The Wheeze, Tormentor

A dog is a real pet.  A cat is an animal that you are feeding, bedding down for the night, and disappearing their feces.  If something bad happens to you a dog will take a crash course in human linguistics so that he can use a telephone to call 9-1-1.  A cat will keep an eye on your corpse.  Maybe.  If it's in the sun and she doesn't have to move.  Dogs are always happy to see you, they're very sorry when they do something wrong, and they never, ever hold a grudge.  Yesterday is here and gone and let's go for a walk!  A cat is merely tolerating your presence and with a pained expression on her face at that.

Ed Note: Why are dogs male in my mind and cats female?  Conspiracy?  Check this out later.

So one really fascinating thing about cats is that they sense who doesn't like them, then use this intuition to torment that person.  A good example is my mother who professed to be allergic to cats - I remain dubious that this was the case but that's a matter for another day.  Mom didn't like to come to our house - no drinking and no grand kids - so she played the cat allergy card all the time, slapping it down like she was filling an inside flush - my sister's two cats, standing between mom and her granddaughters, didn't seem to have the same effect.  The point here is that as soon as mom took a seat The Wheeze would be on her lap in a flash.  I didn't care that much one way or another where the cat sat - Mr. Antsy prefers to be free to get up and move around at will - so she sought me out as the next warm refuge, and she wouldn't jump up on her own, either, preferring to sit at my feet and stare at me until I reached down and picked her up.  What a princess. 

My wife who wanted a cat to sit in her lap and purr?  She couldn't hold the cat down even if she employed a Full Nelson.  When SuperK wanted to take a nap The Wheeze - always in search of some good heat and my wife is a human furnace - would jump up and lay on her lower legs, just out of reach of any grabby hands. 

"User," my wife would mutter.  It wasn't that The Wheeze didn't want to be touched.  It was that she wanted everything to be on her terms.  Man, cats must all be alcoholics.

The Wheeze would remain in my office all day, lying in the sun in the summer and wedged underneath the radiator in the winter.  The Wheeze would saunter in to my wife's office, look around with a bored expression on her face, and then saunter back out.  It was almost mean-spirited.  It was almost malevolent.  You love me?  Tough shit.

That cat could purr when she was content which she almost never was.  That cat never spoke unless she was annoyed - which was often - and then she screamed.  She shrieked, she howled.  If she saw another cat walking through the yard she would throw herself against the window, yelling like a banshee.  Originally I thought this was the bravado of an animal talking shit from a position of safety until I saw her get outside a couple of times and chase the offending animal away.