My kitty is gone, and I am bereft. Someone left our door ajar last night and my cat, Oscar, took the opportunity to abscond (as he always will when he realizes the door is open). Unfortunately, while Oscar has always before ended his outdoor ramblings pretty quickly by coming to snooze on the relevant doorstep (he & I having shared three houses together), this time he hasn't come back after about 19 hours.
You may have heard aspersions cast upon the character of my cat, but I say his is just a very cat character. My mother rescued him in Pennsylvania a few years ago. She lives in the country, and people are always dumping their unwanted pets in her vicinity, where they often become her wanted pets. She couldn't keep Oscar, though, so she talked me into coming up to fetch him. I was raised with dogs -- actually, one dog from age 3 to 19, a saintly beagle/coonhound mix called Ginger -- and I really didn't know about or have any interest in cats, beyond the fact that I generally like all animals, usually better than people.
I went up and fetched the scrawny kitten, though, talking to him all the way home to find out what his name was. All he did was plaintively mew at me, but I learned that his name was Oscar.
Maybe because of his rough early life (and I mean early; he was dumped at mom's at around 3 weeks old), maybe because I didn't know how to teach him, or maybe even because of his disposition, Oscar was always a scratcher and a biter. I learned, in the last two years, how to prevent this type of "playing", most of the time, but for the first year I had him, he scratched me up so much my friends might have thought I was into self-mutilation. Until they met Oscar, that is. A typical occurrence was when I threw my back out and was obliged to lie on the floor for nearly 3 hours, waiting for a friend to bring me (a) a latte, (b) a prescription for muscle relaxant my doc called in and (c) a water gun to hold off Oscar, who always thought that lying on the floor was an invitation to a mauling. Unfortunately, I learned that time that Oscar is probably a Maine Coon, a type of cat known for its love of water. Still, I survived with only minor lacerations.
Many, many people who've loved me have wondered aloud how I can put up with him, or why I do. What they don't know is the other side of this relationship. Sure, he thinks I'm his littermate or something, which is why he plays so rough -- but he also knows I'm his mama. When he's in trouble, Oscar mews loudly for me, only me, and it's the same mew that he made all those years ago during our inaugural car ride. He makes that mew on the way to the vet, and he made it all the times he got stuck as a kitten, usually dangling from somewhere by a claw he couldn't figure how to retract, or accidentally closed in a closet. The last time I heard that helpless mew -- his m'aidez mew -- was on the day we moved into this house. I arrived first, with Oscar, while D hung back supervising the movers. Some numbskull had left the attic-access ladder down in the upstairs bedroom, which I discovered after Oscar vanished for a suspiciously long time. When I went to the bottom of the ladder, I heard the mew, very faint. I had just had foot surgery, so I wasn't sure I could climb the ladder. I called up instead, trying to lure Oscar back down out of the attic. Oscar LOVES attics -- he proved that in Arlington -- but the mew was not a good sign. He wasn't having fun, he was in trouble. Long story short, I ended up crawling on my hands and knees in the attic through loose insulation up to my chin to the edge of the roof where Oscar was stuck between some parts of the house I don't understand. Then I had to drag him back to the ladder, and he was afraid to go down; all this happened while D was ringing my cell phone frantically and I was trying not to fall and break anything else.
Maine Coons like water, as I mentioned. They'll climb in the shower with you, if you let them. They also love being around you, but not actually on your lap and often not even within stroking distance. Oscar prefers to be a couple of feet away, lying serenely on the floor and observing. One exception is kneading. If I take a nap that looks cozy, he'll let me sleep for 2 hours (I know, i'm not working) and then wake me by jumping up next to me and kneading some soft part of me and purring madly. It's the only time he purrs, and it's the only time he wants to be that close. Other rituals include wake-up time, when he comes to bed in the morning, jumps up near my head and gently as anything touches my face with his paw (he's awake; obviously I should be, too), and welcome-home time, which occurs any time I come back from outside the house -- he flops down in front of me on the carpet and sort of swims along, languidly inviting me to coo and ah and rub him hello. Once in a blue moon, he will allow you to sit near him while he naps. Just yesterday he was napping on the sunroom sofa, and he was so cuddly-looking and peaceful, I brought my book over and sat next to him, and he let me rub his nose a couple of times before rolling over. He is a fluffy gray cat with long hair and yellow eyes, and a wise, inscrutable face. When he's curled up, he looks like a muff, or maybe a dust mop, and I love him madly.
I would have added a picture of him to this post, but I don't have one on this hard drive and I am too distraught to go looking for one. In Arlington, I used to let Oscar out periodically because he loves to chase birds and run as fast as he can through the grass. Here, I hadn't been letting him out because it feels too dangerous; there are lots of open construction sites and big equipment around, as well as a couple of big roads where people drive too fast. I keep lumbering with the walker back and forth to the front, back, and downstairs doors, checking to see if he's back yet, and I put some food and water out for him. D promises to go walk around the neighborhood looking when he gets home with the kids. All I can think about is Oscar somewhere nearby, but unable to come home for some reason, mewing for me but I'm not coming. I know it sounds silly, but please say a little prayer that he'll come back soon.
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