There is a pretty good chance that I will never be able to bear children. I don't care to get into the details, but I'm not all that torn up about it. If I ever do long for the patter of little feet, I can adopt one of the thousands of parentless children waiting in the foster care system or some such.
But honestly, I don't. I used to wonder if there was something wrong with me. After all, it's only normal for a healthy young woman to want children. I don't. I never have. Don't get me wrong, I like kids.
As long as they're someone else's and will go home sooner or later.
I'm perfectly content to share my apartment with childer of the four-legged variety. I share my abode with two cats, pictured below.
On the left is Midnight (Midi for short). On the right is Spazz.
Both of my cats were adopted at my local Petsmart, through a wonderful organization called Spay & Neuter 2000. This is a group of people who devote their own time and money to rounding up stray cats and dogs, fixing them, giving them their shots, nursing them back to health if need be, and putting them up for adoption through stores like Petsmart. They're not cheap--I shelled out $60 per cat--but not only are the animals pre-spayed/neutered, you get a free bag of food (GOOD food) and a free vet visit. Cool deal. I got Midi first. She had been found with her kittens, abandoned at a campground, and Midi had apparently been abused. Her kittens went quickly once they were put up for adoption, but nobody wanted her. Too shy, too skittish, too scared.
Maybe I saw a little spark of that cat I'd had since I was three, the one that somehow stayed alive and well until just a few months before I left home to give up four years of my life to Uncle Sam and then passed away peacefully during a nap under a tree, in Midi. In fact, the first time my mother saw her, she noted that Midi and Mumphy did look rather similar...little heart-shaped face, build like a miniature panther and shiny black coat to match. The only real differences, physically: Midi has a little white spot on her chest, Mumphy was solid black; Midi has aquamarine eyes, Mumphy had gold.
There was one small problem. As mentioned before, Midi was shy. She spent her first week in my apartment hiding under the bed. After a while, she would come out to be fed and loved, and then a while after that she only retreated under the bed during a thunderstorm or when the phone guy came by or something. She would not let me pick her up, and she would not sit in my lap. And, after a few months of working long hours, I realized she was probably bored out of her skull while I was gone.
Enter Spazz.
I went back to Petsmart to find Midi a companion. I figured that a young male kitten would be the best way to go...she'd see a female of any age as a threat to her territory, most likely, and for whatever reason, would probably not get along with an adult male at all. I'd hoped that she would see a kitten as one of her own, because she HAD to have missed her own children.
And lo, in the kennel, there was a minuscule black ball of fur going about the process of turning his little cat bed upside down. I asked the clerk if I could see the little guy. I could.
The tag on the kennel indicated that his name was Bosco. That woud be the first thing we changed.
Bosco was placed in my arms, and we had instant bonding. He pawed at my necklace. He climbed up on my shoulder and sniffed in my ear. And then he did the one thing I cannot resist--he squeezed his little head between my chin and my shoulder and nuzzled my neck. Kiss another sixty bucks goodbye, welcome Bosco to the family.
Like I said, the name had to go. For the first two weeks, Bosco was known as Shadow.
After two weeks of observing Shadow's antics, it was time for another name change.
Shadow would pick up plastic grocery bags in his mouth and drag them around the apartment for no apparent reason. He would drink out of the toilet like a dog (and to this day I am convinced that he thinks he is a dog. He walks on a leash. He plays fetch. He drinks out of the toilet. He begs at the table. I swear to God I have heard him try to bark. Maybe he was raised with dogs). Once he and Midi worked out the dominance thing (this was done basically like so: Midi would hold the poor kitten down and wash his face repeatedly, if he tried to escape he would be rewarded with a bite to the ear or a no-claws swat on the nose), the two of them worked out an ingenious system to con me out of food. One of them would claw my usually bare foot. While I dealt with that, the other would hop up on the table and eat off my plate. Then they would switch.
I didn't get the idea to change Shadow's name until I spent a sleepless night replaying Phantasmagoria for the nth time (okay, so I like the gory bits in disc 5, sue me)...and remembered that the main character had a cat named Spazz.
The rest is history.
Spazz remained a cute, cuddly, tiny little ball of fur for several months...and then he started to grow. I mean, he really started to grow. Upon further research, it was determined that if Spazz was not full-blooded Maine Coon, he had a healthy portion of Maine Coon blood in his little veins. He is now two years old, well over three feet long from nose to tip of tail, almost a foot tall from the floor to the top of his head. He is without a doubt the biggest goddamn cat I have ever seen.
Here's one thing about Spazz I don't get. For some reason, every time I bring home a new toy for him, it's in the water bowl the next morning. Apparently, that's where new toys go. It's like he has to wash them before he plays with them. The first time he did this, it was with a catnip mouse. Maybe he was trying to make tea.
There was a third member of the animal kingdom sharing my home, a small turtle named Soup. Soup passed away about a year and a half ago, of apparently natural causes. Strangely enough, aside from Midi developing a taste for turtle water and terrorizing the little guy by merrily slurping the water out of his bowl, the cats left him alone. Even so, right up to the day he died, I was sure I was going to wake up at 3 AM one night to find the cats playing hockey with him.
Aside from the animals that live with me, I have others in my family. My mother owns a miniature black and tan dachshund named Teeny Weeny. She thought the name was quite original. We all did. When we got Teeny's AKC papers in the mail, we discovered that she was Teeny Weeny XVII. My father owns a cream dilute shar-pei named Chief Thundercloud, or just plain Chief for short.
Let me tell you something about shar-peis. Those cute little balls of wrinkles you see on calendars and such are puppies. Adult shar-peis look like pit bulls with more skin. They look scary. Fortunately, they're really very gentle dogs, Chief probably even more so than others. He grew up surrounded by cats. Just as Spazz seems to think he is a dog, Chief thinks he is a cat. He does that head-butt greeting thing cats do. He has been known to pick up kittens by the scruff of the neck and carry them around. The kittens love it. The mother cats are not amused. Unfortunately, Chief--all eighty solid muscle-and-wrinkle pounds of him--thinks he is the same SIZE as a cat. He doesn't realize what a huge beast he really is, and he will merrily plop himself down in your lap if you don't keep an eye on him.
Another interesting fact about shar-peis. They somehow housebreak themselves at six weeks. They just wake up one morning, see a newspaper on the floor, and know they're supposed to pee on it. We don't know how they do it, but we're not complaining.
Am I crazy for acting like these four-legged beasties are part of my family? Maybe. My co-workers were probably thinking about calling the little men in the white coats to come pick me up when I showed up at work, Spazz's shed baby teeth in hand, to show them off like a parent would show off a child's first lost tooth. My mate wasn't sure what to think when I hung up four Yule stockings--one for me, one for him, and one for each cat. But I do know that the cats have kept me sane. I spent my first year back home after getting out of the military pretty much alone in my apartment, with nothing but the cats, the Internet, and my various video games to keep me company. The cats are a constant. The mate may eventually get fed up with me and leave. The cats won't. All they ask for is food, water, a scritch behind the ears, a sun puddle to nap in, and a clean cat box. They're always glad to see me when I get home, if only because their bowls are empty and their tummies are growling. And they make nifty foot warmers.
