My cat is the joke of my friends and family. The joke is that he’s not real because almost no one has ever seen him. That’s not entirely true – he stuck his head out when my mom came to visit, and my sister once woke up in the middle of the night wondering why she couldn’t breathe, only to find Elliot sitting on her chest. (He’s big-boned.) But he’s not the kind of person who meows to strangers for pets while walking. Let’s put it this way: When my friends take care of a cat, they report if he eats the food they put out, and the actual presence is considered an event.
He is not a cute cat. He’s more of a barn cat. He likes to be touched, but it doesn’t last long and it has to be on his terms, and once he’s done, it stops. The only time I pick him up is with extreme caution, if it’s extremely necessary. He wouldn’t let me hold him like a baby and we would laugh so much at home that he would rip my face off if I tried to dress him in a funny Halloween costume. But I like him very much and I love him.
I got him long before I had kids, even before I met my husband, and he’s not the “perfect for kids!” cats that shelters have. On the small description card. I don’t have any cute pictures of him and my kids when they were little. At best, I have a picture of her staring at him in ecstasy while he ignores her. I will never forget that moment when I’m pretty sure she realized that a cat was a newly domesticated creature, with teeth and a will of its own. She was staggering around the living room, a few feet away from him, when suddenly she screamed. She was suddenly afraid of the cat. The cat didn’t do anything to her. It was like she suddenly realized the cat was a cat and not a jelly cat.
Unexpectedly, now she is a pretty responsible 7 year old and he is a gentle old man and my kids love that cat. To be honest, he was nice to her too.
I think in many ways, his barn cat personality makes him a perfect kids cat – he keeps a distance from her that he feels comfortable with. It also helped that we helped her learn how to relate to him. We never let her chase or crowd him, and he has a history of having a very tall cat tower and a series of secluded spaces where he can hang out when he wants to be alone. (We did have to put latches on the bathroom cabinet so he couldn’t hide in there because we kept opening the cabinet to get toilet paper and nearly had a heart attack to find his little eyes glowing in the dark.)
The man himself, checking in.
Kelly Ferb
She pouted a little out of jealousy when she noticed he was almost sitting on top of me, but she was eager to help take care of him. She loves opening his can of wet food in the morning and begging me to brush his teeth. He was very patient, partly because I had explained all the signs that he was angry and that she needed to take a step back. Once, she was able to gingerly lean into his face and touch noses, and she still smiled happily at the time he “kissed” her.
I think part of the reason it works is that the cat was never my child. That’s not our motivation. He’s always been more like my weird roommate. He is my work-from-home colleague and TV-watching companion. He is my childless friend and is very patient with my child when she wants to brush his teeth as long as she respects his space.
Admittedly, I sometimes wish he was the kind of cat that would curl up at the foot of her bed and keep her company while she sleeps. Sometimes I wish we had a cat and could hang out on her lap. I’m kind of sad that I didn’t keep a cute photo of her as a little girl curled up with him. But I think learning to love others the way they are, paying attention to their needs, and respecting their boundaries is a valuable life lesson.
Kelly Ferb is the Managing Editor of Scary Mommy, where she commissions freelance work. If you have a story you’d like to share, please recommend her here! She’d love to hear from you. Previously, Kelly worked at Jezebel.com as a senior editor, where she also wrote about royal gossip and romance novels, as well as body image and history. She grew up between a river and a railroad in Georgia, and she had a lot of questions about PAW Patrol’s world-building.
