Skip to main content

It's a mad cat world


It turns out that cats really do have distinct personalities. Enough so that people can spend hours analyzing the preferences and quirks of each of them. So when you have four you have quite a lot of content for a lengthy conversation. Or a blog post as the case might be.



Among my four furry companions the last
Goofball
three weeks I was in Berkeley, was Madame Fluffles, who was a true Madame and stayed in her room and demanded that her nightly treat be brought upstairs to her, hissed if the two younger cats came on the bed and insisted on sitting on only things that were white and fluffy. There was Mr. Fluffles, the other older cat who knew to run away from me because I would try to pick him up, wandered through the house as though he was the lord of it and would ram his head repeatedly into my hand and leg while I sat in the kitchen until I pet him. Selma was the only cat who would let me pick her up, would climb into my lap whenever I sat on the floor and liked to sprint across the room and scamper up the scratching post while I refilled the food bowls.


Mr Fluffles


And then there was Goofball.



Goofball was initially afraid of me. She would jump any time I made any noise or even walked into the room. But she quickly realized that I was her only ticket to treats and petting and so she got past this stage rather soon. It didn’t take me long to figure out that she was a rather silly cat.



I realized this at the same time Goofball earned her nickname (I gave all of the cats except Selma nicknames). I was sitting on the floor in the kitchen petting Selma who was in my lap. Goofball was nearby, reaching her paw under the fridge as she is wont to do. As I got up to get work done, I realized Goofball’s paw was rather deep under the fridge. She was also squirming a little. Then she started purring desperately and I begin panicking as it dawned on me that she was stuck and I didn’t know how to get her out.



After that I started noticing all her quirks. She got her paws into every door that she could and thus had forced her owners to protect their toilet paper roles because she had shredded them from under the door. She would run to the kitchen every time I opened it, thinking I was going to give them their evening treat. It didn’t matter what time of day it was. Once she climbed up onto the ledge over the kitchen sink that held all of the plants and couldn’t get back down.



Selma
After living in a house with 60 people, the privacy afforded by a house to myself with only four cats as companions was a sudden luxury.  The cats gave the fickle cat-love that people are also wont to do but I didn’t mind. They were still furry and adorable even if cleaning litter boxes for four cats was a pain sometimes.



The owners told me that I would either grow to love cats or hate them by the end of the three weeks. I thought that I would remain fairly neutral but it turns out that it is rather nice having a furry feline purring in your lap once in a while. Maybe someday I will get a cat. But just one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finland's mark

Today in Finnish class I went up to a Nepali classmate and asked him if he knew a Nepali song that I have been obsessed with for the past two weeks. I told him that I was in love with the song but couldn’t understand a word so could he please translate it? In the middle of asking my question I realized he had no idea what I was talking about and that this was really awkward but it was too late to back out so I ploughed ahead anyway. The result was that I avoided him for the rest of class. But part of me didn’t care. Being in a new country gives you thick skin for awkward encounters. Being in a new country also shapes you and molds you into a different version of yourself. A friend of mine wisely said that “where you live leaves a mark on you.” I’m still only a couple months into my two year long stay here in Finland but it is leaving a mark already. On our way to Naantali, a town 18 km away from Turku. There are the little things. I drink coffee (well, half of it i...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Monkey Mug

We have these mugs in our house that have Japanese-anime-style whales on them. Their smiles are wide and innocent, the shade of blue in which they swim is pleasant, not the sad kind that makes you cry inside. Years ago, my parents decided they wanted more of these mugs but the store they bought them in no longer stocked them. So we went online and discovered that there were yellow monkey mugs, and pink rabbit mugs too, a whole world of cute animal mugs that kept their chai hot long enough for them to slowly drink it each morning while they read the paper and ate khakra. So they ordered the monkey mugs. My mother only had my dad order 6 of them. Each mug is $12 so this felt like a splurge. The monkey’s joined the whales in the shelf, breaking up the sea of blue with their gentle yellow. She now regrets that decision. These mugs were already a Prized Possession then for their superiority to other mugs. But they are more valuable now because we can no longer find ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Waltz

At a Finnish wedding, the tradition is for the newlyweds to dance to a wedding waltz during their reception. It doesn’t matter what kind of wedding it is, the waltz is an essential part of the program. I hate the waltz. Compared to the Latin dances that I have been learning, the waltz is too stately and prudish to be of much fun. So I have jokingly told my boyfriend that at our wedding we will not be dancing the waltz. In part this is to gauge his response to my presumption that we are getting married (a bit sneaky, I know). In part it is also to make sure he knows that I am most definitely not Finnish (though I tell him that I am 50% Finnish, 50% Indian and 40% American). When I last told him there would be no waltz at our wedding, my boyfriend didn’t flinch at this challenge, to his immense credit. He just laughed. At which point I realized I didn’t even know how to waltz, which only made him laugh even more. Somehow, after this exchange, he decided to put on some wa...
Post a Comment
Read more