foul weather friend

Last week’s cold snap underscored what a foul weather friend we have in our frumpy, old cat.
In the heat of the summer, she curled up in the middle of the concrete drive, soaking up the radiant heat. As the day waned she aimed for her favorite perch of concrete slab in the back yard or climbed the fence to check out the neighbor’s warm spots.

If we would leave the cat food dispenser outside in the garage as we used to do, the cat would rarely grace us with her presence from late spring to early fall. However, we quit serving the cat outside after we noticed the critters flagrantly galloping into our garage to gulp down a week’s worth of cat food: Neighborhood dogs, an opossum and a feral cat or two treated our garage as a free buffet. So, we moved the food dispenser inside — and our cat food bill dropped drastically.

Understanding our frugality and lack of hospitality to her distant relatives, the feline expects my husband to act as her personal lackey.
When she howls, he must come and turn the knob to open the door for her any time she beckons: 10 a.m. tea, 11 p.m. late night snack or 4 a.m. hunger pangs. Whatever the time, she wants service – NOW!

In the summer, every few hours as hunger strikes, she lazily stretches, meanders up to the house and commands her doorman to come to the front door.
My husband pulls himself out of his recliner and accommodates. She strolls in flicking her tail at him disdainfully, takes a few nibbles and walks to the back door where she wails until her doorman pauses his computer game, stands up and opens the door for her.
Day after day through the heat of summer, she treats our house like a fast food restaurant with a porter.
In return, all summer, she ignored my husband’s invitations to come sit on his lap and purr while he petted her. She had no interest in being petted — until the fall rains came.
Cats don’t like being soaked any more than do humans. With soaking wet whiskers and her tail dripping she begs to have the door opened. Once inside she stays until the rain stops or necessity forces her outside.
But, it is the frigid days of winter that reveal the cat’s true nature.
In the winter chill, we double up on socks and layer on the clothes to keep warm.
Not the cat. She hollers at us to sit down on that couch, to get comfortable in that lounge chair and wait for her. The minute we stretch out after a long day, she walks over to us, scolds us for taking so long and aims for the belly, the back or a crook behind the knees.
She’s not picky. She just wants our radiant body heat to warm her with a lot of petting to top off her pleasure.

She demands to be petted. If we move our hands aside for the briefest of moments to turn the page of a book, pick up a phone or just to rest and she lifts her head, looks around and begins vigorously licking any bare skin she can find, especially the errant hand, its arm or fingers until we begin petting her again.
I can live the rest of my life without ever having another sponge bath from that cat, so I either pet her or show her the door.

The cat acts as if she can live the rest of her life without ever being held or petted – as long the sun warms the dry cement. But let the temperature drop as it did last week, and she is miffed if we refuse to sit down, roll over or deny her room on our laps. The colder and wetter the weather, the more this cat cuddles up to us. She’s such a nice cat – our feline, foul weather friend.
(The cat’s other lackey, Joan Hershberger, is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)

This column received recognition from the annual APA contest.


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One response to “foul weather friend”

  1. jottingjoan Avatar

    Won honorable mention as a humorous column for medium dailies in the Arkansas Press Association for 2009.