The Covert Rules of Feline Behavior by Martha Reed

I’ll admit right out of the gate that I’m a dog person. My two dogs, Forbes and Murray, were the perfect companions. Warm, loving, personable, friendly, always concerned for my well-being, fearless, and not too needy. We shared a great fifteen years.

Then last August, during another of my national perigrinations, my super generous sister invited me to stay with her until my new apartment was available. She has a lovely home right on the Allegheny River with a spare bedroom and a front porch made for river mist, entrancing bird song, and early morning coffee enjoyment. A writerly ideal of perfection.

And two cats.

Now that I’m six months in, I can look back and realize that Moe and Bailey implemented a cunning let’s-train-the-human plan from Day One. Shy and hesitant at the beginning, they gave it a week of getting to know me before they came up from the basement or out from under the bed and allowed me to give them a quick pat to let me know I had earned their trust. Bailey was easier to please. With Moe, it was (and is) two quick pats before I earn (still) a scary warning (that’s sufficient) hiss.

My sister went out of town for Week Two. That’s when I learned that both cats needed to be fed breakfast precisely at 6:15 a.m. or all hell broke loose. This was not negotiable. At 6:16 a.m., Bailey yowled to the world that he was being held prisoner, abused and dying of hunger while Moe woke the neighborhood with the news that Biblical famine had been loosed in our house.

Both cats upped their tactics when I shut my bedroom door. First, I got the subtle paw under the door (i.e. What Are You Doing Are You Dead Don’t You Hear ME?) maneuver. Moe would start strumming the flexible doorstop (BOING, BOING). Bailey learned to pull on the hallway’s closet door (DOINK, DOINK). I would’ve laughed this off, but I remind you this was at 6:16 a.m.

That’s when I made my fatal mistake. Instead of declaring war, I capitulated.

Stumbling downstairs at 6:17 a.m., bleary-eyed, I held my nose and dished out a can of smoothie cat food. Peace was restored on Day One, but it was a false truce. On Day Two, both cats turned up their noses at my offering and loudly reinstated their verbal protest. Checking the label, I realized that this can contained “Cheddar Chunks.” Desperately gambling on the last can of cat food currently in the house, I opened “Savory Turkey Feast.” Thankfully, the little feline monsters approved this alternative and settled in. My fallback option until I got to the grocery store later in the day was thawing out a ribeye and cooking them a breakfast steak.

They were softening me up. I began to suffer from sleep deprivation and PTSD.

By Week Three, I was thoroughly conditioned by Stockholm syndrome. I knew that Bailey wanted to play Bird on a Stick/Pillow Monster for exactly thirty-two minutes each morning at 10:15 a.m. in the downstairs back bedroom. Moe deigned to eat his six pieces of Temptations Tasty Chicken Cat Snacks at 3:20 p.m. in the kitchen by the tall white table, please. (Moe never said please. That’s me, being all human and polite.)

So what has this cat rule behavior got to do with my writer’s life? This month I moved into my new cat-less digs. It’s the perfect writerly set-up – yet I find I miss the feline distractions. At various times during my previous sacred writing time (i.e. whenever Moe and Bailey let me have it) the cats would settle into a cozy spot in my room (usually on the wooly blanket on the foot of the bed in a shaft of warm sunlight) and nap while I chased the great invisible words, the human/writerly equivalent of Bird on a Stick. I imagined they wondered who I was talking to whenever I verbally tested my draft narrative conversations, but in reality, being cats they probably didn’t care.

And now, honestly, as I looked up from typing that last sentence, there’s a cat, a new cat, a neighborhood cat with a strikingly suspicious look in his golden eyes and sunburnt black fur staring at me from the perimeter of my new patio. And suddenly, just like that, snap, I’m home.