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.