(She is sitting on my lap and drooling as I type this...)
Oh my, where to start...
Well, my cat's name is
Smokey. I named her that (when I was eleven, I think) because her fur is of the mottled
tortoiseshell variety and she looks as if someone threw her into a
fireplace full of
ash,
cinder, and maybe a few still-burning
embers.
Smokey has got problems, the poor dear. She was an
orphaned
kitten. A old neighbor of my
Grampa's found her when she was only a week or so old, the
sole survivor in a litter full of
dead kitten
strays. Her mother was dead as well, and Tony (the neighbor) found Smokey and put her in a
cardboard box. This was only a semi-
rescue though, for Tony really had no idea about what to do with an orphaned cat after the pick-it-up-and-put-it-in-a-cardboard-box part was all taken care of. I'm sure she would have died had I not spied her one day as my
mother,
father and I were leaving my Grampa's house after a visit. She was sitting
lonely and
tiny in the box - flies all around,
maggots wriggling about her face,
starved nearly to death, looking up at me with little 'get me out of this
hellish,
godforsaken situation,' pleading eyes.
Tony, who had
shuffled outside while we were peering into the box, told us that he wouldn't mind if we took the kitten off of his hands, as he had no idea what to do for it and couldn't
afford a
veterinarian. My mother was, at first, reluctant to take
responsibility for the little creature because we had a houseful of
pets already. She was trying to
usher me away from the cat and toward the car when from inside the box came a squalling, "
MREOOOOW!" It seemed much too big of a noise for such a small,
sick animal to make, and we all stood still for a moment, in
awe of the strength she must have had to muster up in order to reach that degree of loudness. "Well," said my mother, her face visibly softening as her
heart did melt, "She insists." And we took her home.
After a good
wash and few weeks of
love and supplemental
milk, Smokey was feeling quite a bit better. As time went on though, we started to notice that her kittenish
belly was growing
plumper instead of more
lean with age. During a
checkup one day, we asked the
vet about it and he told us that our dear feline had
glandular problems due to her
malnourishment as an infant. She was destined to be quite
globular about the
midriff for the rest of her life. As she grew older, her belly became rounder and eventually her
glands started to
swell and to
distend her tum. Now she is about eight years old and I'd say that her
misshapen middle makes up about 20% of her
total body mass. What used to be a bit of a
swollen tummy is now a hanging
pouch of soft flesh. It waddles from side to side when she walks. To watch her running anyplace is just
hilarious. When she lays on her side, her feet don't even touch each other because of all the
gut that's in the way. Thankfully, her health is not at risk due to this. She sure is damn
funny looking though. Also, inexplicably, sometimes her
pupils are
dilated at different widths. Some days I look at her, and she gazes back at me with
mismatching eyeballs. Less often, she goes temporarily
cross-eyed.
In addition to being physically affected, Smoke seems to have incurred some
mental/
emotional damage. She is
for the most part pretty well adjusted (if unintelligent), but every now and then, some definite not-quite-normal-cat-behavior emerges. For instance, if
upset by the littlest thing; a loud noise; an unfamiliar person getting too close; an incorrect petting, she will go into fits of
hysterics. She
hollers at the top of her lungs, sounding as if someone were
stabbing her to death. She
hisses and
spits and runs screaming from the room. Her place of
refuge is a shelf in the
pantry, where her
food dish is. To
console herself, she crouches above the dish and gobbles down
catfood. If anyone comes to close, she begins screaming and spitting again. If you reach out your hand to her, she will
growl and try to
slap you. Perhaps this
behavior stems from issues connected with her early difficulties in life, I don't know. One of my friends was convinced that I must
torture my cat for her to react to upsetting
stimuli in such a way, but I swear to
bejeezus, she has never been abused.
What's
odd, too, is that after an hysterical episode has subsided, my cat seems to
forget completely what upset her so. She will
curse you to the high heavens, shoot you daggers with her eyes, and fifteen minutes later will creep back towards you and asked to be petted as if nothing
untoward had happened. If you ask her, "Smokey,
are you okay?" she purrs contentedly. This is not a matter of
forgive and forget. I think she really retains no
memory whatsoever of going
ballistic. She lacks the
mental capacity, I think, to hold a
grudge. Occasionally, she has episodes where she seems to be
infuriated and
loving at the same time. She'll sit on you and growl angrily if you so much as move your arm to scratch your nose, and yet she won't remove herself from your
lap. As long as you sit completely still, she purrs happily. I sometimes wonder if she would be
bi-polar or something similiar were she a human being. No doubt she would be riding the
short bus to school. She just isn't all there upstairs. She has fallen into the
toilet numerous times, walked into walls, gotten lost in closets and been unable to find her way out. Most people describe cats as
regal,
sneaky,
graceful,
cunning, or the like. Not my cat. She is
lumpy and
dim. But I do love her so.