Appreciating the Cat

A couple weekends back, Tara took the puppies and went home to her parent's house for Mother's Day. I stayed behind with our cat, Admiral Goonieface of the S.S. Polyphemus ("Meow Meow" for short) with the plan of getting a good amount of LSAT studying done. It was quiet, relaxing, and allowed me to bond with our precious one-eyed feline boarder. Generally, the cat is completely overshadowed by the rowdiness of the two dogs, forced to creep along the edges of the room while the dogs tear around in the center of it. The cat really gets the short end of the stick in the "pet adoration" department. We rarely get any good one on one time with her because of the dogs being so large and domineering. She doesn't get to have any toys of her own because the dogs appropriate all of the toy mice and plastic balls with bells in them, and then eat them. She can play with the laser pointer, but ends up chasing after the spot, then darting out of the way of the dog barreling down upon her. It has gotten to the point that when we throw the dog's ball (something about the same size as the cat's head) she chases after it with the dog.

But this weekend it was just us. And it was awesome. And a little bit weird. The cat followed me from room to room 98% of the time, and simply disappeared completely for the other 2%. She meowed a lot and demanded to be petted and loved. The best part was that we finally got to play with the rarely used cat toys. Since we can't really play with the cat, she doesn't have anything other than the mice and the balls with bells, but they're so new and novel that it doesn't matter. She liked the mice and ignored the balls, and what I found is that our cat plays fetch. Better than the dogs, in fact. I would hurl it across the dining room, into the kitchen, and she would scamper after it, bat it around a bit, then bring it back and drop it at my feet. She would sit there and look up at me, meowing occasionally, until I threw it for her again. She slept in the bed with me, curled up at the foot of the bed, and just sort of kept me company. It was nice.