Other Cat - by H

The coffee mug I’m drinking from at work says “Simply the Best Mom”. I’m not a mom. Never have been (if you discount my annoying urges to constantly feed people). But somehow, somewhere along the line, I noticed I was being brought coffee in a “Simply the Best Mom” mug at work. So today, I’m going to take it as a sign.

Someone is coming to inspect our home this evening for kitty-adoption-worthiness. Boy and I love animals and have wanted to get a pet for a while. I would have loved to adopt a puppy, and in fact I spent a great deal of time begging Boy for one. I think I almost had him, but his logical thinking and common sense took over (don’t you hate when that happens?) We both work full days all week, so the kind of attention a puppy would need is not available for us to give at the moment.

Kitties are just as lovely though. And clearly, they love us. Somehow, shortly after moving into our home, we became a stop by point for a whole bunch of the neighbourhood cats. They just began to casually pop around for a visit. So while we were delayed in adopting our own kitties due to loads of travels and busy schedules, we vicariously enjoyed our visitors.  We even named them all.

• Cat, the tortoise shell, was our very first regular visitor.
• Then, along came Other Cat, a beautiful grey cat.
• Ginger Ninja was... well... ginger. But she liked to hang in the garden and rarely came inside.
• Fluffy Cat looked just like Other Cat, except super fluffy- like a teddy bear. Ironically, she just wasn’t a cuddler.
• Creepy Cat was white and really weird looking. She’d only come in while we were asleep and make the loudest, creepiest noise. I’d wake up thinking a demon baby had teleported into the house to wail us awake.

Then something unexpected happened. Other Cat started to take over. She got super territorial and started scaring and fighting all the other cats away. We loved her to death, but she wasn’t ours to keep, and as much as we loved her visits and sleep overs, we started feeling guilty about feeding her and so unwittingly, more often, keeping her away from her real home (shuddup, it’s not that bad- do YOU have visitors in your home and not offer them a drink or a nibble?)

Also, we began worrying about what she would do to our own cats when we finally got them.

Boy told me I had to stop feeding her when she visited. Not even a bowl of water, nothing. It killed me. “Love... Other Cat is moaning... please can I give her a bit of water at least? She’s thirsty!” Sometimes it worked. But Boy started sticking to his guns and convinced me to harden up too. Especially when we smelled something weird on our porch and realised... she was “marking her territory”. Our timeshare cat would have to be weaned off us if we were ever going to get a full time cat of our own. We’d have to cut her off from snacks, water, attention and cuddles. It was torture.

Other Cat has been gone for a couple of months now. Sometimes, we’ll still wistfully think of her and say how much we miss her. But now that she’s moved on, we’re ready to look into adopting a cat of our own, safe in the knowledge that Other Cat won’t beat it up.

Let’s hope the home inspection lady thinks our house will make for a happy kitty home. At least, all our feline visitors seemed to think it was.