I came home today and found out I had beat my wife home. We’d spoken an hour earlier, and she said she was in the city and on her way. I was still working, and figured she’d be home first. But I was closer, hanging some lights for a friend in Bushwick, so I made it home in ten minutes. So there was nobody there to greet me.

I walked in, hung up my keys and jacket, and went into the guest bedroom to take off my shoes and put on my flip-flops. The cat was there, sitting in her favorite chair in the sunlight. The room faces southwest, so there is always plenty of sun for kitty to lay in. My turtle liked it too when she was alive.

I stood over the cat, who looked up at me with her blank cat stare. I said; “How do you know it’s me and not her?” A rhetorical question, of course, since I don’t usually talk to cats, or expect them to answer. The reason I asked is that when my wife comes home, the cat is always waiting by the door. She has this little routine when my wife comes home; she runs to the door when she hears the key turn in the lock, rubs against Danusia’s ankles, then runs over to her scratching post and starts plucking at it with her claws, ears laid back against her head. Then she stretches, shakes herself off, and procedes to sit by her food bowl if my wife is in the kitchen. But I get nothing. Sometimes a yawn. Except when kitty is hunger, then she follows me around and sits in front of me and stares at me until I feed her. The other cat Banana, the one who died, would sit by her food dish and tap it with her paw until it hit her water bowl and made a clinking sound. The sound of cat hunger. I would simply pick up the food dish and place it out of her reach. I guess that’s being mean to kitty.

This one is young, and hasn’t finessed the art of begging for food. If I am cooking she simply leans against whatever  kitchen cabinet my legs are closest to, with the most pitiful look on her face.

“Oh, is the poor kitty hungry? Does the kitty want some of her awful-smelling canned cat food?” I ask. Rhetorically, of course. I put some food in her dish in an effort to get her away from me. Sometimes I’m especially mean and bring the anticipated dish halfway down and then back up again, a sort of cat-fake-out. The cat looks confused, but does not budge. I set the dish down, the cat has a sniff, and walks away.

“I thought you were hungry!” I call to her slowly retreating backside.

The kitty likes dry food, and would only eat that if she could. I play another little game with the cat. We keep the dry food in an antique wooden cupboard, and it makes a very distinct sound when you turn the little brass knob on the latch. When the cat hears that sound, she comes running, and she often tires to climb into the bottom of the cupboard to get at the 11.1 pound bag of dry food. But I am usually just getting a garbage bag or something else, and the kitty is disappointed.

“Sorry, I just needed a garbage bag” I tell her to her sad little face.

Then there is the war for the bedroom. Luckily, this cat blew her bedroom privileges when we first got her by peeing on everything in sight. I drew the line on letting her into the bedroom, and got my wife to agree. The bedroom is also where my wife keeps our Papyrus plants, which the cat loves to chew on. The cat chews on a lot of the plants we have, but she has a particular penchant for the Papyrus. My wife loves her Papyrus too, and tires to keep the cat away from it.

The cat knows the bedroom is off limits if I am laying in bed, she found out early on when Danusia left the door open and the cat came galloping in  and leaped up onto the bed, landing on my shin. Not a pleasant surprise. My litteral knee-jerk reaction was to jerk my knee up, away from this unwarranted attack. Kitty found herself flying through the air doing a summersault. Luckily she’s a cat and landed on all fours before galloping in the other direction, her little cat heart all a pitter-patter. Now the cat won’t even come into the bedroom if I’m there.

But in the morning, when we are both home, after the cat wakes up from wherever her spot from the night was, usually that aforementioned chair, sometimes the plastic covered couch, she will sit by the bedroom door until I open it for her and she bounds on to the bed for a little quality time with mommy. My wife always sleeps later than me so they get to spend some one on one time together.

She stopped the peeing a while ago, but we did have to get rid of two couches and my wife had to wash a lot of clothing she left lying around. I never leave clothing lying around, not just for fear of it geting pissed on, but because I don’t want to walk around with cat hair all over me. I forgot once, and someone asked “Do you have a cat?” “No, I don’t have a cat. My wife has a cat.”