Maybe it's genetic
Cats
by Diana
Daniels
hen I was very young, perhaps five years old, I wanted a cat very
badly. My mother, evil bitch that she was, said no.
So when she would leave the house at night to go
bar-hopping, I'd sneak out into our suburban neighborhood and
try to "borrow" one of the local cats. I'd lure one
out from under a car, put it in an abandoned shopping cart someone
had left on the sidewalk and move on, hoping to eventually fill
the cart with kitties.
Unfortunately, the cats had different ideas and
never stayed inside the cart for very long. After luring half
a dozen cats to me and having them all jump out of the cart as
soon as they were placed inside, I finally decided to just settle
for one cat, and took him home.
When I heard my mother come home I hid the cat in
my bedroom closet, where he proceeded to meow constantly. My mother,
flinging open my bedroom door and hearing the meowing, asked,
"do you have a cat in here?" "Nooooo," I said,
trying to make my eyes look big and sincere.
When I was 10, I was playing with another neighborhood
cat. My mother called me in for lunch and I locked the cat in
the crawl space under our house. I was planning on coming back
for it, but I completely forgot.
I was crawling around under the house several months
later when I found the skeleton. The poor thing had died by a
small vent that was covered with wire netting. It was hoping to
somehow get outside where the sun shone through.
As an adult I lived in a series of apartments, all
with a "no pets" rule. So when my (now ex-) boyfriend
asked me to move in with him, part of the attraction was his pet
cat, Buddy.
By the end of our two-year live-in relationship,
I loved Buddy and never wanted to speak to my boyfriend again.
(That's another story.)
I had to move out and I realized how parents must
feel regarding custody of their children. I couldn't take Buddy
with me. He was happy with my ex that was his home. And
I was moving into another one of those damned apartments with
"no pets" rules.
When I finally bought my first house, I proclaimed
it "pets allowed." Now I have two kitties: Ophelia and
Cordelia.
Cordelia eats human hair and throws up. She eats
cat food and throws up. She eats her own vomit and keeps that
down. When she isn't throwing up or eating vomit, she plays with
Ophelia by batting her tail.
Ophelia responds with immediate and furious retaliation,
bringing to mind the phrase "reap the whirlwind." Ophelia
likes to watch TV when it is turned off I'm convinced she
sees dead people.
When I try to analyze how these furry leaches made
me their slave, I can't really explain. My father has 10 cats
and my older brother has seven, so maybe it's genetic.
But maybe my friend's theory about cats being aliens
using mind control on us to be their servants is true.