I Have Cats Now

“A Quick Life Update”

So, I don’t want to delve too deeply into the weeds on this, but I’ve been busy, so I’ll get right to the heart of what people on the internet have been doing for easy content for the last twenty years or so; cute cat pictures. The tried-and-true method of turning to adorable pictures of animals to fill that content void of a slow week or crunch time has bled over onto my blog now, it seems. But at the very least I won’t be posting just any old “I can haz cheezeborger” or “this cat is so G R U M P Y lol!” or “Top Fifteen Cats Just Before Disaster Struck; Number Nine will Disgust You!” general kind of tripe. No, I’ve got something (slightly) better; pictures of my own cats.

If you’ve talked to me about animals for any length of time, you may or may not have hit upon the fact that I am allergic to cats, dogs, birds, ferrets, hamsters, guinea pigs, and any other number of critters that produce dust, dander, and/or saliva. This would seem to present a conundrum; how could I have cats in my tiny-ass apartment if I am going to be constantly sneezing everywhere and drooling out of my tear ducts? Well, the answer is that I can have them quite easily, because I… no longer have allergies to cats?

This kind of struck me by surprise, because whenever I visit my partner’s parents’ home, their two cats immediately make my face itch like my skin itself is trying to escape this mortal coil. It isn’t like my cats are any cleaner or healthier than the average feline friend; quite the opposite, in fact. Until recently, these were perhaps some of the most dirty, filthy cats you could find without necessitating a visit from animal control. And they’re exceptionally fat, to boot. Not that that probably makes any difference, but these cats are, like, twenty pounds each. There is no way in hell that I am feeding them one ounce of food per pound of cat per day. I would have no money left to feed myself!

And yet, it’s been about three (or four?) weeks now since these two furballs entered our home, and I haven’t started to react violently to them. Could this be the fabled allergic reaction recession that my exceptionally upsetting (a story for another day) allergist told me when I was eight? Should I expect to have these lower allergen levels for the next few decades and then explode my nose outward somewhere around forty, like that lab-coated oracle of childhood despair forewarned? Who knows! I don’t! I just keep them off my bed and vacuum a couple of times per week and it seems to be working all right.

You’d also think that I’d have an issue with them knocking over all my assorted knick-knacks and what not, and I do! Between the allergies and the clutter of our house, those were two of the reasons I used to get Cheyenne to hold off on getting a kitten. Except these cats don’t have any issues with clutter, because they are some of the least mobile cats I have ever met in my life. They do not jump. They do not climb. They do not explore. They sit, they wander around a little bit, and they roll over like overstuffed pillowcases. Between them, they have the combined athleticism of a severely overweight third-grader, and a comparable level of endurance. They are the perfect cats for me.

Which is funny, because I stumbled into them very much by chance. My grandmother on my mom’s side has been slowly deteriorating for the last ten-plus years, and it recently reached a point where she was no longer able to support the cats in any real capacity. So, my mom elected to find a new home for them herself, with the cats together if at all possible, instead of just sticking them in a pet shelter somewhere. Cheyenne’s wanted cats for a while, and Nick’s already got a cat, and these two seemed easy enough to take care of. They’re old, like fifteen years old, slow and fat from a lifetime of inactivity, and want to do nothing other than be a very warm floor mat. Cheyenne and I figured, why the hell not? It would be a great way to test my allergies in case we want to get a kitten down the line and a very low-intensity introduction to having “real” pets again (although our fish did require some attention, it isn’t quite the same. I have buried two fish now.).

Turns out, things have gone pretty much exactly as expected. Thanks to a few weeks of care from my dad and his partner while Cheyenne and I were in Glacier National Park, the cats got cleaned up like they were going out for best-in-show. My dad’s partner has some sort of veterinarian experience, so the two of them were able to bathe the cats, comb and cut out the matting in their hair, and generally fix them up to be presentable in polite society and not look like they’d been tossed in a river. So a big thank you for that! But hiccups have been few and far between with these new additions to my family. Julius, the big orange one that we have all nicknamed Garfield, shat on the floor on the car ride from Chicago up to Minneapolis, and he has continued to shit, piss, or vomit on the floor in my apartment at varying frequencies, but these instances are comparative rarities. They have been the model of living furniture that I figured they would be, but much to the surprise of everyone involved, they have exceeded these (very low) expectations to do more than that; they’re actual cats, too.

Once the painful parts of their hair were cut out, both Alex and Julius turned into social butterflies. They want nothing more than attention, from anyone at any time. Alex will yowl if it’s been too long since the last time he’s been fed, and Julius still vomits up dinner once a week or so, but if you start to pet them, they just eat that shit up. They both love having their faces scratched, and both of them will roll over onto their bellies if you pet them long enough. Alex is surprisingly energetic, for being both fat and old, to the point where he actually wants to play with the toys we’ve given them. He’s got a big rope on a stick that my dad put together that he really likes, and will do some light aerobics to grab something that tickles his fancy. Julius does not seem to like toys as much, but I’ve definitely seen him batting at things on the floor before he realizes I’m watching him and he gets too embarrassed to continue.

We’re pretty sure that Julius is mostly or entirely deaf, because I pull out the vacuum cleaner several times a week and he doesn’t even wake up from his all-day napping session. Alex doesn’t care either, admittedly, but he at least will respond if you call his name or clap or something. They are just so low-energy animals at this point that nothing seems to faze them. In the few weeks they’ve been here, they have never once tried to escape while the door has been open, never once knocked over anything that wasn’t immediately on the ground, and never once accosted Cheyenne or me for being bipedal. They are just really good apartment citizens, is what I’m saying.

Doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy, taking care of them. Well, alright, yeah, that’s exactly what it means. But there is some work that goes into it. Cleaning the litter box sucks, and having to get more food for them every other week or so is a pain, but it’s a small price to pay, overall. They are just so content to mind their own business that when they need something, it barely ever seems like that big of a deal. I used to hate cats with foul loathing, and for good reason, too, but that’s a whole other long story that I may or may not share another day. I’m surprised to have some of my own, now, but it is a pleasant surprise.

I like to think that this is a good way for them to ride out the last years of whatever life they have left. And you know what? I like having them around. They are fun! They aren’t cuddly (yet), but they are very affectionate and love spending time with people. I like petting them and talking to them and spinning Alex in a circle when he lays on the hardwood or patting Julius’s stomach because he ate all my lasagna. They’re fun! They’re sweet and they’re fun! I like having them around, and they are a very nice presence in our household. I am sure that someday very soon I will come to love them, as I have with other pets in years gone by. Just as it takes these cats a few weeks to get used to a new place, it does take me some time to get used to the new way, too. But I’m glad that I have them, and I’m glad that Cheyenne likes them around, and I’m glad that I’m not constantly itchy and in pain. Because that was such a huge fear, and it is relieving to know that, maybe someday, I could even get, like, another bird or something. I’m not “Catmanandy” for a reason, you know. Still going for that domesticated owl. But that’s many years down the line, and for now, they are lovely new friends, and I hope you’ve enjoyed staring at pictures of them in lieu of whatever hard-hitting nonsense I would have posted this week otherwise.

Let’s be honest. This is better.