Pooh-cat

Pooh is my special cat. She is the queen of the household and the keeper of my heart. She loves me intensely. Pooh is a plump, short-haired tuxedo cat with a big wide face and large olive eyes. The black/white transition passes perfectly though her eyes giving her a harlequin appearance. I received her from a veterinarian at about six weeks and she fell madly in love with me. During her adolescence she began to sing in her sleep. She would be curled up on my bed asleep, snoring but then she began to add other sounds…humming, drumming, squealing, rattling, clicking, popping, buzzing, all of it underlain by a very musical purring. I called them sleep-songs. The sounds she strung together were not a random selection of sounds, but formed a pattern. Over a period of a day or two the pattern changed into another completely different song. I found her songs so fascinating that I began to awake spontaneously to listen to her latest composition. How I wish I had recorded them. They were the most creative thing I have ever heard come out of any creature. There is no bird song that is as beautiful as hers…at least to me. I considered but did not try to record them. Had I done so I am sure she would have made me wealthy many times over. It was an amazing thing to hear such a creative thing spring from something so simple as a cat.

Pooh takes good care of her man. She watches me carefully and learns my habits. For a while I was going to bed promptly at 9:30. She noticed this and would run to the bed in anticipation of my arrival. If I did not show up on time she would hurry out of the bedroom, run up to me and proceed to meow at me in a particularly plaintive way. She would continue until I told her “Go to bed!” Whereupon she would hurry off to my bed and wait there for a few minutes and if I again did not show up soon enough, she would repeat her lamentations until I relented. Pooh knows my schedule and she expects me to be punctual. She loves her going-to-bed-cuddle-time. She curls up against me and I wrap an arm around her and stroke her.

Some months ago I began to take out time in the evening to watch the sunset. I set up a chair on the lawn and Pooh, the dog, and the duck would come around to join me. Pooh quickly caught on to this activity and decided to make it a special event. She would sit next to the chair and await my arrival. If I did not show up she would run inside and whine at me once again, in her most obnoxious way possible, until I told her to go. She would then run outside and again sit next to the chair. I could see the chair from my desk and could see her waiting patiently for her man to join her. She would turn around and look at me as if to ask if I was coming along. I would relent and join her for another sunset. She is a most attentive cat.

She has been with me fourteen years. I can imagine finding homes for all my other creatures, but I will never give up my Pooh-cat.