Dogs are nice… but I’m a cat person because they’re pretty self-reliant, soft to the touch and like to cuddle. When I was a young adult, as soon as I could I got a kitten. The first time I was in an apartment that didn’t allow pets so I tried to get away with it. Buster was an adorable little American short-hair that was given to me by that guy who gave me the “Kiss that turned off my brain” I had to eventually give him back (the kitten and the guy!) when the landlord found out…but I loved that little scamp.
When my friend asked me to get an apartment with her, the plus side was she already had a pet so I’d be able to get one also. So I agreed and I picked out a beautiful tortiose-shell black and gold kitten I named Killashandra (after my favorite Anne McCaffrey character) and called Shandra. She was a kick ass cat. Looking back, Shandra was my wild side manifested in a feline. Well… if you’d fixed me so I wasn’t into sex anymore.. LOL!
When she was young I tried to train her with a squirt bottle to stay off the dinning table. It worked for about a week until she learned that it was just water. One day when she jumped on the table, I gave her a warning and showed her the bottle and she just looked at me. (Sometimes she’d jump down at sight of the bottle but usually it took the squirt to get her to move.) So I squirted her and got her right in the face. And she just took it, shook her head and gave me a look that said, “Yeah…so?” That was when I gave THAT up.
She was also not allowed on the piano because she wasn’t declawed like my roommates Persian. We were half-assed about the table but diligent about the piano. Yet Shandra like chasing the Persian. But the Persian never left the safety of the piano. So one day I was lying on the couch (set up in the middle of the room facing the T.V. which was against the wall… with the piano behind the couch against the other wall) and I noticed Shandra walk past me with a long string in her mouth dragging it behind her as she walked. It dragged almost 2 feet behind her. I watch her as she circles the couch with this string several times. Then I catch Belle (the Persian) and notice SHE is also watching the string…but she’s watching the end not in Shandra’s mouth. Suddenly Belle leaps off the piano onto the string which Shandra immediately drops and chases Belle back into the bedroom.
I was floored. I’d never seen a cat use a lure on another cat! I was so proud of my smart, determined kitten!
I was single during this time in the apartment with my cat. And in an apartment cat’s have litter boxes. So one night I bring home an interesting prize and we’re getting busy in my bed. The roommate is crashed behind her bedroom door but I leave mine cracked so the cat can leave if she needs to because I don’t want to stop what I’m doing! When our energetic efforts are over he removes the condom and asks where the trashcan is. It’s at that moment I realize my bedroom doesn’t have one. So I tell him, “Toss it in the little box, I’ll get it later.” Because I’m tired! Hello…energetic efforts here!
Anyway, so we’re cuddling and I notice Shandra has gone over to the litter box. She takes one whiff and begins to bury the condom! I can just hear the fastidious cat grumbling obscenities about us to herself! We lost it laughing and I spent days retelling that funny to everyone.
Shandra became an amazing half wild cat. I’d trained all my cats to come when I made a certain loud noise by giving them a Pounce treat whenever I made it. When I moved to my house and took Shandra and my second cat Piemur (another favorite character from a McCaffrey book) they became outside cats and that noise would bring her running for food or medicine or whatever. But she loved being outside.
Once, I watched her in my neighbors back yard just sitting in the middle of the grass cleaning herself. A jay bird flew by a little close so I stayed to see what would happen. The jay flew back even closer and I surmised it was trying to pluck fur off her to line their nests. And she seemed oblivious… ah but this was my smart, now grown up, cat. At the third fly by Shandra leaps into the air, claws reaching, body twisting and turning and just barely misses that jay bird. She must have leaped 5-6 feet! Again… I was so proud!
I was proud until on Mother’s Day she brought home, in the early am hour of 6, a live bird in her mouth. It sounded like a jay as she plopped it onto the robe I’d left on the floor. Yet without my glasses I could barely see it. I’d quickly scrambled to get the live bird away from the, now two, circling cats. I grabbed the robe off the floor, bird inside, and went to the open bedroom’s back exterior door (which I kept open because I didn’t have a cat door and I had no sense of danger.. stop judging me!).
And I stood there wondering what to do with this screaming bird in my robe with the two cats meowing their suggestions at my feet when the bird decided it was outta here. It leaped out of my robe and tried to fly away but it made it only as far as UNDER the car. Both cats scampered after it and I just closed the door and went back to bed. No feathers were ever found which was sad because from what I could see it was a brilliant gold with black markings.
Shandra lived a long time and I saw her less and less through the years until finally when I married and moved to San Antonio I couldn’t find her to take her with us. She never came when I walked the neighborhood making my call to her on the day we drove the moving van across country. But she’ll always be the coolest cat ever.
