Raising Toast
by
Jeff Stimpson
It's
almost two months now since Toast strolled through our front door
one frigid holiday evening. We're teaching the boys to feed her.
"Toast!" says Ned. "Eat your dinner!"
We named Toast after the dog in the movie Funny
Bones. She is black and delicate, although getting rounder in
the middle. She is Jill's second black cat. First was Mimi, a
delightful and deeply missed boy. "I don't see Mimi when I look at
her," Jill says. "At first I thought I would, but I don't."
She (Toast) eats peas and spaghetti, and claws
into plastic bags of barley in the pantry. When you come out of the
bathroom, she's always waiting by the door; she likes to watch the
water twirl down the bowl, from which she then drinks. The other
night she hopped into a bath with the boys, then leaped back out and
stalked away, shaking her hind legs as if it had all been someone
else's fault.
"She's kind of nutty," says Jill, who might be
liking having another (nutty) woman around. "That damned cat was
just on the table eating Ned's porridge. Eagerly licking it up, too.
I mean there was a little butter in it, but it wasn't swirling in
butter or cream. What kind of cat eats oatmeal?"
She (Toast) also squirms under the pantry, maybe
to get away from Ned. Ned's too rough with her for me; he's either a
boisterous 3-year-old or a psychotic, not that there's much
difference. He holds her up by the front shoulders. He squeezes her
until she meows. We've explained over and over and over that this is
wrong, to which he hangs his head. We give Toast a treat after these
episodes - though we're careful not to let Ned do it so he doesn't
get the idea that he can make it up to her that easily. I've shown
him how to cradle his arm underneath her hind legs and rest her
front paws on his shoulder, though he's not big enough to do this
yet. I was heartened when I showed him how to use the cat dancer
toy, and Toast chased him around the house.
"The other day, Ned made me wave it for him to
chase," Jill adds. Ned also crawls around on all fours and meows.
Which is scary. Toast saw him doing this the other day, and swatted
him.
One of her favorite toys is a ball of tinfoil,
which rolls and ricochets better than a wad of paper. She also seems
to love skidding into doors, bookcases, boxes, and other surfaces
that seem to attract an out-of-control year-old cat. At bedtime
(ours), she tracks me with her eyes, makes sudden soft noises, and
bolts down the hall, then on top of our bed, then under the bed in a
black slither.
"I see her out of the corner of my eye and I think
I've seen a mouse," says Jill.
We're teaching her (Toast) to fetch cough drops. I
toss one clattering down the hall of our bedroom. She bolts. Then a
second later she's back, her pale green searchlights boring into me.
"Did you bring it back?" Bore go the searchlights. Flick goes the
head. "Did you bring it back? I can't throw it again unless you
bring it back." Flick goes the head. Throw another! she silently
demands.
Any mouse around here would swiftly feel the
vibration of her teeth, just like my toes do through the comforter
at bedtime. Her claws are lightning. She's a killer. "Kill-ah!'
giggles Ned. Which is scary.
Wherever Toast came from, she's used to being
around kids. She likes to sleep in the boys' room, especially with
Alex, who used to tug her tail once in a while, but who now just
pets her nicely and sometimes meows in her face. In play, she likes
to crouch by my side of the bed, for instance, and pounce at my
wiggling fingers. My fingers she swats at with full force. When Ned
wiggled his fingers, however, she looked at me, looked at Ned, then
swatted gently, with no claws.
Our first major foray into cat-ownership, not
counting Tidy Cat Crystals and the scooping thereof, has been
claw-trimming. "Oh, she's going to nice about it," says Jill, who
has Toast in her arms. I'm behind them, and I see her (Jill's) grip
suddenly tighten and her shoulders hunch. "Oh no, she's not going to
be nice about this."
When she walked through the door, nobody said
anything about "nice." Still, with each day and each pea, it's
getting harder to remember that time before she walked through the
door.
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
