mean cat nice cat

Today my cat died. We decided to put her down, a tumor crowding her lungs. She had lived for months longer than expected, she had been fine. We had almost forgotten about it, thinking the exploratory surgery had some how fixed things, instead of just confirming the inevitable. We wanted to believe that a cat so mean, so tough, couldn't possibly do something as passive as die. Dolores was a powerful feline. She felt her power, her wildness and she exerted it often. She would tear through the house, pupils dilated, on the hunt, on the heels of her kill. Didn't matter that there was nothing there. She had the ability to scare everyone (except us), even pet-savvy people with mean cats of their own. When sitting at the dinner table she made guests afraid to stretch their legs under the table, eating their meals scrunched high on their chairs. A friend took care of her one weekend while we were away. On our friend's first visit Deedee (as we called her) chased her down the hallway. On her next visit she simply opened the apartment door, slid in an open bag of cat food, tipped it on one side and closed the door.

Deedee had a growl that connected her to her tiger brethren (rwowowowow) and was her chief mode of communication. If you did not heed the growl or if you didn't get clear fast enough, then a flurry of swats would follow, but the kind of panicked rapid fire of someone actually afraid of fighting. She would smack wildly with her head turned and her little green eyes closed, then she'd run away. Really, she was the queen of the tough face, of the stare, of the terrifying pop that only really mean cats make. But she wasn't actually mean. She loved to sniff the tops of our heads and would bury her little nose in our parts. She would sit on our laps and purr, though if we actively pet her she would then give a warning growl, a "this is a one way street sister" sort of growl. She liked to sleep next to us, she liked to sit on the balcony and sniff the wind, she liked to eat dirt out of the house plants. She liked peanut butter and tortilla chips. She never once scratched or bit our daughter (that can't be said for one of our other cats). She began her life the runt of a litter born under the stairs of some dilapidated collegiate housing. PBT went to pick up a kitten he had selected from the litter days before, but that kitten was gone and the only one left was Deedee. He took her home. She was crawling with fleas, too little for most of medicines he had to bathe her and massage flea repelling foam into her gray fur. He brought her home to boston, she scratched his father, his grandfather. He brought her to New York and when I moved in with them I brought my two brutes, tom cats used to running the show. And she held her own, never giving them an inch, never letting them be the alphas they wanted to be. They found an uneasy peace (punctuated with fights where the fur actually flew). So she began with PBT. And she wasn't sure about me. But I saw her. I saw that she wanted to sit in my lap. She wanted me to scratch the top of her head. She still woke and waited at the door when she heard PBT open the building door downstairs. And she would know when it was him, and when it wasn't. She didn't get up for a delivery man or a neighbor. So she was his. But for the last seven years she was mine too.