Crazy Cat Lady and How I Got There
9 September 2011
I’ve been the personal slave of cats most of my life. The Prince Consort and I had cats from early in our marriage. When my dad was transferred to Hawaii, TPC and I inherited my parents’ pair of Siamese cats. By the way, Always look a gift Siamese in the mouth. Rik u sin tai ni, the eldest of the pair, wasn’t just an alcoholic. It turned out he was an insulin dependent diabetic. There is nothing quite like catching sugar-test pee from a cranky Siamese who has been forced to move in with a pair of humans who cannot afford to be drunks and are therefore woefully lacking. From then on we’ve had at least two up to six cats.
This morning during my walk, the lawn fertilizer guy asked me for directions to his next customer’s house. I turned to look for a street sign and instead spotted a neighbor cat sitting on a half-wall under the missing street sign. So naturally I asked the cat, “Hey, you. Is this Hidden Falls?” The cat turned his face to me, glared, then faced in the direction I was guessing lead to the desired address. Naturally, I turned to the fertilizer guy and said, “Yep. That way.”
For some reason the previously chatty fertilizer guy had to go. NOW.
I’ve always suspected cats draw a bead on ‘special’ people (Read somewhat to very crazy). So when did I get to be one of those? TPC and I figured it out. Yesterday, after two days of trial and error hook-up solutions, I finally got the new VCR player to light up. So I tested it, with a VHS tape of my parents as young marrieds and me as a new person.
The film starts out all cute and normal. The usual ‘shake the baby’ deal to get a smile out of me, or more precisely to get me to drop whatever I was trying to eat this time, the footage of me clearly filling up my diaper wearing the biggest smile yet. Months later I’m filmed walking, or stumbling. And there it was. My parents had provided a little stroller, three wheeled affair. I was trying to climb into it with little success. So Dad swooped in and gave me a boost. Up, over, and onto my head on the other side. In succeeding years this film came to be known as the Child Abuse tape.
Not too long after this baby film, my parents adopted the first of our family’s Siamese cats. The groundwork was laid when I hit the ground head first on the far side of that stroller.
I was fated to be a crazy cat lady.
Kath
