Senioritis is an ugly thing

BikerDude is gearing up for his last push. Graduation is May 17 on Long Island, but he will still have to finish his last three classes-- simultaneously. The deal was that he could walk in May graduation if he finished his remaining classes by July, and he will meet that deadline, but the most he's ever taken at a time up until now is two, so he's going to have to work hard to finish out undergrad life. That seems appropriate. After that, he will have the entire months of July and August off before he starts grad school at BTSR in the fall.

Remember Senioritis? That blissful illness that befalls those about to graduate, when the end of the race is in sight, you know you only have to pass your finals, turn in your last English essay and try not to blow up the school with your chemistry final and then-- FREEDOM!!

Multiply that by about 10 and you get where BikerDude is right now.

He's been working full-time and going to school full time for four years now. He's still looking at four years of grad school, but that is going to be very different-- sort of like senior year after you had gotten all of your acceptance and rejection letters and knew where you'd be going to college in the fall. In fact, along with his formal acceptance letter into BTSR, he was given a grant for having one of the highest GPAs of the incoming class (he will be graduating Summa Cum Laude), but I have reminded him that he still has to actually finish the classes! He will, but he has been spending a lot of time recently daydreaming.

He is specifically daydreaming about his ultimate graduation present. When he graduates from grad school in four years, he wants us to take a month-long cross-country bike trip. For this, we will need, as best as I can tell, a camper and most likely a new bike. Or a second bike.

The camper is easy. There are these super-cool little pop-ups that can be towed by a motorcycle. I grew up camping in a pop-up camper, and I think this sounds fabulous!



Cute!

As for the second bike, he has determined that we either need to seriously upgrade his current bike or, better yet, buy a bigger one. If you have ever known a biker, you know that one can never own too many bikes. This is his current bike:




This is the one he wants to upgrade to:



Undeniably more comfy-- a rolling Barca Lounger, one might even say. Not that I'm complaining!

The other plan would be for me to get my Piaggio MP3, get comfortable enough riding it to be able and willing to ride it across the country, and for him to take his old bike and us to ride in tandem. I'm thinking that the Barca Lounger has better odds, all things considered.

Anyway, he's got the routes all planned, right down to calculating gas station/rest stops along the way (important for cross-country biking, where you are unlikely to get more than about 100 mile on a tank of gas). We will, apparently, be iron-butting it directly to Denver before the more leisurely aspect of the vacation will kick in, where we will then spend about three weeks touring through the Rockies and the western national parks: Zion, Yosimite, the Grand Canyon, etc. We'll end up in the South Dakota badlands and head home via a more northern route.

This is all fun, but about those final classes...?

Children and dogs

The saying goes that actors should never work with children or dogs. Many cat owners feel the same way, but Bengals are odd cats.

Most cats are leery of strangers, but my Bengals have all, to a greater or lesser extent, been friendly. Cinnamon, however, is in a class by herself. We call her our little Wal-Mart greeter: She runs to the door when strangers come in and DEMANDS attention! She usually hops up on the table that is just inside the door and simply looks cute. Most people can't resist a quick ear-scratch or a pet along the back, but if they ignore her, she will give them a loud MEOW! If they still ignore her, she will begin to pat them, first with her claws in, then with her claws extended. I just tell people, "Do yourself a favor and pet her because she won't leave you alone until you do."

On Halloween, I have to lock her in the basement. She is convinced that all of those trick-or-treaters are there just to see her! Considering that we routinely have between 100-150 trick-or-treaters, she's safer in the basement.

Anyone who comes in and sits down gets even more attention. Shortly after I bought my house, I had a guy in to give me an estimate on siding. He sat on the couch with a clipboard and some samples, and while we were talking, she got on his clipboard in his lap and layed down! Fortunately, he thought it was funny. Even the locksmith couldn't get rid of her. She supervised all of his work and even sat in his lap while he drilled out the place for the new dead bolt. I offered to remove her, but he was fascinated by this little cat who didn't run when he fired up the electric drill.

But where Cinnamon's friendliness really shines is with children. All of my other cats, including my other Bengals, are reasonably friendly to strangers and will usually sashay into the room and check out any newcomers and look for attention and pets, but even they usually avoid small children. Not so with Cinnamon! This was something I noticed from the start. When she was only about 6 months old, some friends came to the house for a cookout and brought their 10 month old baby, who was just starting to crawl. He squealed with delight when he saw my cats (only 2 at the time). Winston took one look and beat it upstairs for most of the duration of their visit, but Cinnamon wasn't the least bit bothered.

With the baby sitting on his mom's lap, Cinnamon hopped up into her lap as well and sniffed the little visitor. He laughed and touched her fur and her ears, and other than squinting a little when he pulled her ear, she didn't react, just arched her back when he touched it. He was enthralled! It worked well for me-- I had assiduously baby-proofed the house, but was a little concerned that he would get bored since I didn't have a lot of toys or baby-appropriate things to play with. Not a problem! He spent the entire day following her around and around: Kitchen to dining room to living room back down the hall to the kitchen. She stayed ahead of him-- just out of reach-- occasionally pausing to let him catch up to her and pet her. She never scratched, bit or hissed and only hopped up into a chair out of his way if she felt the least bit threatened. The perfect baby cat!

I didn't know for sure if her reaction was specific to that child, but over the years I've discovered that it was not. Another friend visited with her young daughter and Cinnamon was equally comfortable with her. More recently, my sister had a baby girl (my niece Smiling Eyes) a little over a year ago and Cinnamon has adopted her as a Favorite Small Person. Every time my sister and her husband visit, Cinnamon immediately finds Smiling Eyes and touches noses for a greeting, much to my niece's delight. Sis and her husband have two cats of their own-- big old boys, a Siamese and a part Russian Blue that each had before they got married-- but they still stay pretty clear of Smiling Eyes. She's 16 months old now and quite mobile, so they have had to improve their evasive maneuvers! Not so with Cinnamon. She hops right up to the toddler and demands ear scratches and pets along her back. Even if Smiling Eyes grabs her tail or a handfull of fur, Cinnamon just steps out of reach to let her know this isn't acceptable.

Razor and Kaos are more wary and tend to steer clear and observe from a distance, but they also can't stand the idea of someone else getting attention, so when they were up Palm Sunday to visit, Smiling Eyes ended up petting all three Bengals. Kaos is almost as friendly and fearless as Cinnamon, so it only took a few minutes of Cinnamon getting attention before he had to insert himself into the scene. Razor approached from the rear and carefully sniffed her from behind before allowing himself to be gingerly petted, but when she let out a loud laugh, he high-tailed it to the staircase and watched through the bannister.

Last fall our church had a St. Francis of Assisi Blessing of the Animals service, so I took Cinnamon to represent the other cats. There was no way I was going to take all of them, but I didn't trust the boys. Even with a harness and leash, I would be the one standing under a tree with my arm straight up in the air, tightly gripping the end of a leash that disappeared into the foliage. I love my boys, but I am realistic about their behavior!

Cinnamon was in her element, once she got over being a little freaked at being outside (she's strictly an indoor cat). I had her in a harness and leash, but still carried her around. Once she realized that all she had to do to participate was let people pet her, fawn over her and tell her how cute she was, she was completely on board with the whole idea! She got lots of attention and had a great day!

Knowing all of this about our cats and their reactions, we thought we knew what to expect when we agreed to puppy-sit for one of BikerDude's friends. The puppy in question was a 10 week old Australian Shepherd named Maya-- a blue merle, odd-eyed ball of fluff and energy. We both work close to home, so it was easy for one of us to slip home during the day and let her out in the early months, until she grew enough that she could be left alone all day. It gave us a fun-but-temporary puppy fix and did a favor for the friend, as well.

We introduced the cat to the puppy gradually, by leaving her in her crate initially until they had a chance to sniff her and scope her out. Next we kept her on a leash or held her in our laps-- they were very curious and immediately checked her out. Once she was allowed to run loose, we blocked off the bottom of the stairs so that the cats could get on the stairs to get away. She's a smart dog, so it didn't take her long to bypass our obstacles, but we kept changing them around and foiled most of her attempts to chase the cats up the stairs. Patches, our old lady cat, was still alive during this, so she would usually just retreat upstairs and stay there while the puppy was around.

Maya was an energetic puppy and LOVED the cats! They were way better than any other toy! Much to our surprise, the cat who quickly adopted her was Razor. He was the most timid of the Bengals in every other new situation we had introduced them to, but he quickly discovered that the puppy was an excellent playmate! He would chase her, let her chase him, wrestle with her and play keep-away by jumping just out of her reach and tormenting her. Kaos and Cinnamon played along occasionally, but Razor was always up for a game of chase, and he would even put her in a headlock and bathe her ears.

Maya's instincts quickly emerged and before long she was trying to herd the cats. This was just as hilarious as it sounds: She would chase them and nip at their heels, which would earn her a swat on the nose. She would corner them in the kitchen, then they would confound her by either jumping over her or, when she got a little bigger (and a little wiser), jumping up on the kitchen counter and escaping over her head. The look on her face was priceless: Australian Shepherds are cattle dogs, and cows don't go vertical. This was not a move that her instincts could account for! She would look at them with a mixture of "That's not fair!" and "How did you do that?" that always made us laugh.

But she was really good at trajectories. When she would chase them and they would jump the barrier and run upstairs, she would run along the hallway into the kitchen, because if the stairs didn't go up to the second floor, that was where their trajectory would have taken them. She would run into the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling. She knew where they were, she just couldn't figure out how to get to them!

Because of the cats, she learned a lot of interesting techniques that I'll wager most Aussie's don't know. Our friend was a little precious and worried about his poor little darling, apparently thinking that because she was a girl she was a delicate little flower. What he clearly didn't understand was that she was a moose, a bull in a china shop. Female she may be, but delicate: Not! Early on he was terrified that she would fall off of a piece of furniture or trip trying to go down stairs and break a leg. Imagine his horror the first time he came by to pick her up and found her mid-chase with the cats, following them as the went through the dining room, into the living room, up onto the ottoman, then bouncing off the seat of the chair to clear the back like a low hurdle, landing at a full run down the hall to the kitchen!

She also liked to nap in the picture window, long past the time when she was really to big to do so. Seeing a cat or two curled up in the window is cozy; seeing a good-sized dog there is just weird, especially when she would roll over on her back to toast her tummy in the afternoon sun.

The friend finally decided that enough was enough when he offered her a dog toy and she turned it down in favor of one of the cat's catnip mice. By that time she was old enough to spend the day with his other Aussie. Her house training was complete and she was big enough to hold her own against the full-grown boy. Apparently she has now surpassed her brother in the number and complexity of tricks that she has learned, and her new favorite game is playing Frisbee with Daddy! And she still loves kitties!

What can I say. They were a bad influence.

Water Babies

One of the traits that sets Bengals apart from other cats is their attraction to water. I discovered this with Winston right away, because from Day One he thought of his water bowl as a toy, and he did so until the day he died.

When I got Winston, I didn't think I needed to buy a lot of stuff-- just food and litter, mostly-- because I had had a cat for 10 years. I had a lovely little matching bowl set for food and water-- typical ceramic "cat size" bowls, one for food, one for water. I kept them in the far end of the kitchen on a little kitty placemat. Shortly after I got Winston, I came home to find a toy floating in the water bowl. I thought it was an accident and that the water on the floor came from his attempts to get the toy out of the bowl, so I scooped it out, wrung it out and set it to dry on the kitchen sink.

Winston came in and sniffed around the bowl, then left. A few minutes later, he came in carrying another toy in his mouth and dropped it directly into the freshly-filled water bowl and began to smack it around, clearly enjoying the splashes he was making. Shocked, I told him to knock it off, took the toy, and threw it out of the kitchen into the dining room. He ran after it and fetched it back... and dropped it right back into the water bowl. A new game! Awesome!

A few days later, I came home and found a trail of water from the kitchen to the dining room and the water bowl upside down under the dining room table. I knew that this called for additional methods, so I went to the pet store and found a weighted food/water dish designed for large dogs. The thing was made out of some sort of resin with weights incorporated so that it looked like it had been carved from a block of black marble. It looked cool, but the key feature was that it weighed approximately five pounds with most of the weight in the base, so it was virtually impossible for a 6 lb. kitten to tip over or drag. It was, however, possible to splash all of the water out of it for an impressive distance in all directions around the fixed point of the bowl, as both Winston and I soon discovered.

He didn't limit himself to the water dish, either. I came home one day and found him bathing himself. When I scooped him up, I discovered that he was soaking wet up to his armpits. I searched the apartment to find out where he had gotten into the much water and discovered that I had accidentally left the lid to one of the toilets up. Apparently he had a little pool party in my absence! He had managed to splash most of the water out of the bowl all over the bathroom floor, and as I mopped it up, he was still splashing around in it, chasing droplets and the edge of the mop.

He also had to learn a few realities about water, though. Like the fact that if you play in water then get immediately into your litter box that contains clumping cat litter, you end up with a condition that can best be described as "concrete toes," and that despite your howls of protest, your mother will insist on chipping all of the offending material away, removing most of the fur in the process. He walked around with some very sad-looking little pink toes until the fur grew back.

I also learned the hard way to lock him out of the bathroom, again, despite his howls of protest, if I wanted to take a bath. He didn't usually get into the shower with me unless he fell in from the side of the tub (which he did fairly frequently as a kitten, less often as he got older), but he couldn't resist a tub full of water. The first time he got in with me, I had to be very careful to get him out without ending up with scratches in places that I didn't want to have to explain to my doctor!

I used to warn my guests that if they were drinking water, they should not set their cup down on the floor or the furniture. He ignored other liquids, interestingly enough (soda, tea, etc.), but if there was a glass of water he would walk up to it and stick his foot in it. I had to explain him a lot.

I think his favorite thing that I ever brought home was the kitty water fountain. I finally decided to give it a try because he kept splashing the water out of the water bowl, and I figured that he would be hard-pressed to make a BIGGER mess than he already was. Besides, the fountain had a filter on it, which would hopefully cut down on how often I would have to wash the whole thing (with Winston floating his toys and putting his feet in the water dish all of the time, I usually had to wash it 2 or 3 times a day). He LOVED it! Lots of water, some of it bubbling, and when he floated his toys there was enough water for there to be a little current that would spin them! Hours of entertainment!

When I had just him and then him and Cinnamon, I would take them with me when I visited my parents. Mom never got used to the water thing. We'd be in the dining room eating and we'd hear the tell-tale splish-splish-splish that told us that Winston was digging in the water bowl. Mom would tell him to stop it, he would totally ignore her, so she'd get up and go scoop him up and fuss at him while cradling him like a baby. I think on some level she knew that he was manipulating her-- he would splash in the water bowl to get attention, and boy, did it work!

Cinnamon has never shown any particular interest in water, but the new boys certainly do. We usually have one or both of them in the shower with us, sitting on the side of the tub between the shower curtain and the liner. They haven't yet discovered the fun of floating toys in the water fountain, but Razor did start to get into the toilet once when BikerDude left the lid up (fortunately I caught him before he could make too big of a mess). They both like to get in the shower after we're done and splash around in the puddles and get in the sink while the water is running and play with the stream of water.

Like Winston, their lack of fear of water can make discipline challenging, too. Long ago I discovered that water bottles can be effective, but with Winston, they were a game. I'd squirt him, he'd jump down and run away, but then he'd run right back as if to say, "Do it again!" Kaos does this, too. Tweak runs off and beats up another cat. But that's why she wears the "Bad Kitty" tag.

Changes

It's been interesting watching the boys as they have settled into our household. It's fun to watch their individual personalities emerge as they become comfortable.

Kaos adapted almost immediately, but that's not surprising. He is a confident, laid-back cat with an insatiable curiosity and absolute confidence that he will be accepted, admired and treated well wherever he goes. He has never met a stranger: He likes to go up to "new friends" and give them a thorough sniff, check out any packages they may have brought in, stick his nose in their coat or shirt pocket, and offer his ears for a quick scratch. If you pick him up, he curls up into your arms and looks around from this new, interesting vantage point. Kaos is by far the most agile of our cats, but he therefore takes the greatest risks, occasionally leading to some spectacular crashes. It doesn't phase him in the least, though. He'll just keep trying 'til he succeeds. This is how he has learned to balance on the railing at the top of the stairs, perch on top of my closet door and lay down across the top of the clothes hanging in my closet.

Perhaps his most impressive trick, however, is balancing on the "cannonball" tops of our four-poster bed. This bed, a 1920s or '30s era reproduction of an antique set, has eyeball-level posts that culminate in balls about the size of a softball. Kaos can perch like a circus monkey with all four paws on one ball. He then bounces off of the matress and lands on another ball, leaps to the top of the shelves next to my side of the bed or launches himself directly onto whichever of the other hapless cats happens to be trying to nap on the bed. It's hardly a stealth move, but he still manages to catch them occasionally off guard.

Razor has been slower to settle in. This may be partly because he was in foster care longer, so it may have taken him longer to decide that this was truly his "forever home," but I think a lot of it is just his personality. Razor is a friendly cat, but not as exuberant as Kaos. He assesses situations before crashing into them, but his curiosity gets the best of him (especially if he sees Cinnamon or Kaos getting attention), and he likes to meet and greet visitors. He has only recently allowed me to start picking him up. He will relax for a minute and purr loudly, even letting me pet his head and snuggle him under my chin, but usually he will want to get down pretty quickly. I let him down when he asks so that he will let me pick him up again. Gradually, the lap time has gotten longer.

Razor does love attention, but likes to be in control. He loves to catch me when I'm reading and get behind me on the sofa or chair, then creep down my shoulder and walk across my lap between my eyes and the book, sometimes pausing long enough to draw his tail under my chin. Just passing through...

I call these his "drive-by" cuddles.

Razor is actually probably the smartest of the cats. He's the one who figured out how to work the toddler latches on the kitchen cabinets and still enjoys breaking into the food locker. He also likes to carry things around the house, so when something odd (a bottle of baby aspirin/Baby Jesus from the nativity set) turns up someplace where we usually don't keep it (under the dining room table/in the fireplace), I have a pretty good idea who is responsible.

Recently, he has started following me into the bathroom in the mornings and demanding belly rubs. He flings himself down on the bathmat in front of the tub and rolls around on his back, purring loudly, until I stop whatever I'm doing and rub his belly. Sometimes he will respond by clamping up on my hand with all fours, but usually once he has me in his grip, he just washes my hand.

His favorite game, though, is wrestling with the other cats. Kaos is his favorite target, and sometimes we will hear Razor walking around the house yowling, calling Kaos to come out and play. He doesn't usually bother with stalking: He just walks right up to Kaos and starts grooming him, then grooms a little harder, then pins him down to really wash those ears, then puts him in a headlock and pins him to the floor. Not very subtle. He does the same thing with Cinnamon, but she is quicker on the uptake and faster than Kaos, so she usually worms her way out of his grip before he can advance too far (she grew up with a bigger, older brother who used the same technique, so she's an old pro). So far he hasn't really tried it with Tweak. She still intimidates him.

I am so glad that we decided to get both boys instead of one or the other. They keep each other entertained and are a great outlet for each other. If we had just one of them, either of them would drive Cinnamon and Tweak crazy. As it is they can take out their aggressive play on each other and leave the other cats to join in or observe at will. It's a nice arrangement.

Remembering a Friend

I just found out that my former youth pastor passed away after an all-to-lengthy battle with cancer. Let me tell you about him.

Youth pastors occupy an odd place in the spectrum of ministerial positions. Many end up elevated to Personality Cult levels by their young charges, but at the same time, they are watched with skeptical eyes, always searching for that Greatest of Adult Sins: Hypocrisy. Nothing will cost a youth pastor his or her standing faster than being branded a hypocrite, and it is a charge that most teenagers will find unforgivable.

John came to West Lynchburg Baptist Church following in the footsteps of a youth pastor who had achieved that Personality Cult standard, and many of the older kids were prepared to despise him immediately because he wasn't the One Who Had Left. But John was made of stronger stuff. He was a Vietnam vet, after all, and yet one of the gentlest of souls. He was laid back and easy-going, engaging in conversations with us from the beginning, making sure that we understood that he was listening to us. Whether or not it was deliberate, it was the perfect formula: Every teenager, more than anything else, wants to be listened to.

John did not coddle us. He challenged us. He would not let us take anything for granted. It wasn't enough to show up to youth group and spout the appropriate phrases and Bible verses, he was constantly questioning us: WHY do you believe that? Is that what you really believe? Defend yourself. He was the Devil's Advocate in the best sense of the phrase, making us really think about our beliefs and refine them. He assisted us through that transition from childhood to adulthood, from believing what our parents and elders had always taught us to understanding and refining our own beliefs so that by the time we went out into the world, our beliefs were OURS. We knew what we believed, but more importantly, we knew why.

The greatest lesson that he taught us was to question everything. It isn't enough to repeat what you hear, you must consider the source, consider what is behind it and evaluate everything. This sounds subversive and, I suppose, in many ways it was, but he was a child of the '60s and had absorbed the lesson that Questioning Authority was sometimes necessary. Some parents were less than delighted that John encouraged their children to ask uncomfortable questions, but many, mine included, understood what a healthy approach this was.

By the time I went to college, I was not ready to fall for the latest trend. I knew what I believed and why, and this made me comfortable and self-confident when it came to meeting people who didn't share my beliefs. They were no threat to me, after all-- I knew what I believed!-- and I learned a lot over the years from some very interesting people by engaging with them, frequently with the same questions that John and posed to me: Why do you believe that? What are the ramifications of your belief? Have you considered these alternate approaches? It lead to some wonderful friendships and long, late-night conversations with people who I might have otherwise avoided because they didn't believe what I did.

And John never ducked the difficult questions. In youth group we discussed rock music and what effect it might have (a big concern in the late '70s and early '80s when burning and smashing albums seemed to be a national pasttime). We talked about dating-- not just "Don't have sex" but love and relationships and the importance of spirituality and family and, yes, sex. We talked about drugs and friends, crime and politics, theology and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.

Every teenager should have a John in their lives-- an adult who loves and cares and forces them to think for themselves. And most of all, someone who isn't their parent who says to them, "What you have to say is important, and I am listening."

A Different Kind of Cat

After Sammy Cat died, I didn't really know what to expect with this new little bundle of fur who had found his way into my apartment.  Part of me felt guilty:  I was still mourning Sammy and I knew that I would never love another cat the way I loved her.  Winston was adorable-- and lovable-- but he just wasn't Sammy.  Of course, as anyone who has lost a pet and adopted a subsequent one knows, it's true:  You never love two pets the same way.  This is why pets are good for us, because the prepare us for life with humans, too.  Winston was no Sammy, but I came to discover that Sammy was no Winston.  

Samantha was the Queen of All She Surveyed.  She was the epitome of royalty, a beautiful, elegant seal-point Siamese with hyacinth-blue eyes that looked like crackle glass.  She was stunning, and if you weren't sure, you only had to ask her.  SHE thought that she was gorgeous!

Winston was so different.  Yes, he was a male, obviously, and he was still a kitten (five months old, but still a kitten), but it was clear from the beginning that his personality was just... different.  

Whatever Samantha did, she looked like she meant to do it.  Fall off the furniture?  I meant to do that.  On one of his first days in my apartment, Winston was bathing himself on the ottoman and simply lost track of where he was and fell right off the edge-- boom!  He looked around, startled to find himself in a different place.  But rather than shrug it off with an "I meant to do that" attitude, I could almost see him shrug his shoulders and say, "Whoops!  I fell!"  then immediately he resumed his bath on the floor, where he had landed.  

If Samantha was a Queen, Winston was the Court Jester.  Not a regal bone in his body.

Similarly, while Samantha enjoyed being picked up and would frequently climb into my lap for cuddles, she would only allow herself to be held certain ways, and NEVER on her back (as my veterinarian discovered once to the amusement of me and the vet tech).  When I picked Winston up, he would go limp, the Amazing Jello Cat!  I could cradle him on his back like a baby and he would purr and put his paw on my cheek.  He would climb up on my chest and tuck his head under my chin, then give me upper-cut head butts.  But his greatest trick was his dismount.  He would lay in my arms on his back, stretching his front paws out over his head and looking down.  I would slightly tilt him and shift his weight, and he would pour out of my arms, backwards and head first, then land on the ground first with his front paws, then his back.  I called it Pouring Out the Kitty, and he did it his whole life, even when he weighed 18 lbs.

Kaos will sort of let me do that, too, but he's the only other cat I've met who tolerates being poured.

The other thing I had to adjust to was deliberate disobedience.

Whenever I caught Sammy getting ready to do something she wasn't supposed to do-- say, eat a plant-- all I had to do was say her name, "Sammy Cat..."  She would then begin an elaborate charade of carefully sniffing the plant, the pot, the rug under the plant, and would eventually look at me with a wounded expression, as if to say, "I was just admiring this beautiful plant.  How dare you accuse me of eating it!  I know I'm not supposed to do that!"  Then she would casually saunter away, biding her time until I wasn't looking.

Winston was completely different.  If I saw him getting ready to eat a plant, I could say, "Winston!" and he would look at me then go right back to eating the plant.  His expression was more, "Want me to stop?  Make me!"  No cat is totally obedient (hah! no kidding!), but Samantha at least had the decency to pretend to obey when I was LOOKING RIGHT AT HER and she KNEW it!  Not so with Winston.  He would look at me and push something off of a shelf, maintaining eye contact the whole time.  Little twerp.

Winston Comes Home

My first cat after I left home was a beautiful seal-point Siamese that I adopted in law school named Samantha (aka, Sammy Cat or Slammy Cat). One of her most notable eccentricities was that she HATED other cats. With a passion! She would sit on the balcony of my apartment and growl at other cats sitting on their balconies, and on the rare occasion she actually encountered another cat, she would react with the Banshee Scream From Hell and scare the bejeebers out of them. Truly obnoxious.

Sammy Cat died after a bout with a nasty form of cancer and I was devastated. A co-worker whom I knew bred and showed cats had been kindly following the saga (it was 8 months from her diagnosis 'til her death) and had offered support throughout. She saw me a week or so after Sammy's death and stopped me to express her condolences. I told her that as much as I missed Sammy, I was going to have to get another cat soon because my apartment was way too quiet, and coming home to an empty apartment was just worse.

Janet paused and looked thoughtful. Finally, she said, "I normally wouldn't offer a cat to someone who had just lost their beloved pet, but I have a unique situation." Janet was getting ready to get married, and she was marrying another cat breeder that she had met on the show circuit, so they were going to be combining catteries. Between them, including pets, kittens and everything they had almost 40 cats, so they were looking to thin the herd! They had agreed that they were not going to keep any more kittens that they couldn't sell-- they had to find homes for cats who were not already household pets.

She went on to explain that she had this one kitten... he was five months old and all of his littermates had been placed. The folks on her "kitten list" didn't really want him because his markings were very poor. She said that he was a very sweet boy, very social, and from a litter from one of her favorite cats, a melanistic (black-on-black) girl. I asked her what kind of cat he was and she said, "A Bengal. Specifically, he's a seal-lynx point, or snow leopard Bengal." My first thought was, "What's a Bengal?" I had to go back to my office and look them up on the Internet to see what she was talking about.

The next morning, Janet played a very dirty trick. She left two Polaroids of this adorable kitten on my desk! He looked for all the world like a lynx-point Siamese: A cream colored cat with tabby markings on his face, ears, feet and tail. As it turns out, that was the problem: He was supposed to have spots on his body, and he didn't. He looked like this:



Now, I ask you, was this fair?

Cut to a year or so later. Winston was driving me crazy. He was certainly fun and lovable and incredibly goofy, but he CRAVED attention! From the time I got home he was Velcro-Kitty: Every time I sat down he was in my lap. He wanted to play all of the time, and we would play fetch with his furry toys for half and hour at a time. Winston was always a Night Crawler, so after I went to bed, he'd be up and around, getting bored, and he'd start to bring me toys. I would wake up surrounded by cat toys-- mice, fur balls, pom-poms, even his fishing toys with the long sticks! When he really wanted to get my attention, he'd dunk the soft toys in his water dish first then drop them on my bed. There's nothing like reaching over and finding a cold, wet, slimy fur toy right next to your pillow... If I still insisted on sleeping, he'd jump up on one of my dressers and start knocking things off until I yelled at him.

I was getting pretty exasperated and asked Janet and my vet what to do. They both had the same conclusion: Get another cat. Why on earth would I want to do that when the one was driving me insane??!! Janet explained that Winston had been raised in a house full of cats and was very social. He was lonely, and I was his only playmate. Get him a playmate and some of the neurotic behavior would cease. What sealed the deal was that my sister went out of town for 2-3 weeks and I kept her cat Ivan for her. Winston and Ivan were already friends (they were the same age), and Winston's behavior improved dramatically as soon as Ivan was there. After he left, the antics started up again. I was convinced.

I asked Janet if she had any more cats available. As it turns out, she did. She and her husband also did Bengal rescue and they had brought in a mother and kittens shortly before. They had all been placed, but when they came in they brought feline herpes virus with them, and two of Janet's kittens had gotten infected. The kittens would outgrown the virus (it's like a bad cold, but it lasts for several weeks or months), but she couldn't sell them because they had snotty, crusty noses and teary eyes and just didn't look healthy. She brought me: Cinnamon, a tiny brown spotted Bengal with the cutest turned-up nose you've ever seen.

I think Winston thought that I had brought him a pet, but he quickly discovered that even though she was a fraction of his size, she was clearly in charge. They remained best buddies until his untimely death in 2007.