LEMME TELL YOU 'BOUT MY CAT

I made a comment (or maybe, like, ten...) about my cat in another post talking about how special it is to form a bond of trust with an animal, and another imgurite asked for a picture. I thought that while I uploaded a few maybe I could tell all of you about him, my cat, arguably the best cat (does your cat have a trophy? Mine does), in detail.

I met him when I lived in NYC, in the South Bronx. He was a stray in the neighborhood. He started coming into the backyard of my building and meowing, ear piercingly, every day. For hours. I tried everything to make him stop. I shouted at him, then chased him away (he came back within five minutes every time), then sprayed him with water. It went on for almost an entire year. Finally, as a last resort, I trapped him and took him to the pound.

I had a huge crisis of conscience on the subway ride home. That cat was fuck ugly (I thought so at the time, anyway- he was lean and shaggy and just dirty as hell, during his street days) and weird and annoying, and I had taken it to a kill shelter. It was gonna die in there. I went back and paid a hundred bucks to adopt him (yes, they charged me), which was pretty much all the money I had at the time. He was terrified of me, understandably, and it was weeks before he would even stay in a room with me. I will always remember the moment I won his trust.

He had taken to hiding in one of my kitchen cupboards, so I had taken everything out of it and put a folded blanket and some rags in it to make it comfortable for him. One night while he was in there, I went and sat down in front of the cupboard and slowly opened it. He looked at me, I looked at him, and it was the first time he had ever been this close to me without trying to bolt. I reached out very slowly and started petting him. He tolerated it, then eventually started to purr. Then the little idiot started thrashing his head all around trying to get me to scratch him under his chin, around his ears, just kind of everywhere, and he was smashing his head pretty hard into the sides of the cabinet over and over. He didn't seem to give a shit. I will admit that my heart melted.

Things were hard back then. I was a full time Chef (about 60-80 hours a week at a joint aaaaall the way down in Brooklyn, I don't miss those hour long subway rides), and I was poor as fuck, because culinary doesn't really pay well and New York is an expensive city and I wasn't a very responsible person. I was pretty fucked up and depressed too, did a lot of drugs, and lived in squalor. I was skin and bones, 6'1" and 150, maybe even like 145lbs for a while. Life was not going well.

And then all of a sudden here was this cat, this precious fucking creature that had wanted so badly to be loved, that had finally opened up to me. I started to clean my life up. I cleaned my apartment a little more each day until it was actually approaching tidy, because I couldn't let trash sit on my floor if he was going to be walking on it too. I started doing fewer drugs, then got clean, because they made it harder to keep my apartment straight, and also because even if I was cool with going a few days without being able to afford food now and then, I wasn't ok with him having to do the same. I wasn't ok with not having money to take him to a vet when I needed to. I really, honestly don't think I would have pulled out of the downward spiral I was in if I hadn't had to be responsible for him too.

It wasn't easy taking care of him, either- he had some bad nervous tics and anxiety problems. I put a collar on him when I got him and he scratched at it until it made a cut, and when I took the collar off he kept scratching at the cut until it became a six inch long wound that ran from his neck to his lips. I took him to the vet and they charged me two hundred bucks to tell me that yep he sure was injured and to test the wound "for mites" (they never told me what the result of the test was (don't go to animal hospitals in New York, go to privately owned small clinics with good reviews. I learned that the hard way). He would lick himself in a spot until he tore all the fur out, then keep going until it was an open wound. A few months after I got him he licked all the skin off of the spaces between his toes on one of his feet, and for three weeks I had to replace his cat litter with torn up strips of paper towel that had to be changed every use or as often as possible (thirteen hour work shifts don't facilitate constant attention well), to keep the area from getting infected. I had to hold him in my lap and swab on some kinda blue substance like rubbing alcohol, but safe for him, that would sterilize the area. Twice a day. It must have hurt like fuck because he thrashed and yowled every time it touched the wound, but he never scratched me. He has never, to do this day, scratched or growled at me.

I've had cats most of my life so I know them pretty well, and I can tell you with confidence that he is a real oddball. His pupils are almost always dilated, even in bright light (I lovingly refer to the mas his "crazy moon eyes"). He doesn't give a shit (to this day) about running headfirst into hard things. He huffs ant trails and frolics around in them like they're catnip (he goes fucking MENTAL for catnip, also), and tries to lick paint off of window latches and cleaning solvent off of freshly mopped floors when he thinks no one is looking. He likes to eat cobwebs. He's teeny tiny (I think his growth was stunted a bit by malnutrition or something, or he's just a very small breed) but his paws are disproportionately huge, and when he scratches on those box things you can buy the noise is terrifying. He goes through a lot of those things. When you're petting him he'll use all four legs to push his head or his entire body into you/your hand, pretty freakin' hard, especially for such a small guy. He purrs very easily, and LOUD. He is possessed of a powerful voice in general, in fact- he can really belt when he feels like it, unfortunately. He also makes a lot of really weird noises, his kind of odd versions of the normal cat ones and also a selection of "ehh" and "meh" sounds. I saw him get in a staredown with another cat once and he made, just... the most unholy of sounds. Like a super deep "mrrgrrhrghrrrrghrrrowwwwhrhgrrr" that just kept going and going, my god, it was unlike any sound I have ever heard a cat make, far, far removed from the typical prefight growling and whines (definitely the cat equivalent of "don't fucking FUCK with me man I'm fucking crazy I swear to god"). He is super neurotic about food, as is to be expected of a stray, and he can be a real turd during the hour or two leading up to meal time. And after he eats, if no one is in the room when he finishes, he'll walk out into the main room and let out a few cries just to make sure we're still here. If I'm in a room with the door closed and he wants to be near me, he'll bang his head into the door loud enough to sound like someone is knocking on it, over and over until I open it.

He doesn't hurt himself so much these days, and I'm a lot better at noticing it and stopping the habit before it gets serious when he forms one, now. Mostly just spending time with him seems to help.

We live together in a nice house in sunny California now, so truly he did win the New York streetcat lottery (grand prize, like, a hundred million bucks, you know?). He's about eight or nine years old (I think he was like 3 when I took him in). There are more people in his life who care about him and love him and give him attention these days, which is good, because he needs a lot of it. My room is still the one that he waits outside of even when other doors are open, though. I am still the person he sits next to when we are watching TV, even though other people in the house have schedules that make them the people that feed him more than I do (that Chef Life is still a grind, even out here. I make a lot more money for the hours I put in now, though). And he still starts purring the second he lays down next to me in bed.

His name is Fat Charlie, or Charlie for short. We were both a little too skinny when I named him that, and we've both put on some much needed weight. He isn't perfect, and he isn't always easy to live with, but in his heart he is a gentle soul (unless you're some other asshole cat, then don't fuck with him, it's not worth it man). We helped each other through a really dark period in both of our lives, and I hope that he will be with me for many more. I tried so hard to push him away and he just wouldn't leave me alone, and in the end he taught me something really important about letting people in and how to love others. He really does mean the world to me.