My first cat's name was Aquila. She was a pastel tortoiseshell from the local SPCA, so fat she looked like sausage stuffed in a casing that just happened to have legs and a tail. Poor baby hadn't been brushed in years. The first time I slicked a brush over that beautiful auburn fur, she went plumb mad with joy.
I only had Aquila for a few weeks before her kidneys started to fail.She'd sit in the litter box and cry and cry from pain. I took her to the vet once, twice, three times; I tried one thing after another to ease her suffering. Nothing worked, and I was out of money. With a heavy heart, I packed her up and re-surrendered her to the animal shelter, knowing they would put her down. I wasn't strong enough to be the one to schedule a creature's death myself.
In the month of having Aquila, I had grown so accustomed to having another being in my apartment that I felt I could not go without another cat even for a day. I went back to the cat room at the shelter and looked around for another kitty I could have at my place, but my hopes weren't high: the rules of my building state that cats must be declawed, spayed/neutered, and fully immunized. I didn't have the money to pay for all of this; I'd gotten lucky with Aquila. I was just about ready to head home cat-less when an oversized white paw thrust its way out of a cage at waist level and patted the fringe on my purse. "Reow," said the owner of the paw: "Hey! Hold still! I want that dangly stuff!"
I bent down and looked. Two green eyes stared out at me. When I saw that the tag on his door read: "Jude. Neutered male. Front declawed. Domestic Long Hair." I just had to hold him. I sat down in a folding chair and had my friend pull him out of the cage and place him in my arms.
Jude was a rangy kitten too big for his britches. His ears were huge. His feet were the big, awkward stompers of an adolescent boy. He was rail thin and needed a brushing, but I could see what a handsome cat he'd be when he finished growing and filled out and got a shine to his tuxedo-patterned fur. "Alright," I said. "You're coming home with me."
"Reow."
It didn't take me long to discover that I'd fallen in love with a decidedly strange beast. He was very needy but didn't want to show it: he'd wait to cuddle till he thought I was asleep; I'd leave my eyes slitted open just the slightest bit and watch him sneak around the corner like a secret agent to lay himself out along my ribcage. He loved to climb but was afraid to jump down, so I'd come home from work and find him sitting atop the dresser crying piteously. He scorned most toys and went instead for the kinds of play he wasn't supposed to engage in: rooting around in the trashcan, dropping catnip mice into the toilet, finding a loose thread in a blanket and tugging it out for yards and yards, destroying entire rolls of paper towels and delightedly shredding kitchen sponges. And he never grew out of any of it. He just got more devious. He's been known to shred open a seven-pound bag of Purina One and surround himself with a sea of kibble. He eats my headphones. He has a strange affection for shoes -- especially Biz's shoes -- and handbags, and shiny electronic devices like iPods. At one point he was "going steady" with his girlfriend the red silk pump (Biz's) and also wining and dining an Army parka (also Biz's.) He hates to be brushed beyond reason and he's the only cat on the planet who's scared of the dark. He thinks the wind is out to kill him. His response to most things is a meow that sounds a lot like a smoker croaking out: "Meh." which I have interpreted as, "Screw you, where's the food?" He's very particular about object placement and becomes quite distressed when Debbie comes over to clean and moves things or touches "his" chair. He pretends to ignore me half the time and then comes kissing up asking to be scratched under the chin. He's a grumpy brat, and I love him.
What would I do without this face????:
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