The Cat-Hater (and the Cats who love her)

Look carefully...this is a photo that, by all rights, should never have been taken. The serene look on her face...the hand gently brushing the fur of the animal on her lap, purring in its pleasure like a well-tuned motorboat. What you're seeing is as close to a miracle as I've ever experienced. There is apparently no single animal on earth that instills as much love or hate among human beings as the cat. Famous cat lovers include Sir Winston Churchill, Muhammed (who once cut off a sleeve of his shirt to avoid waking a sleeping cat), Ernest Hemingway, Sir Isaac Newton, Raymond Chandler (whose cat reportedly doubled as an editor by sitting on his manuscripts), Florence Nightingale and a host of others, including myself (not famous, mind you, but a cat lover). There were just as many on the other side of the fence. President Dwight Eisenhower and composer Johannes Brahms took great pleasure in killing, or having killed, cats from their homes (the composer of the great Lullaby was rather adept at a bow-and-arrow in this endeavor). Noah Webster was not kind in his appraisal of cats in his dictionary, calling them a "deceitful animal and when enraged, extremely spiteful." Napoleon Bonaparte was once found sweating and on the verge of a nervous breakdown over the sight of a small kitten. Add my wife to this latter group. Growing up with three brother and a plethora of dogs in her childhood, she became quite acclimated with their playfulness and loyalty. (that's the dogs I'm talking about, not her siblings). Her reaction to cats was another matter. I don't know what occurred in her past that gave my Best Beloved such an intense case of ailurophobia. Simply put, she has no use for them and was more than likely to use a foot as a hand when getting said creatures out of her way. (Okay, a retraction...my wife would NEVER intentionally put the boots to any living thing, except maybe me, but only because I can fight back). I knew this when I married her, but like cat-loather James Boswell and his famous subject, cat-lover Dr. Samuel Johnson, we mostly kept our opinions to ourselves. In the early years of our union, the subject of pets never materialized because we were simply too busy as DINKs (Double Income, No Kids) to lend time for a muzzle to feed. It never occurred to us that other people in our close-knit family unit would ever have a say. Sure enough, within a decade our beautiful children came into the debate. Once our kids reached the age of reason, pets became an ongoing part of our daily conversation. We 'experimented' with a Siamese fish named Wally for about six months till it died and we tearfully buried it in in the back yard. Pets of the four-legged variety were not at the top of our list. My daughter was jumped by an overzealous retriever in the first grade and, hence, did not trust dogs any further than she could throw them. My son, who is asthmatic, cringes at anything on four or more legs that took the even most remote passing interest in him and shedding. A recent family reunion did quite a bit, however, to further discussion. My kids spend the better part of an evening in the same house with several dogs and cats, a number of which were of the long-haired variety. Both came away with nary a sniffle. A close family friend of ours have children in the same age group with at least two dogs. Both our kids have slowly dropped their guard faced with the overt friendliness of the pair. Mom, however, remained steadfast in her stand that while the discussions will go on, no cats will be involved. Ever! That was, until the arrival of Felix.

Felix is a yellow-eyed black cat...the kind one avoids on Friday the 13th and, sadly, falls prey to the more demonic components of the human population around Halloween.

He found his way into the neighborhood over the past summer with two others...'Dude', an overweight, green-eyed black cat with white fur on his chest and feet, much like the famous 'Socks' of the Clinton administration, and 'Kramer', a blue-eyed Siamese of equal girth.

While it appeared his compatriots were getting their daily requirement, Felix was definitely not in the 'well-fed' category.

He eventually made (read: crawled) his way to our lives in the heat of July and August. He would make his way through the neighborhood scrimping and scrounging for anything that was the least bit palatable. This included roaches (or 'water bugs' as our Terminix man calls them) and the occasional lizard. Within a week of his presence, my wife responded in a way I had not thought possible for her. Not with a swift boot to the backside or even a restraining order.

She personally went out and bought a bag of Friskies and a pet bowl.

She confided to me that, as much as she hated cats, she couldn't stand by and let Felix starve. I found this a side to my wife I had not seen before. Sure, she had always been on the front lines when it comes to compassion for those less fortunate, but this was a new one on me. As much as she detested the creatures that walk by themselves, as Rudyard Kipling famously wrote, she refused to let this cat suffer.

Soon the children became enraptured by this new-found friend, who in turn allowed them to pet him and, through the discovery of a simple shoelace, play with him. This became a good thing...the kids weren't stuck playing video games, as was the norm, but were engaged in active play with an active pet. This fact was not lost on the Mrs., who continued to supply the cat with '9 Lives', 'Purina Cat Chow', 'Meow Mix' and even a brand connected with the Disney movie 'The Aristo-Cats'. Anything but 'Iams'...that stuff is EXPENSIVE! Finally, in early September, my wife did the unthinkable...she let Felix in the house. He promptly threw up in my daughter's room, but the point had been made. After about a month, Dude and Kramer made their presence known. Sensing that there was food about, the two have habitually stopped by for a quick snack at Felix's expense (we, of course, make sure Felix is not neglected). One night, we were all watching a movie when we heard (and felt) a quick series of thumps against the front of the house. Being that all three cats are male, there was some jockeying for position in the household between Kramer and Dude, an argument which Dude won. While Kramer maintains a respectful distance from the house, the kids quickly discovered that beneath Dude's bloated exterior lies a cat very much in need of some lovin'. When petted, he responds with heavy cuddling and a purr that can be heard from yards away. While Felix curls up in a neat circle for his nap, Dude will splay himself prostrate like a frog ready for disection, as if to say, 'Pet me'. My wife will still puts her foot down on a few things...she still gets a shiver down her spine if a cat rubs up against her, which is now often. If we're sitting down to a meal or if we're going out or even ready for bed, the cat goes out. Still, there are instances of further softening of her dislike. The photo above, for instance. While one cat made his way into her heart through his sorry plight, another had charmed even the most savage breast. That's not Felix in her lap...that's Dude.