Today is not a good day
Nov. 23rd, 2011 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
At a little after 10:30 this morning, my little old lady cat, Shampoo, passed away. I hope there are many wild rodents for her to hunt where she has gone.
I wrote this essay about her for a radio contest which I actually won, and this is how I like to think of her.
My husband and I are owned by a cat. She's of advancing years now and content to stay indoors and bask in whatever sunshine she can find, but it wasn't always thus.
Back in 1998, Russ and I lived in a shared house on Nelson Street in Burnaby, alas long since fallen victim to the wrecking ball. It was in many ways a fine old house with hardwood floors and an apple orchard at the rear, and we had as our bedroom a lovely, bright room on the ground floor that looked out onto the front yard. At that time, the cat, whose name is Shampoo, was a flighty young thing of around 18 months old.
She had a standing agreement with us that she could come and go through the window, which was left cracked open at all times especially for her. She made good use of her freedom, and would snake out through the window as we were heading for bed, returning sometime in the early hours while we were sleeping.
So on the particular night that my saga begins, I was woken from a sound sleep to go and answer the call of nature. It's true what they say, that as you get older 'going all night' means you don't have to get up to pee.
So at three am, I hopped out of my comfy bed to head to the bathroom, and stepped on an offering from Shampoo - the first of many. She'd tenderly placed it exactly where I would put my feet, and obviously thought I would like it, because she was sitting beside the rug awaiting her justly deserved praise.
So, as reported, I stepped on her offering, which was the biggest, fattest, juiciest earthworm ever. I can still feel the sensation of it squishing between my toes. Excuse me for one moment...
The next night, in the same place, was a small mammal - a shrew or a vole, I'm not sure which - and the night after there was a larger one. Then followed a series of deceased creatures, ranging from baby birds through to mice. I learned to look before I leapt, even in the wee small hours.
Around two weeks after the great earthworm incident, the pattern changed a little. It was a lovely Saturday morning in May. I looked warily down beside my bed, but there was nothing there. She was stretched out on the bed, basking as was her wont, and didn't seem to be sick, so I thought that perhaps her hunting phase was done. Maybe she thought that we now had enough food to see us through or perhaps she had decided that we were never going to learn to hunt. I smiled to myself. Our little girl was growing up.
Then it was time to get up, and Russ went to get dressed. It became distressingly obvious at that moment that Shampoo was going on to bigger and better things. She had brought in her offering as usual, and deposited it in Russ's underpants. It was a large, fortunately very dead, rat.
To this day I believe that she was commenting on the garment she had defiled, but it seemed to me that I should try and discourage this decimation of the local wildlife. I grabbed Shampoo by the scruff of the neck and held her up eye to eye with me. I still recall my exact words at that moment.
"Listen, you! Quit bringing in all this protein!"
Setting her down, I went about disposing of the rodent's body and thought no more about it.
The next morning, another beautifully sunny one, I opened my eyes with trepidation. Was there another offering? Yes, there was. However, this was different.
It had obviously put up quite a fight, because it was covered all over in bite marks, but there it lay, on my rug in the approved position.
It was a zucchini.
I laughed. I freely admit it, and Shampoo, very visibly outraged, stalked out of the room in high dudgeon. She never gave us another offering after that.
So that is how I know for a fact that my cat understands the English language.

I am now cat free and I don't like it at all.
I wrote this essay about her for a radio contest which I actually won, and this is how I like to think of her.
My husband and I are owned by a cat. She's of advancing years now and content to stay indoors and bask in whatever sunshine she can find, but it wasn't always thus.
Back in 1998, Russ and I lived in a shared house on Nelson Street in Burnaby, alas long since fallen victim to the wrecking ball. It was in many ways a fine old house with hardwood floors and an apple orchard at the rear, and we had as our bedroom a lovely, bright room on the ground floor that looked out onto the front yard. At that time, the cat, whose name is Shampoo, was a flighty young thing of around 18 months old.
She had a standing agreement with us that she could come and go through the window, which was left cracked open at all times especially for her. She made good use of her freedom, and would snake out through the window as we were heading for bed, returning sometime in the early hours while we were sleeping.
So on the particular night that my saga begins, I was woken from a sound sleep to go and answer the call of nature. It's true what they say, that as you get older 'going all night' means you don't have to get up to pee.
So at three am, I hopped out of my comfy bed to head to the bathroom, and stepped on an offering from Shampoo - the first of many. She'd tenderly placed it exactly where I would put my feet, and obviously thought I would like it, because she was sitting beside the rug awaiting her justly deserved praise.
So, as reported, I stepped on her offering, which was the biggest, fattest, juiciest earthworm ever. I can still feel the sensation of it squishing between my toes. Excuse me for one moment...
The next night, in the same place, was a small mammal - a shrew or a vole, I'm not sure which - and the night after there was a larger one. Then followed a series of deceased creatures, ranging from baby birds through to mice. I learned to look before I leapt, even in the wee small hours.
Around two weeks after the great earthworm incident, the pattern changed a little. It was a lovely Saturday morning in May. I looked warily down beside my bed, but there was nothing there. She was stretched out on the bed, basking as was her wont, and didn't seem to be sick, so I thought that perhaps her hunting phase was done. Maybe she thought that we now had enough food to see us through or perhaps she had decided that we were never going to learn to hunt. I smiled to myself. Our little girl was growing up.
Then it was time to get up, and Russ went to get dressed. It became distressingly obvious at that moment that Shampoo was going on to bigger and better things. She had brought in her offering as usual, and deposited it in Russ's underpants. It was a large, fortunately very dead, rat.
To this day I believe that she was commenting on the garment she had defiled, but it seemed to me that I should try and discourage this decimation of the local wildlife. I grabbed Shampoo by the scruff of the neck and held her up eye to eye with me. I still recall my exact words at that moment.
"Listen, you! Quit bringing in all this protein!"
Setting her down, I went about disposing of the rodent's body and thought no more about it.
The next morning, another beautifully sunny one, I opened my eyes with trepidation. Was there another offering? Yes, there was. However, this was different.
It had obviously put up quite a fight, because it was covered all over in bite marks, but there it lay, on my rug in the approved position.
It was a zucchini.
I laughed. I freely admit it, and Shampoo, very visibly outraged, stalked out of the room in high dudgeon. She never gave us another offering after that.
So that is how I know for a fact that my cat understands the English language.

I am now cat free and I don't like it at all.