I am not a pet person, and the idea of having a pet never crossed my mind. Being a bit of a clean freak, having pet hair all over the place didn't seem overly attractive. Then, one day, a cat showed up at my place. She was very skinny. I didn't know what to do. When she was still lurking around my place a week later, I bought some cat food at Wally world and started feeding her. I put the dish with food about a hundred feet away from the house, so that she wouldn't know who was feeding her, and get the idea in her head that I would take her in. The feed-the-cat from a hundred feet distance went on for several months. Then wintertime arrived, and the white season can be quite cruel up in the Adirondacks where I live. I built a little house for her, and put some insulation in the walls. I also made a little 'porch' on it, so that the snow wouldn't blow inside. It was satisfying to see that this 'stranger' used her tiny house, once the temperatures started dropping into the single digits. But one night, I came home from work at 1 in the morning, the wind was blowing mercilessly, and the outdoor thermometer showed a horrible 26 below zero. The cat was on my porch, crying, she had her head against the door, knowing I would open it. Well, I'm not heartless, so I thought "Okay, just for this ONE night". That was seven years ago, and my little queen is cuddled up on my lap while I am writing this.
The first winter was rough. To her, a litterbox seemed like the kind of gadget you sniff for a minute and then walk away from. Being a stray, I figured that perhaps she needed regular dirt, something she would be more familiar with. Now, you try to find dirt under 4 feet of snow with the ground all frozen! I shoveled a small area in the snow, and then broke up the dirt underneath with a pick axe. I carried the clumps of frozen dirt inside and let them thaw out. Sure enough, the cat knew what they were for, and she used her new litterbox. Problem is that, when you have straight dirt in there, you have to change it every time the cat uses it, otherwise the smell becomes rather obnoxious. I did a lot of digging, dragging and thawing out that winter. I started mixing the dirt with kitty litter, a bit more litter each time, until she was used to the litter. It worked.
Soon I found out that the cat had strange habits. She often attacked and bit me for no reason. Several times I woke up in the middle of the night, because she was standing right on top of me, hissing. When I walked through the house, she would come out of nowhere, jump on my legs and bite me. It took a few months and a few harsh words to teach her right from wrong, but she started to know the boundaries and quit biting me. Unfortunately, to this day, I have been unable to teach her not to attack or bite strangers, she still does that as a rule.
Last winter, I became quite ill. After being released from the hospital, I had to stay home for two more weeks and rest. My cat surprised the heck out of me during that time. She knew what was going on, and she did the best she could to take care of me. She never left my bed (unless to eat and to use the litter box). On a normal day, she runs around quite a bit and plays with her toys. Not when I was sick. She spent two weeks with her body wrapped around my head "to keep me warm". She also constantly "washed" me. Two days after I got home from the hospital, I knew that I had taken a turn for the worse. I tried to reach the phone on my nightstand, but I was too weak to lift my arm and grab it. The cat CRIED, I swear. It was the only time in the seven years she has been with me that she cried in such a strange way. This, of course, worried my more than anything else. I thought I was dying (animals feel that). Obviously I made it through. During the next days, friends came over to bring food and such. The cat attacked every single one of them, and would not allow them to come near my bed. In the end, the friends decided to put my food by the door. Better safe than sorry. Ever since that time, one of my friends still always calls before he comes over, asking me to make sure the cat is outside.
My family lives on a different continent, and I have lost touch with most of them. The cat is practically my only family. I love her very much. According to the vet, she was about 1 year old when she decided to move in with me, which makes her about 8 years old now. She is a lovely creature (to me at least), and I worry about her every time she goes outside. She loves to jump in the street right in front of cars, and she attacks everything that moves, even dogs, no matter how big they are. Last summer she brought me a huge rat.
She lives like a queen. She only eats cat chow, and does not care for any of the cat treats, except for fancy feast salmon. I give her tunafish once a week (on Tuesdays), which makes me think that she knows the days of the week, because only on Tuesdays does she jump up on the counter when I open the fridge. She has more toys than I had when I was a kid.
Her name is Mousti.
