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by D. Cashon Klein
I've been at the mercy of a tabby for
almost three years. She came with the house. It was very obviously
her house when I moved in. She did not wish to leave with the
previous renter who was responsible for the tags on her collar and
her name, "Frodo." He did not try to take her with him. She isn't
one to be coerced.
She was an outside cat, the very idea of
which I loathe. The guy who she previously owned used to set out
cans of Fancy Feast. That's how he fed her. The cans remained
outside to become little pools for toads, or deterrents to
barefooted visitors. His cat-care style was extremely low
maintenance, which is probably why she did not wish to keep him any
longer.
Her house sits on a large corner lot. When
I first moved in, I watched her herd the feral cats off the
property. She would actually roll the poor things down the
driveway. She permitted a couple of domestic friends to hang with
her in the carport, but she was an utter snob to the ferals. She
suggested I build a fence around the property to keep the aliens
out. I told her she was an imperialist and I would not support the
idea. She wanted to move in and requisition the house, but my
companion was an elderly Siamese to whom it currently belonged.
When Lilly, the Siamese, died, I allowed
Frodo to come in, fleas and all. We have been trying to get to know
each other since. She has horrible etiquette. She breaks things.
She doesn't understand that it's rude to attack me without
warning. She opens the closets and drawers and drags things out.
She is so much different than the Siamese cats I've known.
But here's the kicker, she took to the
house immediately and has never tried to get out since she moved
in. She is an official house cat. She answers to "Peggy" now. She
likes that name. Peggy knows that when I call her Margaret she's
in deep s***.
She's a beautiful brown tiger with a hint
of orange. Her eye make-up is meticulous every day and has
startling yellow highlights. It even looks perfect when she wakes
up from her beauty naps. She is a bit heavy of thigh, and her farts
smell like sulfur. She likes to work it for the camera. She likes
to jam her ear down on my big toe. She body slams me as soon as I
lie down. She will wear a hat for approximately 10 seconds before
tiring of it.
I made an appointment to get her shots,
flea stuff, and blood work to make sure she hadn't picked up
anything in the hood. My sister works at an animal hospital so I
decided to take her there. They have Saturday hours and they're
close. I had an extra eighty bucks, thanks to some overtime the
previous week. (Surely shots wouldn't be more than that.)
The crate wasn't a problem for Peggy, nor
was the ride in the car. The ferals outside did jeer at her
however, as she was loaded in to the front seat. At the veterinary
clinic I filled out the necessary paperwork. The receptionist
checked her old tag number and found that she had had shots a
couple years earlier. She asked if her name was Frodo. I told her
that we changed it to Peggy. She said, "Good."
We waited in the examination room. The
doctor's assistant came to weigh her and clip her nails in the
back room. Peggy draped herself over the girls' arm like a shawl,
or a lion on a branch. She said they'd bring her back in to the
exam room for shots and blood work. Peggy was calm and comfortable
as she was carried away. I took a seat.
Not five minutes had passed before I heard
banging noises in the back room and the sounds of humans shouting.
I heard a blood-curdling low growl that accelerated in pitch and
volume until it was an extremely loud screech. This was not a human
sound. There were more banging noises. After what seemed like
hours, the girl and the vet came in. His hair was awry. She was
covered with fur and blood. They were both disheveled.
"We're going to give Peggy her shots and
do her blood work in the back room, if that's ok with you?" He
forced a smile as he asked. His assistant added, "We were not able
to clip her nails... perhaps we could try that another time... with
sedation."
I pointed to the blood and asked if Peggy
had scratched her. "No, we tried to get a sample for labs... I'm
fine," she said as she glanced nervously behind her.
Two hundred dollars later I was back at
home, talking on the phone with my sister who had gone in to work
just after we left. She told me she asked them if anyone had come
in that day with a gray tabby. They told her they didn't have a
gray one, but a brown and orange one came in and was THE CAT FROM
HELL.
I said, "Peggy is brown and orange."
Debbie Cashon Klein is a Safety Harbor
resident.
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