I have a Calico cat, one year old, that Carl named "Puddy." As in, "I tought I taw a puddy tat." (Hey, he really hated cats and mostly because he was horribly allergic. I figured if he named her, he would bond.)
Puddy had stowed away in a toolbox of Carl's truck last winter just before Christmas. When he arrived home, he said, "The toolbox is meowing, and you can't have it." Ha. She had been abandoned by her mother, she was barely weaned, and the dog they keep at their workshop had gone out into the field next door and brought her back, trying to clean her and take care of her. Puddy was dying, and I think she realized somehow that Carl would end up loving her. Or, well, at least letting her live.
She's been an interesting cat. She fetches (her most favorite toy in the whole world are the pull tabs from a gallon of milk. She will fetch this until your arm falls clean from your body from exhaustion.) Her most cherished sleeping spot is the in basket on my desk -- though sometimes she gets a little rambunctious hopping into the basket and it scootches a little closer to the edge of the desk... each time... so that it ends up half-way hovering over the edge... so that when she sits up and puts her weight in just the right spot, down goes the basket, down goes the cat, whose head somehow stretches and stays above the desk for a brief second, like Wile E. Coyote going over a cliff. Which just cracks my ass up. And then she walks around the desk and sits and glares at me with a, "I am planning evil revenge, just wait 'til you go to sleep," look.
Unfortunately, she's just not the brightest lamp in the shop. She's always been a little hesitant in jumping, and she'll study something for thirty minutes, start little attempts for another five before she'll actually make a leap. God forbid she was wanting to sit up here by me and I have to get up and leave just after she manages to get here. Lately, though, she's been getting a bit braver and pushing off harder from her initial jump, so she's making that leap up to the top of the monitor without much trouble. I have a set of baskets (a file type of thing) next to the desk that she can jump on easily, and she usually uses that as a staging point to the next spot, that monitor. Only, she's been getting braver and braver, stronger and stronger, and barely touching the baskets as a midpoint in the jump. Until yesterday. She jumped so hard and she pushed off at that midpoint as she was flying by it, which gave her a bit too much momentum, and as her front paws reached the middle of the monitor, she suddenly had a horrified expression because her back end had too much momentum and it went up and over her head, like an Olympic handstand leap, and then down the other side... and whooosh, there she went with it, thoroughly humiliated. Of course, I laughed, she glared. It is our ritual.
Right now I am eating a grilled cheese sandwich, and Puddy is doing her very bestest vulture imitation: she's sitting on the absolute edge of the monitor, hunkered over, her beady eyes half-closed as if she's about to take flight and swoop down to get something. I raise a tiny little piece to give to her and she doesn't really want to eat it so much as smell it, and she stretches... and stretches... and kerthunk, falls off the monitor. She doesn't even eat it, she's so disgusted.
Luke came home from his university with a "lost cat" poster he had seen on a light pole. This university is about an hour from here, and someone had put up a photo of a Calico cat... named "Puddy." Same spelling and everything. Carl snatched the photo and examined it, and I noticed he was actually relieved when the markings on that cat were so different from ours. He loves that cat. Now, if I could just get him to quit coloring spots on her with markers when she's sleeping on the desk, we would all be happy.
Posted by toni at February 21, 2004 01:06 PM