March, 2010:

Did you know that black cats are adopted less than non-black cats? This article and a flyer outside my apartment promoting the awesomeness of black cats told me so. People think they’re satanic agents of evil! I found this strange since I adopted a black cat months before the article or the flyer existed, and never assumed that she had a mysterious past filled with Slayer concerts or path-crossing bad luck experiments. Also, I’m not a racist. All I thought when I saw her at the shelter was “KITTY” in a high pitched squeal that threatened to shut off my air supply if I didn’t stuff her in a box and bring her home with me to love forever and ever.

BERZERKER BARRAGE

Margot is an awesome cat. She enjoys making pigeon noises, waking her owners up at 5:00 in the morning by biting their hands and feet and pretending that a one bedroom apartment is actually a jungle full of prey that look like power cords. People that usually say, “Well, I’m not a cat perso–” have their sentences interrupted by an unstoppable urge to crawl around on the floor making “woodgie woodgie woo woo” noises at my cat. Her response is to either playfully swat them in the face or take a dump so large that it unravels the fabric of time and space. Did you know that kitten poop smells like a rotting turkey carcass that was kept in a sweltering garage for six days? Neither did I! The vet assured me that this was normal, to which I replied, “Sister, if this is normal, I’d hate to smell abnormal in your topsy-turvy world ahahahahahahahaha.” Oh, how I laughed.

But pet ownership is no laughing matter. I thought it would be a laughing matter, and that Margot and I would just laugh and laugh until we forgot what was so funny in the first place, but no. Having never owned pets besides a handful of stupid goldfish that I won at county fairs as a kid, this was news to me. My parents didn’t believe in fish food. “Fish don’t need fish food, just feed them breadcrumbs,” they would say as tears quietly rolled down my face at the sight of another malnourished fish floating at the top of its bowl. To this day I don’t understand their logic. Perhaps they were members of the 12 Pound Box of Breadcrumbs of the Month Club that they couldn’t figure out how to cancel, or they reasoned that a fish covered in breadcrumbs is delicious, so clearly a fish can get its daily serving of vitamins and herbs by feeding it breadcrumbs. Either way, they killed all of my fish, and I’ll never forgiv– oh wait, I just forgave them because my cat is pouncing on the ironing board and it’s adorable.

Cats have their own doctors, just like people. When I first took Margot to the vet, they put her through the proverbial “cat’s meow” of tests. The vet was all, “We’re going to test Margot for feline AIDS. Do you know what feline AIDS is?” I replied, “Is it like regular AIDS, but for cats?” Stymied by my vast intellect, the doctor nearly handed her lab coat and stethoscope over to me. “Yes, that’s exactly what it is.” Margot does not have CATAIDS, which is a huge relief. There’s a good chance she has a slight case of the pica, though, which is a cat disease that makes chewing on paper both all-consuming and hilarious to her. On one hand, the apartment looks great because we can’t keep loose sheets of paper laying around. On the other hand, on the rare occasion that we accidentally leave a receipt on the table for more than 5 seconds, she grabs it in her mouth and hoards it under the bed. Possibly for income tax purposes? She can’t read so I don’t think that’s the case.

Cat Ownership Fun Fact – cats can be unreasonable jerks and don’t care if you live or die. “Margot, stop eating our food!” we yell as the cat shoves her face into anything that features the faintest smell of meat. “FUCKYOU,” she meows. “Margot, we’re trying to sleep, and while dangling a string over your face and watching you attack it is an adorable game at 7:00 in the evening, it’s now 3:30 in the morning,” we say as the cat jumps into bed with a shoe lace in her mouth. “IDON’TFUCKINGCAREMRAHHHHH,” she coos. She has this really cool feature where she takes all of her toys and string and sheets of paper and brings them into bed in hopes that we’ll play with her. All night. Every night, until we say, “Enuff Z’Nuff,” and throw her out into the hallway. Thankfully she thinks this is also a game, and patiently waits for us to wake up at a reasonable hour so she can make her next move (which probably involves getting her claws sharp enough to behead us).

But those are the only annoying things that she does. Most of the time she’s just sleeping or rubbing herself on the furniture or climbing up my back like I’m a ladder that leads up to the back of my own head. I’m not a creepy cat person who owns cat calendars or cat aprons or doormats that say, “HURRRCATS” in huge letters, but I’m probably not very far off… sorry to end this so abruptly, Margot is out of breadcrumbs.