Kitty Heaven

This post has no real purpose other than to demonstrate that our strange cat can, indeed, be happy on occasion.

I know both Jason and I have mentioned our almost-feral 5-pound cat Akira whom we rescued at the age of about 4 weeks, near starvation and with a pitifully broken tail. This April she turns 7 years old and is only just now allowing us to pet and talk to her. (Previous attempts resulted in a disappearing cat act.) For many, many years she actually remained unseen, both by guests to our apartment (then house), and by us. She would emerge about 7p.m. for dinner and then vanish to who-knows-where the rest of the time. She really was the Invisible Cat.

In our blog posts, Akira has previously earned such monikers as "selectively incontinent" (see our very first blog entry), "cross-eyed malignant dimwit" or "insidiously destructive furball."

Though she has come a long, long way in her ability to interrelate, she continues to render us bemused. By many, many accounts, her life is enviable. She has the run of the house; she has the run of the dog (who shies away any time she directly eyeballs him); she can watch birds and squirrels from the comfortable confines of her various pillows and soft perching places.

She is well-fed, well-watered. She has TWO entire litter boxes to herself which she, for some unknowable reason, chooses not to employ for their said function, thus producing our sometimes vitriolic postings relating to her.

Well, the other day my co-worker Randi bestowed a marvelous gift to my underserving feline - homegrown catnip in a little cloth pillow with six raffia strings.

My cat thought she'd died and gone to heaven. (A happening Jason has oft pined for, in rather wistful tones...)

Anyway, it's good to know we can provide some semblance of happiness for her.