I Have Cats

for realsies

My partner moved in, and so did her cats. So now I have cats. One is Baby Shelley. The other goes by Ms. Perkins. Perkie, for short.

            Baby Shelley was rescued from oblivion by my animal-loving partner, Alyse, a couple of summers ago. Alyse had been feeding Shelley and her feral mom-cat. One day she found Baby Shelley hanging around the dumpster near the condo complex with his anus hanging out. Alyse took him to the vet. Got him all fixed up. It became clear to Shelley, over time, that he could trust this symbiotic relationship. He used to lunge for whatever Alyse was eating, that first summer, but now he has better manners. Personality-wise, he can be sort of anxious and skittish at times, but he is also inquisitive and playful. I love him.

            I’ve been instructed not to refer to Baby Shelley as “Percy Bysshe,” because, although he is a he-cat, he is named after Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who married Percy Bysshe Shelley, but also outshone him and some of the other English Romantic yahoos by writing Frankenstein, thereby inventing the science fiction genre. Percy wrote “Ozymandias,” which, big effin’ deal, right? Amateur.

Sometimes, though, when Alyse is asleep, next to me, and Baby Shelley lands on my head after trying to climb the curtain Alyse added to the window by my side of the bed, I whisper to him, “You’re such a Byssssshhhhe,” and I giggle and wipe the puddle of drool off my pillow.

            Ms. Perkins used to belong to a man in Alyse’s old condo complex who died. Ms. Perkins remained in the man’s apartment, loosely cared for and mostly left alone for two weeks by the man’s out-of-town relatives, until someone petitioned Alyse to take the cat. Alyse meant to “foster” Perkie short term and then re-home her, but, you know, Alyse obviously has a soft spot for traumatized cats. And Perkie is, mostly, a sweet and gentle cat, as long as our beagle isn’t near her food. She especially loves me because I am the only full-sized-man she comes into contact with, and, we figure, I remind her of her full-sized-man of a dead former owner. She is named after that man’s favorite schoolteacher from elementary school. I know. Heartbreaking.

            For decades – for real, for two decades – I have dodged the pleas of my children to adopt or make acquaintance of or otherwise live with cats because I am allergic. They did an allergy test when I was a kid and I was allergic; it was a whole thing. Cats, and dust mites. But I do not appear to be allergic to Baby Shelley and Ms. Perkins. I have not taken a knockoff Claritin for seven days and I feel fine. No snifflies. No watery eyes. Well, not counting the tears of joy that spontaneously appear when I think about our cats, and how much I love them.