, judgmental individual just for not believing in a Christian god. Proximity can make you blind. How did I ever not recognize that it was you all along making me feel miserable and inadequate? I am way smarter than you, and probably even nicer when it really comes down to it. What I mean is, at least I care about the people who care about me. I remember once I told you how happy I was that school had started again, and I could finally focus on something and how just sitting in the library with a good cup of coffee made me so happy. And you just told me that college was useless. And all I could think back then was well yeah, if you majored in photography and can’t even keep a coffee shop job. And even if my degree is pointless, at least I’ve worked hard and learned and loved it. I couldn’t say it back then, but really, Fuck You.

And while I’m on the subject, maybe I am NOT the person you should have told that you don’t love your girlfriend, you wouldn’t even want to be her friend, and you think sex with her is morally wrong. Maybe those are the things you should be telling HER.

You are gross, I can’t believe I ever called you friend, and I am so much incredibly better off without you. Fuck off!

Sincerely, KR

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