It’s been quite a saga on the cats in our house over the last couple of months,[1] but we seem to have reached a resolution of sorts. Admiral Janeway is back with me. She’s missing a lot of fur because she’s been excessively grooming herself and pulling it out, apparently from stress, but she seems to be through the worst of that.
The final straw for my mother, however, was when the Captain came yesterday to visit—mostly to eat, it seems—saw her come in the front door and bolted in her direction. I thought it was because he was glad to see her. But no, he just wanted out.
My mother has now removed the Captain’s collar and his food dish. The cat door is still open, but she says he was hardly eating any of his food anyway. She wants him to settle in the home he found.
I’m skeptical that the Captain is the sort of cat that will ever just choose one place. I think it’s just his nature to roam widely, claim a vast territory, and seek adventure wherever he can find it.
The Admiral, in contrast, is apparently furious that I hastily left on an expedition to the McHenry Library at University of California at Santa Cruz yesterday. She wants me to stay at home all the time, which I just can’t stand to do—for me, such would be a life with the last vestige of hope sucked out of it.
My mother wants a pet that will love her the way the Admiral loves me. Because the Admiral is adamant in her refusal to tolerate other cats, we are unlikely to try again to bring another cat into the house. Given the dichotomy of cats and dogs—my mother raised rabbits as a child and insists they have no personality—that likely means a dog. Dogs completely disgust me because they, to all appearances anyway, treat feces as candy. That they tend to be entirely too energetic and to make entirely too much noise only adds to the aggravation.
My life is becoming even more unpleasant.
- [1]David Benfell, “A bully is getting bullied,” October 26, 2012, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=5227; David Benfell, “A Saga of Cats Continues,” October 30, 2012, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=5236; David Benfell, “Cat Politics,” November 9, 2012, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=5243↩