My daughter's cat, Rudy, came from a family with 2 children; a 4-year-old, and a toddler. Rudy was just a kitten, and apparently, very impressionable. I answered the classified ad about this free kitten, because Jenny had been wanting one, and I was feeling magnanimous. The ad read:
FREE KITTEN TO GOOD HOME. HAS BEEN SPAYED, HAS ALL SHOTS. MUST GO DUE TO FAMILY ALLERGY.
I went and retrieved the kitten, a little gray-streaked thing with huge eyes, and presented her to Jenny as a gift. Three days later I was informed by Jenny that she knew she had a cat, but she had learned little about her.
"What'd'ya mean?"
"She stays under my bed, won't let me come near her, and won't let me pick her up. She yowls and cries and meows until I put her down."
"Well, give her some time. She needs to settle in."
Six weeks later nothing had changed. When I picked the cat up, she squirmed and growled and hissed, and was not at all the sweet, cuddly kitten I had hoped for. The words to the ad ran in my mind over and over ... had the family been allergic to the cat? or had the cat been allergic to the humans? I watched the cat slink around the house, constantly watching over her shoulder, going from under one piece of furniture to another, and I moped; she was a faulty cat, no two ways about it.
She had shed her kitten look by now and was long and slinky, and even better at being evasive than she was when she first came to us. She seemed content enough; would stretch out in a patch of sunshine in the floor and play with whatever little tidbit she found to play with. She romped around the house chasing her tail and played with Frog, the mutt, for hours on end. She seemed to love that dog, and even slept with him, but if I went to try and pet her, she would spring away, tossing a dirty look over her shoulder.
What did Frog have that I didn't have? He stunk, and licked his own butt. He would eat any dead thing he found in the yard, or roll in it. He was the anti-cat. Nasty, dirty, bad breath, and would eat all her food if we didn't watch him. I got to wondering what Frog had that we didn't have, and came to the conclusion that it was not what he had, but what he didn't have.
Hands.
I was whisked back to a time when I had a 4-year-old and a toddler in the house. I remember saying, "No! Don't pick the kitty up by her tail!" and "No! Don't hold the kitty upside down!" and "The kitty does not want to wear your baby doll clothes, honey!"
I thought of the ad again, and suspected that had it been truthful, it would have read:
FREE TRAUMATIZED KITTEN TO GOOD HOME. HAS BEEN PICKED UP BY HER HEAD, DRAGGED BY HER TAIL, AND DRESSED IN BABY CLOTHES. MUST GO FOR HER OWN GOOD.
I ran into Jenny later in the day and offered the following advice:
"You ever want that cat to love you, don't chase after her, and don't pet her. Whatever you do, don't pick her up at any time for any reason."
"Huh?"
"Just don't crowd her, let her alone."
"Well, that's not much fun. What good is it to have a pet that you can't pet?"
"You have a fish, do you pet him? Look, just trust me on this, okay?"
After about 3 months the most miraculous thing happened. I was lying in bed about 2 a.m. when I felt small paws walking across my stomach. Frog, who was lying beside me, lifted his head, sighed noisily, and went back to sleep while Rudy curled herself in a ball on my chest, purring. I lifted my hand cautiously to pet her, and she rubbed her face against my hand and I knew that she had found her peace.
Nowadays, it's all we can do to keep her off of us. We sit, she's in our laps. We love on her and she loves on us. We are still not allowed to pick her up; some things apparently take longer to get over than others, but for the most part she's the loving cat I wanted. All it took was a little patience and a vivid, unbidden memory of the "No! Don't ..." days.
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