the crucible: for reasons still unknown, a letter to the cat

Dear Oliver,

You are the cat. I am your momma. Not in the literal sense, but sort of. I know that you are unable to read this letter I am writing to you, but oh well. People tend to engage in strange behavior when they acquire a pet, so I suppose I am just participating in this aspect of human nature.

Oh, I miss you being so small.

I remember in the days after we brought you home, I constantly worried about you. Were you lonely while Jonathan and I were at work? Were you going to eat our poinsettia when we weren’t looking and die a horrible death? And most importantly, were you secretly pooping somewhere other than your litter box? Since then, I have determined these answers to be no, probably, and definitely. Luckily for me, I just don’t get quite so upset about these things anymore. I’m pretty sure you are asleep about 80% of the time we are absent; you always seem sort of surprised whenever we come home and mildly annoyed when we turn the lights on. You are rather passionate and aggressive when it comes to chewing plants, so we moved the poinsettia from the kitchen to the garage where it promptly died in the sweltering Texas heat. Better it than you, little kitty. I have to give you some credit in the pooping department, however. I’d give you 5 out of 5 if you’d just cover up what you do and try to keep some of the litter in its box. That all changed when we discovered how well and how frequently you had been fertilizing our aloe plant. We appreciate your attempt at contributing to our household chores, but really. It’s not necessary.

That being said, you are way better when it comes to poo than puke. I have been shocked at a) the variety of items I have discovered when I dissect your regurgitations and b) the fact that I have the wherewithal to actually pick through it without vomiting myself. It is good to know where all my ponytail holders have been vanishing to. I was beginning to think that there was some kind of space-time vortex that abducted them, similar to the one that takes socks from the dryer. I came home this evening to you, happy and purring, and my husband on all fours grumbling to himself as he scrubbed the carpet where you yakked up that string I shouldn’t have let you play with. I didn’t feel to bad for your daddy since he has not scooped one poo out of your litter box since we adopted you last April (except that week I spent in Ohio). But when you threw up again in the exact same spot as soon as he cleaned up the first pile? Yeah, I think one was calculated. Bad kitty! Bad!

Oh, I know you can’t really help it, though. I have discovered that I can not hold a grudge against you, regardless of the severity of your crime. Or crimes, as they usually are. One minute you are sprinting through the house, tearing down curtains, biting my toes (hard!), and snacking on my husband’s bootlaces. Every time you leap from the top of my computer monitor to the top of the bookshelf (like you just did), I swear you are going to split my monitor from its already wobbly base. But then I see you lounging up there, bathing yourself and dreaming about jumping from the bookshelf to the ceiling fan. FYI: that ain’t gonna happen. I forgive you for bringing down the dining room curtains on multiple occasions because they are the ugliest in the house. I don’t mind you biting my toes because you bite Jonathan even harder. I tolerate your shoelace addiction because they are replaceable but you, my darling, are not.

Oliver, I think it's time we had an intervention about these bootlaces. Your bingeing and purging is beginning to concern me.

Faults and all, I’m still glad you’re around. I have never known a cat that can retrieve large stuffed animals so well and enjoys slurping toilet water as much as you do. Life in our little gray house is just a bit more fun and interesting now that we have a little gray cat.

Here you are, digging through the bathroom trash searching for used Q-tips that you can chew on and then leave in my bed. Thanks.

Okay, Oliver. It’s almost 10:30. Time for you to wake up from your bookshelf loft and start running amok some more or none of us will be sleeping tonight. Go get Bloop-Bloop and we’ll play fetch.

This is the stuffed animal known as "Bloop-Bloop". He gets his name from the drippy bubbly sound he makes when you squeeze his left fin. I like him because he always looks surprised like someone who has had one too many eyebrow lifts.