We cats come in a wide variety of coats. Some would say we’re different breeds. I’d prefer to talk about our coats. My coat is a tuxedo with white paws. Spot is mostly white with some black accents. Isis is a sleek black cat. Nuri is a gray tabby or a silver cheshire as my girl likes to say.
We come in different colors and patterns. Well, there are tabbies or cheshires and of course classic black and white. Not to mention calico or tortie. Some are even hairless. I bet they get cold and perhaps sunburnt at times as my girl does. So, if you live with a hairless cat, make sure they have some clothes to wear or somewhere warm to go.
I suppose a hairless cat is perfect for those of you humans who are allergic to cat hair. Don’t forget there is also a hypo-allergic cat who has hair. They look like ordinary cats. But I suppose those hypo-allergic cats could make a difference and keep you from being lonely, even when you’re allergic to our hair.
Our tails are something you humans don’t have. I’ve heard you have tail bones, but no tails. Pity. We can smack others with our tails. We also use them to communicate. And some of us like to play with each other’s tails. Even my girl has been known to give my tail a gentle tug. I never understood why. She’s not a cat. She’s just too silly!
Our mood can be conveyed by the very movement of our tails. Spot was very expressive with his tail. More so than I ever was. My girl would recite names to him, such as mine or Isis, and Spot’s tail would wag even harder because he loved us all.
Some people thought he wagged his tail because he was angry. Spot was hardly angry. He was so happy go lucky that it drove me crazy at times. He did have a temper, but it didn’t flare that much. He just like to wag his tail a lot.
Our eyes have been known to creep out quite a few people. You can’t see us very well in the dark, but you might see our reflected eyes staring right at you. Sounds scary?
I never thought I was scary unless I was hunting. Otherwise, I was just a cat who was lying in the sun or meditating or complaining to someone who cared to listen to me.
My girl admitted to me that she couldn’t see as well as I could in the dark. She said when she turned out the lights, she couldn’t see me anymore. She used to walk into me. She apologized every time, thank goodness. I’d really be mad if she had done it on purpose and didn’t care to apologize for her behavior.
So, I did what any reasonable cat would do. Whenever she turned out the lights and she walked too close to me, I’d let her know where I was. It worked. Her hearing is better than her eyesight. Yes, she wears glasses. She wears lined bifocals now. She didn’t then. But that’s another story.
I’m glad she listened to me. She was able to walk around in the dark without stepping on me. That just proves it is possible to train your human to take excellent care of you. Just find one who will listen to your every complaint and does something to make things better. Those are the kinds of humans who are worth waiting for.
We cats have amazing paws. Usually we have four unless something happens in the womb or later in life. We usually land on all four paws when falling or jumping. Sometimes things go wrong. Perhaps because I live with a klutz I caught some of it from her…
Or whatever the reason, usually we do land on all four paws. That’s where we hide our claws when we don’t need to bare them for any reason. We walk on our paws. We can box with our forepaws.
I have been known to impress my girl with my athletic prowess. She’s a klutz and has never been that coordinated in her life. She tries to focus and I think she has improved somewhat, but she’s not as good as I am. So, when she’s watched me jump and land perfectly on my paws, she is wowed by it.
She’s seen me jump over her bed while she was lying in it. She saw me just before I landed in the position I would land in. I ended up half standing half sitting. I was also trying to get away from Spot at the time. *Sigh.* He was annoying me with how playful he was at that time.
But at least I impressed my girl with my landing on all four of my paws.
When we cats talk, all you humans hear is meow. But we do use actual words. I myself have learned lots of English over the years living among humans. I have tried to speak English, but sadly my vocal apparatus won’t let me form the sounds correctly.
So, I’ve learned to adapt my cat language so that humans would understand me. Too many have complained that I’m loud and whiny. I’m just assertive. I am particular as to how I like to be care for. It seems to me that too many humans are too distracted or just simply don’t care enough to even listen and try.
That is until I met my girl. She is the best caregiver and caretaker I could ever ask for. She listens to my complains and requests and does something about them all. She’s learned and become so good at taking care of me that I don’t need to talk as much as I used to.
She just knows what to do now. I’ve very lucky. I’ve known many humans in my time and she’s the best one for me in spite of how silly she gets at times. *Sigh.* I do love her dearly in spite of her silliness.
All cats have whiskers. My girl likes them. They do help with balance. Once when I was looking after Spot, he annoyed me so badly that I bit his whiskers off. The little kitten didn’t seem to know any better. He’d walk around our place and fall over. He never got hurt. He was so small and so happy go lucky that he didn’t seem to notice whenever he had tumbled or fallen over.
My girl thought he was cute whenever he did that. Kittens are just plain annoying. This one wanted to play all the time. He drove me crazy. I only bit off his whiskers once. I couldn’t be that mean to him over time. It just wasn’t possible. And he didn’t get the message the first time. *Sigh.* I knew I had gone too far with him. So, I never did bite off his whiskers ever again. He still annoyed me, but I suppose it was just going to be that way.
We cats do a lot of purring. I know humans have wondered why and they like to study us. They can with our permission. Don’t ever forget that. I find it’s easy to purr when someone knows how to pet me just right. Of course they like to stop before I’m ready for them to and I tell them to keep petting me.
Then there was a time when I couldn’t purr. It wasn’t good. Apparently I had developed a heart murmur and my girl could hear it. She said nothing to me about it. I did hear the vet mention it. The vet thought that I had lost a heart valve. So, for a while I couldn’t purr.
My girl continued to take care of me and give me lots of love. And you know what? She’s full of healing energy and she doesn’t mind sharing it whether it leaks out or not. Some of it spilled over into me and eventually I was able to purr again.
I still had the heart murmur, but at least I could purr again and continue to get better or at least not get any worse. I had missed purring. It’s something I like to do whenever I meditate.
My girls says she heard one of my brothers also had a heart murmur. So perhaps that part was genetic. I just feel grateful to my girl for helping me to heal and to purr again.
As a cat, I know about hunting. I used to do it. That was when I was young and could take care of myself without any trouble. As I got older, I tended to lose some teeth and my claws became brittle. Once my girl clipped my back claws and they weren’t clean breaks. I told her never to do it again.
She didn’t after that. She did try to say it was the ultimate in cat pampering. But after I told her not to do it anymore, I think she understood there was something wrong with my claws.
Well, I liked to hunt. It was my way to assert my independence of humans. I never had any trouble catching mice and eating them. Humans tended to find it disgusting that I would eat mice. I don’t know what their problem is. Those humans eat animals too. My girl doesn’t eat animals and she understood whenever I ate a mouse.
Or even a bird. She didn’t like the gifts I left her, but she is a vegetarian. At least she understands that I need to eat animals. I don’t think she needs to. In fact, she seems to think it will make her sick if she were to eat them.
So, I’ve had lots of mice in my time. And a few birds. There was one bird who got angry with me for eating a couple of birds. If my girl wasn’t around, I don’t know what I would have done. She rescued me from getting pecked.
*Sigh.* I no longer hunt because I cannot. I sometimes miss it, but I’m so well taken care of now that I am okay without it. I feel blessed that a vegetarian understands and knows what I need to stay healthy and that’s what she gives me. So, I’ve learned to live without it and just pretend on occasion that I’m hunting and stalking prey when in reality I’m off to my food bowl my girl has filled up. She finds the scenes I make quite amusing.
*Sigh.* When I first met fairies, those tiny glowing humanoids with wings, I was just a kitten. I had no idea who or what they were. They played with me. They teased me. They told me I was going to be a witch’s familiar.
I had no idea what was going on at the time. I didn’t understand until much later. After I had met the witch herself. Needless to say, it took me time to get used to the fairies and the witch.
Now I think nothing of such things. Neither the fairies nor the witch have ever harmed me. They have all annoyed me at one time or another. I’m used to them and their playful ways.
*Sigh.* If they are gone from me for too long, I miss them too much.
In the middle of the night, Nuri lost her balance on the pillow she was resting on and fell. She landed on my girl. My girl was lying in bed resting and was of course startled by Nuri. My girl ended up with a few claw marks going down the length of her shoulder.
My girl did absolutely nothing to punish Nuri. And why would she punish any cat for an accident? My girl understands it was an accident. She has tended to her wounds and they’re healing up fine.
That accident reminded me of why we cats need our claws. All of them. And what we used them for. When we fall, whether we jump down or lose our *gasp* lose our balance, we extend our claws to use as anchors to break our fall. We do it to stop faster and reduce the chances that we will get hurt.
When we jump up on to things, we extend our claws to stop ourselves once we’ve reach our goal. If we are missing our claws, doesn’t matter why, we will slide and wonder why our claws aren’t helping us. If we slide too far, we can get injured. Cats can fall out of windows without screens. I’d hope we don’t break any bones or have anything worse happen.
We do use our claws for fighting and defense. We may play with them. However, when we play with humans, we usually learn to keep our claws retracted because we don’t want to hurt you. Of course if humans threaten us, we will bare our claws in self defense. Please treat us well and we will keep our claws sheathed.
Without our claws, we can have trouble burying our waste. We cats like to bury our waste and we do need our claws to dig in the dirt. I know some of us can get over zealous when burying in the litter box. Sorry about the mess, but we have to be thorough. We can’t leave a trace that we’ve been somewhere to our enemies. Can’t let them find us.
So, for those of you humans who think we shouldn’t have claws so we can’t tear up your furniture, why didn’t you think about us? You know you can give us our own scratching posts to tear up. Yes, we do need to sharpen our claws to keep them in good shape. We have more trouble being cats without our claws.
As my girl is fond of saying, “Cats come with sharp teeth and sharp claws, duh!” She understands we are people and not objects to be owned. And she is a crazy cat lady who thinks having at least one cat, if not more, is more preferable than having immaculate furniture and other things of material wealth.
And my girl also believes, based on knowledge and her own observations, that cats who have been declawed are mutilated. That’s just one of the reasons I love her so much. She just accepts us as we are and we can accept her as she is.
Sir Socks Le Chat 