I was dumped

My cat blog looks fine!

Hmm. I think I'll upload a pic of me soon. All of you out there - especially the cat lovers - would be wanting to know what I look like, right? The reason I can't do it now is that I'm clogging from this PC and that's not where my pics are stored.

My pics are all in a Mac in another place. Uh huh, yes, I am in the Mac camp, most definitely. User-friendly and beautiful machines to boot. There's no way to advertise one's uber cool status faster than to use a Mac. [OK, I hear all you PC-philes swearing never to return to this clog already. Go if you have to. No skin off my pink, heart-shaped nose!]

In my last post, I promised to tell why I no longer live with my human. It's a sad story and I know she's pretty broken up about it and still thinks of me often. I know for a fact that she has pinned up six pics of me at her cubicle at her work place and has a picture of me on her computer desktop...

I came to live with her and her husband in their East Coast apartment in mid-1998. From the start, the situation didn't look good. She wanted a cat. Her husband was [and still is] a dog person. But he said OK to her anyway.

She took real good care of me: I got my yearly shots at the vet, and was brought there each time I fell ill. I was fed Science Diet premium cat kibble, and yummy tinned food on Saturday mornings. She cleaned my eyes and ears every morning with damp tissue and talked to me.

In return, I hammed it up for the guests who came by for their fabulous dinner parties. [Her husband cooks really well.] I was a real centre of attraction with young and old alike. I was variously described as "big", "muscular", "fat", "aggressive", "psycho" ... and "pretty". [Me, a big boy, "pretty"? I object!]

In July 2005, my human and her husband decided to get their home remodelled. This entailed moving out - all the three of us. They went to live with his mom [a non-cat person] in Telok Blangah, and I became a boarder with Auntie S in Punggol for those three months because my human didn't want to "impose" on her mom-in-law with a huge, scratching, fur-shedding critter.

Living in Punggol with Auntie S was fine, because I knew my human would come back for me. She always came back to get me, even back when she used to put me at the Pet Hotel in Pasir Ris whenever she went on short holidays with her husband.

When the work was all done, she came to get me in October, as I expected. But what I wasn't prepared for was The Change. What had they done to my world?? I was terrified.

The floor was white and shiny. The walls were all white. The cabinets were now all in dark brown wood. Some walls I remembered brushing against were gone. And this was just the shell of the house.

The Change affected the furniture as well: Where was that wonderful cane set where I used to strop my claws? In its place, there was this hideous scarlet sofa, all fabric, no hard bits to give some resistence when my claws itched to be stropped off. The dining room chairs were now in this smelly black leather, eeewwww.

I spent a good part of the following two months trying to make sense of it all - the new colours, the new textures, and worst of all, the new smells - wood, leather, aluminium strips, glue, paint.

Were they doing this to traumatise me? Why weren't THEY traumatised?? How could they accept such change?

Hold it. They were not just accepting of the change. They seemed to revel in it, and were proud of it. They hosted more of their fabulous parties and more humans came by. All of them cooed at how wonderful the place now looked. My human gave running commentaries about what was done, and her continuing battles with the interior designer to unf*** some of his shoddy work.

Me, I wasn't happy. I stropped my claws on that red monster sofa. Hey, I found out the fabric had some give. Little threads came loose and did fine to relieve my itchy claws. I also left some of my Eau de Moggie marks at the corners.

And, bad as the black leather smelled, I made a wonderful discovery one day when I deigned to leap onto it. I dug my claws in and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Soon, there were long scratches on it and bits of green sponge filling were spilling out. And my overgrown nails flaked off. Sweet relief.

She noticed my artwork soon enough and became angry, very angry.

I. have. to. leave. my. mark. somehow. It's a cat thing. All this new, unmarked furniture was just calling out to me. WHY couldn't my human see this? She yelled at me and spat out something that sounded like "BAD CAT!" She wasn't happy, that much I knew. I could tell it from the tone she used as she shouted at me.

Her husband was also saying things about me in my direction. He wasn't happy either, and it was also clear from his tone of voice. In my seven years under their roof, he and I had just steered clear of each other. He never petted me [except when he was a little high on beer], but never hit me either. I knew he was just tolerating me for her sake.

She even smacked me on my rump one day, but I don't know why.

The furniture became more "me". But somehow, in their terms, they called it "getting worse". Things came to a head. I know my human had a few discussions with her husband, and that he said the decision about what to do was up to her.

One quiet Saturday afternoon, she fed me my usual tinned food and told me tearfully that she had to give me up. She explained that she had thought about it, and that this wasn't just her home. It was his too. Already, he had put up with seven years of:

• scattered litter,
• my fur flying all over the place and sticking on clothes,
• bedroom doors needing to be kept shut in order to keep me and my fur out,
• the smell from my litter box (despite an industrial strength litter),
• brown stains on corners of walls - my "dhoby marks",
• occasional pee accidents,
• puddles of vomit, usually after I scarf down my food in the best Homer Simpson tradition.

The damaged furniture was the last straw. Did I know the new furniture was a gift from her mom-in-law, she asked me. They were only four months old and they looked like shit, she sighed. She said she couldn't go about repairing it if I was going to be around. She held my face and asked me: "Why can't you stop doing this? Why?"

She took some pics of me, put me in my pet carrier and drove me to Auntie S's in Punggol. So that's where I live now.

Auntie S has cats too, some of which have pretty sad stories of homelessness and abuse. These cats are now up for adoption.

Me, I' m not for adoption. I've just become a long-term boarder. I still belong to her. She comes to visit, but I don't think she will come to bring me home any more. I think I heard her negotiating with Auntie S about how much she had to pay every month to keep me here.

I'm angry that she has dumped me here. The last time she came to visit, I refused to take my favourite cat snacks from her hand and walked away from her to show her I was hurt.

She came again to visit this week, and I was so happy to see her, I went up to her and purred, hurt feelings quite forgotten.

I could see she was happy to see me. She hugged me - I hate this, can't she ever remember? - but I could see it in her eyes she was sorry and feeling guilty she had to make me adapt all over again to a new place at my old age.

But this is how it is going to be. Top Cat checking out for now.