It was a quiet Saturday and I was trying to eat a sandwich and read Newsweek but I was continually interrupted by our kitten, Haley, who was under the dining room table biting my toes, reminding me how much tiny little kitten teeth can hurt. Eventually I got annoyed and took some of the turkey out of my sandwich and put it on the floor, because Haley loves turkey, and went back to my sandwich and my magazine.
A moment later I laughed aloud. I was reading an article about cats, and the author referred to cats as “noble, reserved creatures.” I wondered briefly if the author had ever seen a cat, let alone owned one, but then I yelped. Haley had finished the turkey and went back to my toes.
I picked her up and took her into the den where my partner was trying to do a continuing education test on the computer. “Can you watch her for a while; I’m trying to eat lunch,” I told him as I deposited Haley without ceremony on his lap.
“No, I can’t,” he said with some heat. “Ginger won’t leave me alone.” Ginger, our senior cat, is a 20 pound bruiser who was stretched out on his keyboard. “She just pressed the ‘send’ button,” said my partner, “and now I have to start over.”
“’Cats are noble and reserved,’” I told him.
He looked up at me. ”Says who?” he asked.
“Newsweek,” I said.
He was immediately dismissive. “Huh,” he said eloquently. “Consider the source.”
He had a point, but now, I agreed to take Ginger so he could finish his test and he agreed to keep Haley so I could finish my lunch. I went back to the dining room to find Haley had beaten me back; she was on the table, finishing my sandwich. I put Ginger down, shooed Haley from the table and heard an oath from the other side of the house. Ginger had raced to the den and jumped back on the keyboard, hitting the “send” key again.
My partner was in the dining room a second later. “Here,” he said, handing me Ginger. “Take your cat.” Before I could protest he was back in the den and I heard the door shut with some force. Then I heard what sounded like a heavy piece of furniture being moved in front of the door.
I decided that the cats could use a time-out so I deposited both of them on the screened porch. “Be good,” I told them, “you’re supposed to be noble and reserved.” I retreated hastily into the house, closing the back door behind me. The cats usually love the back porch but now, confronted with the indignity of a closed door, they began to wail in unison.
My partner came out of the den. “I can’t work with that noise,” he said. I shrugged, unequal to the task of a response; he opened the kitchen door, and both cats rushed back in.
Haley did a quick check to make sure there was no more turkey in my sandwich and then raced back to the porch in hot pursuit of a lizard. I wanted to finish my lunch but since Haley had eaten all the turkey, kindly leaving an unappetizing mess of bread, lettuce and tomato, I grabbed a yogurt instead. Ginger was there instantly.
Once, when Ginger was a kitten, I unwisely gave her an empty yogurt container and she licked it clean within seconds. Now, she goes berserk when she sees me eating yogurt and, impatient for me to finish, she sits on my lap while I eat, drooling profusely, and staring at me.
I had only had two or three spoonfuls when I heard a pathetic little “meow” from the back porch. Sighing, I put my yogurt on the table and found Haley hanging from the screen, her little kitten claw hopelessly entangled in the mesh. She did not seem especially perturbed: she was looking intently at the lizard that was several inches above her, taunting her.
I carefully untangled her and put her back on the floor, went into the house and saw that Ginger had knocked my yogurt onto the floor and was lapping it up enthusiastically.
Realizing that lunch was simply not in the cards today, I started to clean up the mess and threw Newsweek to the side. A minute later Haley ran by with the lizard, still wiggling, in her mouth. She was on her way to the guest bedroom, where she likes to store the little corpses under the pillow. I never did finish reading the Newsweek article about the “noble, reserved creatures” that share my home; it seemed so irrelevant.