By Beauty Damned

A Cat Drama

It's deader 'an a doornail around these parts. It seems really weird to me that I was so intent on blogging for a couple of years and I could barely tear myself away from it in my free time, and lately it just hasn't been happening. Fucking weird I tell you. I think of things to blog about constantly and keep telling myself I'm going to find the time to sit down and spit it all out...but it hasn't been happening much. So I have a lot to say. But here's something that just came to me now.

Amelia is at the back window right now. Amelia is Matilda's sister. They're both Russian Blues. I got them from a catlady, who had like a thousand cats. This was back when they were just little babies, a couple of years ago now. They'd shared a small cage their entire lives up to the point that I took them home (they were a couple months old) and had not received much human contact, so they were beyond skittish. They were psycho schitzo crazy cats. Hated people. Hid all the time. Literally lived in the walls of my apartment when they found a crawl space that would lead them from one end of the house to the other without being seen at all. My friends used to laugh about my cats that lived in the walls and hated humans. Amelia is this pretty fluffy gray thing with a long, plumed tail. Matilda is a tiny, short-haired black cat, very delicate and perfect like a little princess, with long slender legs and tail. I always thought they loved eachother. They're sisters. They would frollick and play and pounce and curl up together on the floor for warmth. They also pissed on everything and made nests out of paper that they would steal and tear to pieces. I could never figure out why they behaved this way. I tried everything to make them stop, but nothing worked. They were a double dose of trouble. Maybe they were fighting over their territory...or something. Or maybe they just fed off of eachother's badness. I know how that is. They were wild when they were together. Like two unruly teenagers.

One day when a friend was visiting from out of town, the door was left open and Amelia unexpectedly took off. Ran out into a dark stormy night - never, ever to return, except as this occasional ghostlike creature. I call her my daughter who ran away and became a drug addict and a prostitute out on the street. She's a shadow of her former self in my eyes. She left us, but she comes back once in awhile, into the backyard, and peers through the window of the back door. When I have tried to coax her in, she either gets scared and runs away or she just stands there and stares at me with that cat-look that humans can't decipher. Does she know me? Does she know that I'm her mama? I think she knows this is her home, but she just doesn't want to live here. I don't know why.

She is still out there now. Matilda was captivated by her for awhile; standing up on her hind legs on a chair to put her nose up to the window. I opened the door to see what would happen if Matilda went out and tried to approach Amelia. She ventured out gingerly, but soon became a little more brazen and got up the steps to where Amelia is crouched, at which point they hissed pointedly at eachother. I called Matilda back in and shut the door. It's cold out there and I don't know if it's the right thing to try and take Amelia back in. When Matilda got back inside she stood up on the chair again to gaze at Amelia awhile longer. Not long after that, she lost interest altogether and has found the activity of laying in a corner in the manner of a furry black pancake more worthy of her time. (Oh, she just switched to her "backside turkey waiting to be stuffed" position on the floor.) Amelia sits at the top of the steps still, looking down at me every so often and otherwise staring off at the world that she's chosen over the warm confines of this home.

At the same time, when Amelia left, Matilda became a much more passive and loving cat. She has also ceased to piss on any floors or household objects. There is some strange psychology here, but I don't know enough about that kind of thing to really figure it out. I just assume that there was a rivalry there and I never really detected it, but that rivalry may have had something to do with Amelia taking off and never returning. It's weird that she continues to live as a stray in our neighborhood, only to come back and haunt us with her presence now and again. Meanwhile, Matilda seems much happier without her sister here and I feel like that's not right. Matilda should be sad and miss Amelia and wish for her return. But she's not a human, so why would she feel those things? She's perfectly happy to be the one that's getting all the food and all the love & attention and a warm spot on the bed. What a schemer.

Anybody out there a cat psychologist?