magπ.ca

Old Cat is Old

The long bor­ing one, about my cat!

Sasha was never the cat I would have picked.

He was one of two cats owned by the pre­vi­ous owner of our house. I had a com­plic­ated rela­tion­ship with his owner. Suf­fice it to say, I wasn’t pre-disposed to wel­come into my life things that were his. When he left, he left behind two cats — Sasha and Souma.

Sasha and Souma were sib­lings, big, black bruis­ers, neur­otic and awk­ward, and I did not want them. We tried for months to find new homes for them.

Kit­tens are easy to get rid of. Adult cats, less so. Espe­cially when you’re hard-pressed to explain why some­body should want to take them. They weren’t beau­ti­ful. They weren’t well social­ized. They tried to be affec­tion­ate, but more often than not failed in ways that were more annoy­ing than cute. I found them both unlove­able, and man­aged to con­vey that to every­body we offered them to.

Souma, in par­tic­u­lar, had the unfor­tu­nate habit of pee­ing when she was nervous. Since she was nervous all the time, this led to con­stant “acci­dents”. We decided to try her as an “out­door” cat, and within a week, a neigh­bour had adop­ted her. We found fly­ers all about the neigh­bour­hood, declar­ing a “pleas­ant”, “love­able” black cat found, inex­plic­ably with her photo. If they found her love­able, we weren’t about to dis­ab­use them of the notion. Of any notion. They’ve had her for almost 10 years now, and I only feel the slight­est twinge of guilt when I think about it. Souma & I do not make eye con­tact, when we pass on the street. We’re both hap­pier with this arrangement.

Sasha, on the other hand, I found I could live with, and we even­tu­ally stopped look­ing for his new home.

Some cats con­nect with people, and some cats con­nect with places. The Boy had Stu­pid (an insep­ar­able pair), and I had the (fickle) affec­tions of the Demon Lord, but Sasha was the house’s cat. We the People looked after his phys­ical needs, but Sasha seemed more attached to the phys­ical space of the house than with any­body who was actu­ally in it. When we first moved in, he haunted the rooms, drift­ing vaguely towards any activ­ity that happened in the house, but stay­ing apart from it. We used to joke that he was the house’s spirit. We assumed that was just Sasha’s way. It was his way, for sev­eral years.

Shortly after the Demon Lord left us (to return to his heart’s first, true love), Sasha choose me. Cat’s do that, of course. Talk to any cat fan­cier, and they’ll tell you about a cat who choose them. Not the other way around.

Sasha always slept with us at night. Usu­ally draped across my torso, and tucked behind my knees. But he star­ted sniff­ing my face instead. He’d stand dir­ectly in front of me, and spend sev­eral minutes sniff­ing my cheeks and fore­head, before lay­ing down with his front paws on my shoulder, and his face pressed closed to mine. He’d stay there until I moved.

Its always a pro­duc­tion, for Sasha to lay down. He’s never cer­tain it will go well, so he eases into it, ready to abort should some­thing not go as expec­ted. Its excru­ci­at­ing to watch; you have to keep very still. But when it works out, its like noth­ing else. If he stays down long enough to start purring, bliss!

For Sasha, I’ve learned to lay still(-er) at night.

At about the same time, he star­ted com­ing to me dur­ing the day, with his concerns.

He is a very anxious cat. We always knew that. As the Amer­ic­ans say, he has “issues”. He wor­ries about everything, con­stantly. He used to just worry in silence, though. Now, he comes to me with these wor­ries, and we’ll try to work them out. But he’s a cat, and I’m a per­son, and we do not speak the same lan­guage. He’ll cry, lead me to some ran­dom loc­a­tion in the house, and I’ll try to divine what’s on his mind. Some are obvi­ous: if he leads me to the kit­chen, he has com­plaint about his food. If he leads me to the lit­ter box, he has a com­plaint about clean­li­ness. If he leads me to the bed­room, he wants a snuggle. If he leads me to the bath­room, he wants to drink from the tub. I have no idea what it means when he leads me to the lib­rary. Or the din­ing room. Or when he cries, but doesn’t lead me anywhere.

When it first star­ted, I tried ignor­ing his cries. I’m well aware that cats try to train us, just as much as we try to train them. I’m also aware that they are bet­ter at it than we are. Sasha had learned the secrets of inap­pro­pri­ate pee­ing from a mas­ter. Its worth tak­ing a few minutes to try and under­stand this cat, if it means not hav­ing to do extra loads of laundry.

When in doubt, I assume he wants love.

Lov­ing Sasha has become more com­plic­ated, since he decided to get “up front and per­sonal” with us. When he was the House Cat, we could pet him from across the room. A hand, slid­ing through the air, mim­ick­ing a caress from 6 feet away, was all he wanted. He would begin to purr before your hand reached the end of the stroke.

But now, he wants to be touched. He likes the pres­sure of a hand flat­ten­ing his ears, press­ing firmly down his neck and back. Likes it more than any­thing. He just can’t stand to see that hand com­ing. If we didn’t know his entire life his­tory, I would assume he’d been phys­ic­ally abused before we got him. But no; he’s just weird. He faces you, when he wants to be stroked, so you have to wrap your arm around his body, so that he doesn’t see it com­ing. But when you get it just right, when he actu­ally relaxes into the pleas­ure of touch, it is so much more grat­i­fy­ing than get­ting any of the other cats to snuggle and purr.

Lov­ing Sasha is hard work, but its worth it.

One of the first battles Sasha & I had was over the tub. He loves water, almost as much as he’s par­tic­u­lar about it. It must be cold. It must be fresh. It should be free flow­ing. A per­petu­ally leak­ing tub offers the best water in the house.

Sasha can be stub­born about his water. If you don’t offer accept­able water choices — for instance, if you have merely fill his water bowl — he will refuse to drink it until dehyd­ra­tion leads to an expans­ive vet visit. This happened once, and is the spector which prompts The Boy to leave the tub faucet on.

I don’t like a leaky faucet. I don’t like hav­ing the clean the tub of cat hair before every bath. I don’t like the rais­ing water bill. I don’t like Sasha join­ing me every time I go to the bath­room, wide-eyed and expect­ant. I’ve spent the bet­ter part of 10 years attempt­ing to train Sasha and The Boy out of this.

We’ve gone through 3 “cat foun­tains”, with vary­ing suc­cess. We “acci­dent­ally” leave cups of water on the floor, where Sasha can find them (illi­cit water is appar­ently more refresh­ing). We fill his water bowl only when he’s watch­ing, so he can be sure of the fresh­ness. All of these have worked in keep­ing him healthy & hydrated, but he still loves tub water above all else. Although we keep the tub off now, he’ll still accom­pany us to the bath­room every time. He’ll hop in the tub, and cry. The Boy occa­sion­ally relents. I never do.

And yet.

The past sev­eral months, Sasha’s leap into the tub hasn’t been as effort­less. It takes him a few tries before he can jump, and some­times that jump doesn’t clear the side of the tub.

Sasha, my mighty hunter. Sasha, who could jump 5 feet, to land in the nar­row space between the forest of pot­ted plants on the shelf, a space he couldn’t even see from the floor.

It breaks my heart.

Last week, I watched as he tried to work up to a jump into the tub, and then gave up.

Sasha does not give up on tub water.

He turned, and walked away.

Every day this week, he’s fol­lowed me into the bath­room. He’s looked at the tub, and he’s walked out without even trying.

Which is how it is that this morn­ing, I found myself lift­ing Sasha into the tub, and turn­ing the faucet on for him.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.