A Tale of Two Kitties

Six years ago, I moved back to sunny socal from a four year stint at Sonoma State.  I immediately moved into a place with my best friend from high school, and we worked our respective jobs and lived the life of two young single women.  Unfortunately, there were twists and turns during that year that ultimately caused a detour in our friendship.  It was not an easy time for either of us.  

As a result, I moved back in with my parents.  Not long after I moved in, they announced that they were going to buy a house in Oxnard, about an hour away from their house in the valley.  I was in my first year teaching with the district, so I was not able to move out to Oxnard with them.  They graciously allowed me to stay in their house until they rented it out so that I could save some money to find my own place. 

It was during this time, while I was living alone in a three story house, that I brought home my first fur baby, well, the first fur baby that I really felt was my own...the first one I had as an adult.  Meet baby Cecily, my Siamese princess.

Cecily is my "problem child".  She's loud, she's obnoxious, she's a pain in the neck, but she's completely lovable.  She's got spunk, and I totally love that about her.  She also has a hidden talent for playing fetch.  That's right: my cat plays fetch.  She'll fetch pretty much any kind of cat toy or tiny folded strip of paper.  In fact, in her first year or so with me, I would wake up and find a myriad of toys in my bed that she had brought me while I was sleeping because she wanted me to play fetch with her!

About a month after Cecily came home with me, I was worried that she was spending too much time alone.  I lived alone in this huge house, and it was great to have Cecily to come home to, but I felt that she was getting lonely while I was at work all day.  It was around this time that my mom decided that she wanted to get a kitten, and she invited me to go with her to visit the cattery.  Big mistake.  I immediately fell in love with Gus-Gus.

He was not in the cattery with his brothers and sisters.  He and another kitten had been sold to another cattery that wound up infested with ringworm.  He and the other kitten were quarantined in a big bird cage looking thing.  So, my mom went home with his littermate, Ruby, and I reserved Gus-Gus and came to pick him up when he was all healed of the ringworm.

I immediately noticed something about Gus-Gus.  He was the antithesis of Cecily.  She growled at him for the first month or so after he joined our home.  He took it all completely in stride.  It was as if he was saying, "What?  I don't get it?  Okay, I'll stay away from you."  He had the best demeanor that I have ever experienced in a cat.  Where Cecily is anxious and neurotic and loud, he was calm and nonplussed.  Sometimes I imagined that he had one of those surfer voices, "Hey dude, no sweat."  

He loved people.  He wasn't a fraidy-cat at all.  He loved to chill and watch TV.  He loved to look at the birds and squirrels outside, he loved high places like the top of the bookcase or refrigerator, and he loved his sister.  Sometimes it seemed like he thought he was a dog, other times a person, and still other times, an acrobat.   

He has left Cecily and I to figure stuff out on our own now.  Maybe some of his spirit rubbed off on her for the four years he was with us.  One can hope.  We could use a little more balance in this place.  He totally provided that for us.