My Circus, My Cat
Animals are wonderful companions. Anyone who has shared their home with a pet knows that animals bring a certain comic aspect with them. They live with us, and are part of our lives, but their view of the world is not ours.
We have had dogs, cats, birds, fish, gerbils. A veritable zoo. They have not all resided with us at the same time, but we have had two dogs, two cats and two gerbils all at the same time.
Pets come and go, they don’t live as long as humans; they don’t need to. Somehow, they seem to get it, what is important, well before people ever figure out the purpose of life. They live in the moment, they enjoy themselves.
Cats, on the other hand, are selfish creatures, and like to think they are dignified. Anyone who has shared a home with a feline friend knows that this is an act. They fall off stuff, do stupid things and get themselves into scrapes that defy logic.
Just recently, our becoming-elderly cat greeted me as I got up to get a glass of water at three in the morning. She seemed so pleased to see me up at night, company for her nocturnal vigil staring out of the window. Her eyes lit up, her tail up in greeting as she made what was to be an heroic leap from the window sill to the end table by the couch.
In my sleep-induced stupor, I watched her jump into the air and reach the peak of her jump at which point, she turned in mid-air and headed towards her starting point. It took me a second to realise that she had somehow got the cord for the window blind round her middle as she headed like a pendulum from a clock directly underneath the cat scratching post.
She went under head first, her weight releasing the blind cord, which meant she was now thoroughly and uncomfortably stuck. Uttering a cry of surprise, and a snort of amusement, I hastened over to rescue said feline from her predicament.
She produced a squeak glaring up at me balefully with her yellow eyes. This particular cat has rather satanic eyes, yellow and goat-like with a very narrow pupil. I was, I admit, laughing at her.
This is never advisable with cats. No matter how stupid their actions, nor how foolish they look, nor how stuck they are, they like to think that we do not find the humour in their actions. I attempted to help her as she attempted to bite. My daughter, awakened by the kerfuffle, could hear me scuffling with the cat, saying “Don’t bite me, you old bat!”
Having finally extracted the cat, her dignity, by this time, inextricably bruised, and my arms irrevocably scratched, I proceeded down the hall and deposited her on my daughter’s bed to recuperate from her daring trapeze act in the company of someone who might be more sympathetic to her night time high flyer act.
