About two weeks ago, my 17.75 year old cat began to sporadically howl from the basement. It's the kind of drawled meow my Siamese (I got for my 5th birthday) would make at night in the middle of the hallway near the bedrooms for no apparent reason. She, being timid and neurotic, spent most of the daylight hours under my parents' bed.
My current old cat, Sasha, may be yowling when I am not home, but she seems to do it around feeding times, either before or after she's come upstairs to eat her nibble of wet food (the old ones get whatever they want). It's as if she forgets who/where she is. Or maybe it's an acute and piercing loneliness surfacing, unquenchable. The sound stabs you under your sternum.
The other new thing with her is if you go down and get her from the basement, she will sleep next to you on the couch while you watch tv. She won't even flail or cry out as you carry her up the stairs. She, who was found as a dirt-eating, weaned too early, itty street urchin on the stoop of a run-down colonial house. She never, til now, lost the feral streak. Always prickly, an occasional arm kneader/sucker.
Her mindset is so vastly changed from even a year ago. Yesterday, clueless and curious, she walked right up to Bug, and stuck her nose at his head three times, Bug with his beak ready to chomp her tender pink nose. The point is, Sasha now loves everyone.
Bug, on the other hand, is a bit more selective. He prefers his two humans, and the companionship of our birdsitter. Occasionally, he will swoop down on the shoulder of a brown-haired female friend, who tend to shreik a little and shrug him off in a panic. Bug never seems to be offended by it, though.
Besides biting his two humans, SSW has bitten those who stick their hands near his cage or near him while he's perching on one of his humans: my brother, my friend John, the bird sitter (who was nonplussed). He has yet to land on any other person with blond hair besides me. Maybe we just have brown-haired friends?
It's late fall and this means fleece-typed sweaters are out of the cedar chest. Bug's now thinking of destroying the zipper pull as I type this. I am listening to Rose Polenzani's new cd, http://www.rosepolenzani.com/, off her website. The bird likes the harmonica and percussion, quietly matching his chirp to the beat, but randomly.
It's almost dinner time, and after that, movie time, the cat next to me on the couch. She's melting away as she ages, muscles disappearing, arthritis rising. She will purr and purr on the couch, and I look at her, seeing a different cat than the one I have had over these last 17 years. What ever disrepair aging has brought her, she is content to be the new her. Stranger, sweeter, loving--
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