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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
New Boy
"I am Elliott."
WE KEEP GETTING NEWENS. Mrs. CP is supposed to be the sensible one in this household. Normally she is. Like when we go to Petsmart to spend our weekly king's ransom on dogfood, catfood, birdseed, etc, she won't let me even walk by the cats in the Pet Rescue booth. (I do anyway.) But on Friday she called me to say she'd seen a cat at Petsmart she had to have. We have four dogs and three cats, and the deerhound is still just one year old, a handful more demanding than a human infant, because he's one and one hundred pounds of trouble. What can you say? "Sure."
We went and got him on Sunday. After all the calls. Cat rescue people are, well, anxious and hyper. They had it in mind that this new boy might be too much for us to manage. He's an "alpha male," they said. He might attack and maul our other cats because he's such a bad dude in the cat universe. Mrs. CP knew how to handle it, which is good because all my instincts were (as usual) wrong. I'd have told them that our Bengal Izzie could kick his ass with one hand tied behind her back, and our feral Mickey is so huge he could simply sit on an an "alpha male" and forget about him. Which doesn't even address the real issue, meaning Raebert, who continues to think cats are mysteriously mobile toys, still unaware that one tap of his gigantic paw can send a cat to the hospital. Izzie doesn't care because she's Izzie, friend of Psmith and becoming friend of Raebert...
Mrs. CP just told them she could take care of it. Adoption approved. So on Sunday I spent the longest eighteen hours of my life in the sixty minutes it took to complete the paperwork in that claustrophobic booth and get the new boy into the carrier and into the car. (Occasionally, even the most enlightened male understands why so many men tune all women out completely. Jesus. Do they NEVER shut up?) His foster mom was worried that the 50 miles we had to drive to get him home would be too much for him. He meowed exactly three times en route. I think he was as glad as I was to get out of that place where all those women, in an incredibly confined space, were talking over each other continuously like lunatics. Never been asked the same questions so many times with no comprehension or memory of the answers. Enough said.
Guess what. He is an alpha male. Alpha plus. He doesn't need to kick ass. His thing? He's completely unafraid. Mickey stalked him, Izzie did her scary, warbling danger voice, and Raebert did his "Wow, a new toy I can paw and boot around." What did this guy do? Nothing. No retreat. No threat displays. He just sat there, plainly saying, "I am Elliott." The perfect answer. Meaning he was utterly unimpressed by any possibility of harm.
And meaning that Mrs. CP knows what she's doing when she bonds with a cat in a nanosecond through a plexiglass window at Petsmart. She just knew. Instantaneously. Maybe I'll learn how to fully appreciate this women before I die, but it's going to take some time. A lot of time.
Some key facts about Elliott. He's supposedly an orange tabby. He isn't. Anyone can see he's a blond cat, just like his new daddy. He knows his name, which came with him, and he responds to it just like a dog, coming at a trot from wherever he is. There's a lot more to him than dignity. He likes to play with all the toys, he will sleep with his head on your hand, and he investigates absolutely everything with a kind of patient resolve.
Truth. I sat up with him all night the first night. He didn't want me to go to bed. He knew he was home at last, and his whole attitude was, "I've been waiting and waiting, and now here you are."
The missus and I are still getting used to his implacable calm. Raebert paws him and he simply bats lightly at the paws. Incredible because Raebert's affectionate pawings still hurt me.
I know I've talked a lot about dogs and cats here over the years. I've never suggested that Instapunk.com needed a mascot. But maybe Elliott should be our mascot. Did I mention that Elliott is slightly lame? A hind leg that might have been broken in the past. Who knows what rescues endure before they fall into human hands? But I put it to you: Isn't this guy the essence of us? Standing there, calm and observant, somehow immune to the onslaught. Too cool to get violent. Too confident of his own destiny to let temporal provocations get in the way of his enjoyment of life.
Well. No pressure. We don't really need a mascot at Instapunk.com. But I'm sure those of you who don't hate cats will extend a warm welcome to our newest boy. His name is Elliott.
