I’m a dog person. It’s just in my DNA. Dogs rule and cats drool.
When I was old enough to handle it, my parents shared with me the awful truth that there were people out there in the world who were cat people… strange, other-worldly beings that actually cared for these heartless, cold monsters who would eat you alive if the Fancy Feast supply ran low.
This concept was beyond comprehension for me. Even in adulthood, I struggled with this notion of good and evil. Cat people were the feline-Bizarro to the canine-Superman of my world. Crazy-eyed, disheveled, hermit-liked beings that preferred the company of hundreds of cats over that of another human. It was just too hard to understand.
And then I met my wife. She had a cat. And to this day, I’m still not 100% sure it wasn’t the Anti-Christ. The cat’s name was Natasha and if she wasn’t pure evil, she was close.
For the sake of my wife, I tried to make nice with Natasha. I’d sit down, slowly extending my hand to her, secretly praying I wouldn’t yank back a bloodied, mangled stub. She’d look up at me and… as God is my witness, peer right through me. All I could see in those slit eyes was a hideously deformed thing that passed for her soul. She’d leap up and arch her back, promulgating all types of obnoxious, spiteful hisses before goose-stepping away in what my wife tried to explain as “heat.” (Though I always secretly suspected Natasha to be a member of the Nazi party.)
Over the years, Natasha and I had our battles, with no clear victor in the war. We finally settled into an uneasy détente – with the bloodshed limited to an occasional cat-pee salvo into my shoe, to which I’d retaliate with an appropriately measured response by banishing her into the night rain.
She was always doing something that made me suspicious of her. I’d wake up in the morning and, walking through the house, I’d expect her to jump out and attack me like Cato attacking Clouseau. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the character Cato has the word “cat” in it. Invariably, just when my suspicions subsided, she’d bolt out at me, stopping my heart for a few seconds and then darting off while I tried to recover.
As bad as our relationship was, I have to begrudgingly admit, she was fairly intelligent in her evilness. While I can’t confirm this, I could have sworn that she once wrote, “Leave out a fish offering or the dog gets it tonight,” sprawled in kitty litter on the floor.
Later in life, Natasha continued her campaign of hatred against all living beings except my wife. The dog would chase her during the day, and she’d use my expensive leather recliner as her personal claw sharpener at night. We’d run out of her favorite wet food and she’d howl incessantly from midnight to four in the morning. We’d buy a new pet bird for our children and she’d ambush and slaughter the parakeet in front of our kids. In short, she was evil.
Now I’m not saying that my dogs have been saints over the years. I’ve owned dogs that live on the cutting edge of stupidity. And I will have to work at least 10 years longer to replace all the household items my dogs have destroyed. But Natasha topped them all.
I am quite familiar with all of the “dog versus cat” arguments. Dogs are loyal and cats are independent. Dogs are more useful and cats are smarter. The list goes on and on. As matter of fact, there is a great article that discussed the scientific studies underway to settle the dog versus cat argument once and for all. I won’t ruin the results for you but suffice it to say… “woof.”
After Natasha passed at 18 years old, I experienced a strange void. It’s hard to explain but the balance of good and evil was tipped. Our family equilibrium was off. So when a friend of the family mentioned to my wife that she had a free kitten she was trying to find a home for, my wife jumped at it and brought him home.
We’d never had a boy cat. I didn’t know what to expect. My years of misery during the Dark Ages of Natasha had me extremely on edge about this newcomer. But when he arrived, there wasn’t a goose-stepping, howling, buzz saw coming at me. Just a sweet, gentle little meow and this odd, soft, sputtering sound like a muffled 1960’s Volkswagen Beetle coming down the street. My wife said it was this thing called a “purr.” What a strange animal this cat was!
We named him Jack-Jack-Attack …probably a subconscious nod to what we figured would eventually be coming my way. And… things were fine. The era of Jack the Jovial finally ended the nightmarish reign of Tasha the Terrible. He showed himself to be a pleasant, amiable and funny little guy who has panache for purging our house of mice and for snuggling with the children.
While Natasha treated us as her own personal pin cushions, Jack treats us as …well, family.
Life comes full circle. I’ve changed my tune now on cats and I consider myself a reformed cat-hater. So much so, that I even purchased another cat at the pound… a fluffy, sweet older calico that yips rather than meows; and who loves to sleep with me and purrs all day long. There’s hope for us all.
