Ariel, also known as the Muffin
Monday, 25 November 2002 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"I Could Elaborate On That Four-Month Gap In My Employment History, But Then I'd Have to Kill You."*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I've had a lot of cats in my life. We had seven of them, from the time I was a very little girl, 'til I moved away from home at twenty-two. These cats included a couple of seal point Siamese, a kitten I had for a couple of hours (he ran away when my parents came home from the grocery), a gray tiger who hated us all, a tuxedo cat I just adored, and two calicos.
And Pat and I have had six cats altogether. One of those was my second calico, who moved in with us after we settled in my grandmother's house. After she died, we acquired (in a matter of two weeks) four kittens, and the next year we got another, a little mostly-black thing, runt of the litter.
I'd've thought that after living with eleven other cats throughout my life, there wouldn't be anything much that would puzzle or surprise me about them. But this little black muffin of ours has me baffled.
My old calico, Mimi, loved me desperately. She loved me so much, when I was busy, she would sit across the room from me and just look at me and purr. Talk about a rush–being loved like that by anything is a real high.
And this one's like that, too. Ariel follows me around. She gets terribly upset when I go in the basement (a place she fears), sits at the door and cries until I come back up. If she's awake when I leave the house, she cries at the door. She follows me into the bathroom and lays at my feet.
She's a strange cat.
And the strangest thing she does is a bedtime ritual she has.
Every night I feed the cats (there are 2 of them now). Then I make sure I have something to wear for work, and go to the bathroom, and go to bed.
Ariel sometimes eats (she prefers dry food to canned, so she doesn't always), then she comes to the hallway. She waits there for me, and if I take too long, she starts meowing at me. (She's very cranky; she meows at us if we annoy her. She meows at us if we sneeze; she doesn't like sneezes.)
She goes with me to the bedroom and sits on top of the radio while I turn on the fan on for white noise, while Pat plays with our other cat, Fred Astaire, while I do the things I've forgotten to do (as long as I don't leave the room. If I leave the room, she follows). She sits on the radio, and if I take too long shutting off the lights, she starts bathing. Not in her usual energetic, "I'm dirty! How did that happen?!" way, but in a bored, I-haven't-got-all-day manner.
Then, once Pat and I are all settled in bed, Ariel leaves the room.
I don't know where she goes, or what she does, but she comes back about half an hour later and then demands to either go under the covers with me, or she lays on my pillow. On my head.
And every night I lie there and wonder what she does for that half hour. Does she check the locks, make sure I turned out all the lights? She's a little mystery.
*Cheney
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I've had a lot of cats in my life. We had seven of them, from the time I was a very little girl, 'til I moved away from home at twenty-two. These cats included a couple of seal point Siamese, a kitten I had for a couple of hours (he ran away when my parents came home from the grocery), a gray tiger who hated us all, a tuxedo cat I just adored, and two calicos.
And Pat and I have had six cats altogether. One of those was my second calico, who moved in with us after we settled in my grandmother's house. After she died, we acquired (in a matter of two weeks) four kittens, and the next year we got another, a little mostly-black thing, runt of the litter.
I'd've thought that after living with eleven other cats throughout my life, there wouldn't be anything much that would puzzle or surprise me about them. But this little black muffin of ours has me baffled.
My old calico, Mimi, loved me desperately. She loved me so much, when I was busy, she would sit across the room from me and just look at me and purr. Talk about a rush–being loved like that by anything is a real high.
And this one's like that, too. Ariel follows me around. She gets terribly upset when I go in the basement (a place she fears), sits at the door and cries until I come back up. If she's awake when I leave the house, she cries at the door. She follows me into the bathroom and lays at my feet.
She's a strange cat.
And the strangest thing she does is a bedtime ritual she has.
Every night I feed the cats (there are 2 of them now). Then I make sure I have something to wear for work, and go to the bathroom, and go to bed.
Ariel sometimes eats (she prefers dry food to canned, so she doesn't always), then she comes to the hallway. She waits there for me, and if I take too long, she starts meowing at me. (She's very cranky; she meows at us if we annoy her. She meows at us if we sneeze; she doesn't like sneezes.)
She goes with me to the bedroom and sits on top of the radio while I turn on the fan on for white noise, while Pat plays with our other cat, Fred Astaire, while I do the things I've forgotten to do (as long as I don't leave the room. If I leave the room, she follows). She sits on the radio, and if I take too long shutting off the lights, she starts bathing. Not in her usual energetic, "I'm dirty! How did that happen?!" way, but in a bored, I-haven't-got-all-day manner.
Then, once Pat and I are all settled in bed, Ariel leaves the room.
I don't know where she goes, or what she does, but she comes back about half an hour later and then demands to either go under the covers with me, or she lays on my pillow. On my head.
And every night I lie there and wonder what she does for that half hour. Does she check the locks, make sure I turned out all the lights? She's a little mystery.
*Cheney