Some of us are dog lovers. Some of us are cat lovers. Some of us love both though I have a sneaky feeling we always lean more toward one than the other.
My father was a dog lover. He didn't like cats. He hated cats. He loathed cats. The word 'cat' was never spoken in our house.
I understood his loathing - completely! At the tender age of 5, my best friend's mother took us to the cinema to see 'Lady & The Tramp'. One look into Lady's big brown eyes and I was sold. That day, a true dog lover was born (and this in spite of having been 'run over' by a Great Dane in the park when I was 3)! What of Tramp with his raffish charm? Adorable!! Simply adorable!! But the cats....do you remember those mean Siamese cats??? Do you remember how they wrecked the house and poor little Lady got the blame?!! Do you remember the sly, sneaky way they pretended to be cute and nice when Aunt Sarah was around? Do you remember their names? I do! For me they were the stuff of nightmares. I was 5 years old and those two cats were the scariest things I had ever seen. My life was never going to be the same again. Did I want a cute little kitty cat all of my own? NO WAY JOSE!!
Fast forward now if you will to the 19 year old me - recently married to first husband Robert (1953 - 1981 R.I.P.) a great rescuer of all things furry or feathered. We already had Sam, the rescued G.S. puppy, so what was Robert now cradling so gently in his arms? It was the teeniest, tiniest, tortoiseshell stray kitten. Oh my! Soooo cute!! My cat horrors were forgotten and I was in love! I know....let's go show her to my parents....surely to see her is to love her???
Big mistake. BIG MISTAKE. My father's words were (and I remember them with utmost clarity) 'Bring that thing in here and I will kill it!'
'How mean, how cruel?' I hear you cat lovers cry! Yes! It was time to get to the bottom of this....phobia? Was there a reason for this seemingly illogical hatred of all things feline? Yes. My father as a teenager, still a child, had been a Japanese prisoner of war. Life in a Japanese concentration camp was harsh beyond our comprehension. The cruelty is beyond imagination. With only one small bowl of rice per person, per day, many, many slowly died of starvation....one such was the man that, had he survived, would have been my uncle. From sheer necessity the prisoners turned to the only food/protein source available....Rats. But there was strong competition for this valued food source. Competition that was swifter, stronger and born to hunt. The cats. Worse still was when the rapidly weakening prisoners managed to trap the rats only to have them taken from them by the mocking, jeering, callous, Japanese prison guards and then being forced to watch as they were fed to the cats. An understandable loathing? Perhaps so. You decide.
What about me? Did I manage to fully overcome my own night-time terror caused by those two sneaky, Lady & The Tramp horrors? (Have you remembered their names yet?) Well, Lizzy, Opal, Panda, Tom, Harvey and Squidge are now deceased feline proof that, yes, I became a cat lover.
Today, Andy and I have 4 cats of our own that share our daily lives. Cielo, Sonic, Smoke and Scooter. They all have their own stories to tell.
Cielo and Sonic are gentle souls. They have passed their juvenile stage and are a little wiser for it. Smoke and Scooter are 5 months old and think they are brothers. They are not. They are partners in crime. Smoke bears more than a passing resemblance to a Russian Blue. He came to us after being 'rescued' by a local property manager. Scooter is an ocecat (look it up if you don't know what that is). He appeared by Andy's truck in the middle of a ferocious storm. They are both adorable and yet.......how to describe that feeling that sometimes flashes through me and is gone in an instant?
I arrived home today, hot, sweaty, weary. I entered the kitchen and viewed the scene of destruction. The broken bottle of olive oil slowly leaking it's contents onto the kitchen floor. The chewed and mangled loaf of bread in pieces on the counter top. The roll of kitchen paper shredded and scattered like confetti over every surface. The torn, bright red oven glove - now soggy and minus it's thumb, waving to me gaily from it's new place on the curtain rail.... There's that feeling again.... Ah yes, now I know....now I recognize that shudder, that tremor that usually resides deep in my subconscious....now I know. The Truth.
Si and Am are alive and well.
And living in my house.
My father was a dog lover. He didn't like cats. He hated cats. He loathed cats. The word 'cat' was never spoken in our house.
I understood his loathing - completely! At the tender age of 5, my best friend's mother took us to the cinema to see 'Lady & The Tramp'. One look into Lady's big brown eyes and I was sold. That day, a true dog lover was born (and this in spite of having been 'run over' by a Great Dane in the park when I was 3)! What of Tramp with his raffish charm? Adorable!! Simply adorable!! But the cats....do you remember those mean Siamese cats??? Do you remember how they wrecked the house and poor little Lady got the blame?!! Do you remember the sly, sneaky way they pretended to be cute and nice when Aunt Sarah was around? Do you remember their names? I do! For me they were the stuff of nightmares. I was 5 years old and those two cats were the scariest things I had ever seen. My life was never going to be the same again. Did I want a cute little kitty cat all of my own? NO WAY JOSE!!
Fast forward now if you will to the 19 year old me - recently married to first husband Robert (1953 - 1981 R.I.P.) a great rescuer of all things furry or feathered. We already had Sam, the rescued G.S. puppy, so what was Robert now cradling so gently in his arms? It was the teeniest, tiniest, tortoiseshell stray kitten. Oh my! Soooo cute!! My cat horrors were forgotten and I was in love! I know....let's go show her to my parents....surely to see her is to love her???
Big mistake. BIG MISTAKE. My father's words were (and I remember them with utmost clarity) 'Bring that thing in here and I will kill it!'
'How mean, how cruel?' I hear you cat lovers cry! Yes! It was time to get to the bottom of this....phobia? Was there a reason for this seemingly illogical hatred of all things feline? Yes. My father as a teenager, still a child, had been a Japanese prisoner of war. Life in a Japanese concentration camp was harsh beyond our comprehension. The cruelty is beyond imagination. With only one small bowl of rice per person, per day, many, many slowly died of starvation....one such was the man that, had he survived, would have been my uncle. From sheer necessity the prisoners turned to the only food/protein source available....Rats. But there was strong competition for this valued food source. Competition that was swifter, stronger and born to hunt. The cats. Worse still was when the rapidly weakening prisoners managed to trap the rats only to have them taken from them by the mocking, jeering, callous, Japanese prison guards and then being forced to watch as they were fed to the cats. An understandable loathing? Perhaps so. You decide.
What about me? Did I manage to fully overcome my own night-time terror caused by those two sneaky, Lady & The Tramp horrors? (Have you remembered their names yet?) Well, Lizzy, Opal, Panda, Tom, Harvey and Squidge are now deceased feline proof that, yes, I became a cat lover.
Today, Andy and I have 4 cats of our own that share our daily lives. Cielo, Sonic, Smoke and Scooter. They all have their own stories to tell.
Cielo and Sonic are gentle souls. They have passed their juvenile stage and are a little wiser for it. Smoke and Scooter are 5 months old and think they are brothers. They are not. They are partners in crime. Smoke bears more than a passing resemblance to a Russian Blue. He came to us after being 'rescued' by a local property manager. Scooter is an ocecat (look it up if you don't know what that is). He appeared by Andy's truck in the middle of a ferocious storm. They are both adorable and yet.......how to describe that feeling that sometimes flashes through me and is gone in an instant?
I arrived home today, hot, sweaty, weary. I entered the kitchen and viewed the scene of destruction. The broken bottle of olive oil slowly leaking it's contents onto the kitchen floor. The chewed and mangled loaf of bread in pieces on the counter top. The roll of kitchen paper shredded and scattered like confetti over every surface. The torn, bright red oven glove - now soggy and minus it's thumb, waving to me gaily from it's new place on the curtain rail.... There's that feeling again.... Ah yes, now I know....now I recognize that shudder, that tremor that usually resides deep in my subconscious....now I know. The Truth.
Si and Am are alive and well.
And living in my house.
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