Saturday, April 08, 2006
Keekee Comes to Visit
While Karim was busy puttering about the kitchen making himself a cup of Turkish Coffee (American coffee is too weak for REAL men!), I s
at on the sofa looking at my dying palm plant and wondering when the apartment maintenance people would be coming around to paint our building so that I could put the poor thing back out on the patio. JJ was there (Jumpy Joe, the jumping spider, for those who have just tuned in) hopping from one frond to another. You could almost see him crouching, swinging his arms, and calculating the jump before he pounced to the next one. He jumped up about six fronds before he leapt all the way down to the one on which he started and then bounced over to the shoot growing in the middle of the plant, (the one with the dying fringe poking out the top like a dried corn stalk). He would sit there for a few minutes and then start the whole process over again.
As I sat there watching him, a furry shadow slithered quickly in front of the fencing surrounding our patio. "Kitty!" I exclaimed, and Karim and I both tore out the door to call the kitty over to us. This kitty is a "neighborhood" kitty, who, I don't think, belongs to a particular person, rather, she is simply the community cat, and I think the children in the complex find her more of a playtoy than an animal. She is very skittish around children as I found out when I went outside with a piece of cheese to feed her. She is very friendly with me, but when the children ran past us giggling at each other and playing, she disappeared from the top of the stone bench we were sitting on and hid beneath my feet as if she were saying, "save me from those vile creatures". I picked her back up and shielded her while she started to eat, but as soon as I scratched her behind the ear, she stopped eating so that I would pet her. She is more starved for attention than she is for food, poor thing. She wouldn't go back to the cheese, so I thought maybe she would like to come inside for a bit. (I had some old leftover shrimp in the fridge and decided she might like that better.)
So, in we went, and while I was preparing her shrimp, she was exploring the house. I could see that she was the "nosy" type that, if given half a chance as a house cat, would be on the counters in an instant if food were left out for any length of time. She came back to the kitchen at a fast trot when I put down the shrimp and a bowl of water. She licked at the shrimp, but was more interested in me. She just wanted my attention. "Keekee, you're so skinny. You need to eat something," I told her. She started sniffing around the water and then drank as if she'd not had anything wet in a long time.
After this, we just let her wander around and explore things, so that she could see that nothing was a threat. Then she wandered back out to the porch, sniffed around there for a bit, jumped up onto the fencing and then went off to chase birds.
I suppose she will be back, referring, of course, to the old addage, "feed a cat and it will return", which never bothered me at all. In fact, it never bothered my father, who is a professed cat hater. But, he fed the neighborhood cats for years, buying bags and bags of cat food for cats that never once set foot inside his house, until one by one they were killed off by the 18 wheel logging trucks that zoom by his neighborhood frequently. After the last one disappeared, he stopped buying cat food, and now, very few cats ever put a paw to his patio.
I, on the other hand, love cats, and will continue my anti-feline father's example by making sure they have a good meal if they need it. Even if it means enticing them into my home to keep them from being mauled by the village imps.
at on the sofa looking at my dying palm plant and wondering when the apartment maintenance people would be coming around to paint our building so that I could put the poor thing back out on the patio. JJ was there (Jumpy Joe, the jumping spider, for those who have just tuned in) hopping from one frond to another. You could almost see him crouching, swinging his arms, and calculating the jump before he pounced to the next one. He jumped up about six fronds before he leapt all the way down to the one on which he started and then bounced over to the shoot growing in the middle of the plant, (the one with the dying fringe poking out the top like a dried corn stalk). He would sit there for a few minutes and then start the whole process over again. As I sat there watching him, a furry shadow slithered quickly in front of the fencing surrounding our patio. "Kitty!" I exclaimed, and Karim and I both tore out the door to call the kitty over to us. This kitty is a "neighborhood" kitty, who, I don't think, belongs to a particular person, rather, she is simply the community cat, and I think the children in the complex find her more of a playtoy than an animal. She is very skittish around children as I found out when I went outside with a piece of cheese to feed her. She is very friendly with me, but when the children ran past us giggling at each other and playing, she disappeared from the top of the stone bench we were sitting on and hid beneath my feet as if she were saying, "save me from those vile creatures". I picked her back up and shielded her while she started to eat, but as soon as I scratched her behind the ear, she stopped eating so that I would pet her. She is more starved for attention than she is for food, poor thing. She wouldn't go back to the cheese, so I thought maybe she would like to come inside for a bit. (I had some old leftover shrimp in the fridge and decided she might like that better.)
So, in we went, and while I was preparing her shrimp, she was exploring the house. I could see that she was the "nosy" type that, if given half a chance as a house cat, would be on the counters in an instant if food were left out for any length of time. She came back to the kitchen at a fast trot when I put down the shrimp and a bowl of water. She licked at the shrimp, but was more interested in me. She just wanted my attention. "Keekee, you're so skinny. You need to eat something," I told her. She started sniffing around the water and then drank as if she'd not had anything wet in a long time.
After this, we just let her wander around and explore things, so that she could see that nothing was a threat. Then she wandered back out to the porch, sniffed around there for a bit, jumped up onto the fencing and then went off to chase birds.
I suppose she will be back, referring, of course, to the old addage, "feed a cat and it will return", which never bothered me at all. In fact, it never bothered my father, who is a professed cat hater. But, he fed the neighborhood cats for years, buying bags and bags of cat food for cats that never once set foot inside his house, until one by one they were killed off by the 18 wheel logging trucks that zoom by his neighborhood frequently. After the last one disappeared, he stopped buying cat food, and now, very few cats ever put a paw to his patio.
I, on the other hand, love cats, and will continue my anti-feline father's example by making sure they have a good meal if they need it. Even if it means enticing them into my home to keep them from being mauled by the village imps.
