Meep  − 11 May, 2008

Our family grew by one member today.  We are not the traditional family of two adults and some children.  We were a family of two adults and one dog.  Our family now includes a cat named Meep.  My old college friend’s family just grew bigger, too.  They are now a “blended family”, with two additional children and a new father.  The new son is allergic to cats, so Meep needed a new home.

We met Meep over the Christmas ’07 holiday.  We were at my friend’s house enjoying the company of her family when Meep jumped up into my lap and settled in.  I had a glass of wine in my hand, and unfortunately, Meep lay across that arm.  I went without a sip of wine for a very long time, not wanting to do anything to cause Meep to leave.  I had come to the conclusion that I was not a cat person.  Meep was beginning to change my mind.

She is a tiny tortoise shell cat.  She turned out to be more than adaptable to my changes of position.  Longing for some wine, and hoping Meep would not jump down from my lap, I slowly moved my arm (which was also beginning to fall asleep), but Meep adjusted her position, and nestled back against me.  I was pleased and delighted, and a little bit tipsy.  I was falling in love with Meep.  How odd.  I had never expected to love a cat again.

We’d had a cat, but things had never really gelled between her and us.  She was terribly particular about where she would tolerate being touched and for how long.  If we stroked her for a second too long, she would suddenly reach back and mock-nip at us. It rattled me every time.  It never hurt, but its suddenness would shock me.  I never grew accustomed to it, and it began to frustrate me increasingly.  I learned to caress her for only the shortest period of times, hoping to avoid the mock-nip, but it frustrated me not to be able to give her more love.  Fortunately, she not only tolerated but also adored being stroked and scratched on her back at the base of her tail.  She would arch her body into it, never seeming to tire of it.  

Had it not been for her enjoyment of that caress, I might have stopped caressing her altogether.   Unfortunately, not being able to caress her lessened my love for her.  She seemed to be so distant.  Over time, I began to avoid petting her very much, other than scratching at the base of her tail.  It was a sad evolution of events.  I knew that cats could be cuddly because I’d seen other cat owners cuddle their cats, and I had cuddled other people’s cats.  But our cat seemed like an old grouch by comparison.

I knew that our relationship with our cat deteriorated badly because I could remember a time when it had been better.  But later, I would always feel a sting of insult when I would see her flop down on the sidewalk while passers-by lavished their attention on her.  After many years, I came to believe that she was more comfortable receiving attention outside of the house.

What made me believe this was her reaction to a friend who was a terrific cat lover.  He pulled her onto his lap and smothered her with affection.  She rebuffed him badly, much to my embarrassment.  He looked baffled, so I explained weakly that she was an odd cat.  It was then that I thought that there must have been something very different about being inside the house and being outside the house.  One thing I did not consider was that perhaps our friend taking hold of her without first having gained her trust might have made the difference.  I do, however, remember a time when another friend who was very good with cats stroked her for a very long time on our porch.

Perhaps we simply did not understand our cat.  When we moved to a new neighborhood, our cat adopted a family across the street.  This family had two teenaged daughters who adored our cat.  Our cat soaked up their affectionate attention.  This bothered me, but I at this point, we had given up on her and she had given up on us.  I would have given her to that family, except that the father was allergic to cats.

Our old cat is gone now, and my exposure to cats for two years has been the cats at my husband’s mother’s house.  His mother has had, at one time, seven cats.  Of the seven, I liked two quite well.  I could have lived without the others.  Once one of my two favorites died, leaving only one that I liked, and he was not a lap cat.  My impression of cats became skewed towards the negative.

Meep overturned my feelings about cats, reminding me that cats are individuals; that it is unfair to generalize about an entire species.  The cats at my mother-in-law’s house receive more than ample attention from their humans, and are part of an unusually large cat family.  Perhaps guests are of little interest to them. Most of them have never seemed especially interested in us.

My friend and her daughter, to whom Meep belonged, visited over this weekend, bringing Meep with them.  I knew that our dog Lily would be delighted, but I knew that Meep would need some time to adjust.  I had anticipated separating the two animals for days or maybe weeks to give Meep time.  I had few worries about Lily.  She has lived with a cat, and understands that the cat is the boss.  She has experienced the pain of sharp claws swiping at her tender nose.

To my surprise, Meep has been a very brave cat.  We let her out of her cat carrier in a very small room with a window.  She was tentative at first, but she soon became very curious, and sniffed under the door into the next room.  I wanted to indulge her curiosity, so I opened the door to let her explore the guest bedroom.  My husband, my friend, her daughter, and I walked downtown to spend several hours wandering around, taking in the sights.  When we returned, I thought that Meep had done very well, and that we should expose the animals to one another.  I kept Lily on the leash, and Meep was a bit concerned but she did not retreat.

It was not long before the dog and the cat were both free to roam.  When Lil would come a little too close to Meep, I’d call her off.  Lil is extremely obedient.  At one point, I didn’t call her off, and I heard Lil yelp in pain.  She came to me, tail between her legs, and I comforted her.  But I new that Meep had set some boundaries.  For the rest of the day, Lily showed Meep a great deal of respect, giving her a fairly wide berth.  Meep also learned Lily’s boundaries.  Lil is food aggressive.  Meep must have made the mistake of coming too close to Lil while she was eating.  We heard three ferocious growl-barks, then a yelp.  

With time, Meep will grow to accept Lily.  Maybe one day they will even be friends.  But Lily can read Meep’s body language.  Lily came near Meep to go upstairs, and Meep arched her back and put back her ears.  Lily slunk around corner, hugging the wall and avoiding eye contact with Meep.  I feel a little badly for Lily.  She would love nothing more than to lick Meep to death and lavish all her love on Meep.  But it’s hard for me to imagine Meep ever accepting that kind of attention from a dog.  

It was little sad when my friend and her daughter left.  The humans didn’t seem too disturbed about leaving.  They knew that they were leaving their kitty in good hands.  But I felt badly for Meep.  People who don’t understand cats might find it hard to believe that a cat would miss people, but I think that she will miss her people.  It may take her a while to warm up to us.  She’s sitting on the couch next to me right now, curled up in what seems like a contented fashion.

It’s raining, and she looks up every one in a while at this noise or that.  But I will give her all the time that she needs.  I will let her come to me, and not over extend myself into her space.  We have all the time in the world.

Comments:

edunn (May 13, 2008. 02:42am)

How appropriate that you adopted Meep on Mother's Day! congrats on the new addition. Our kitty is currently hunting a moth or Trevor would congratulate you too.