At some point over the Holidays, Michael and I were blessed with a new cat. It appeared to us on the stairway of our rowhouse and did its kitty thing of rolling over on the ground and rubbing against things to show us how adorable and loveable it was.

I just wanted to feed it, but Michael insisted we bring it inside. Inside our apartment. Where we have another cat. Things were going well until the new kitty starting hissing and yowling at Inari, who was mostly curious about the other cat, until it turned aggressive.

Well, we separated them and investigated new kitty to see if we could tell gender or whether it was homeless. The jury is still out. It is a male kitty – but he’s been neutered. His fur is thick and not particularly kempt, but not matty. His ears aren’t torn up like most outside cats, he doesn’t appear to be starving. He also has particular kitty habits, like Inari. He’s not particularly aggressive towards people, he vocalizes a lot, he uses his paws as hands to eat his wet food. It makes him seem like he belongs to another family. He’s also only outside in the evenings… or maybe that’s just when he shows up at our door. But he has no collar.

Well, we let him back outside because we thought he might belong to someone. He climbed up on a shed next door and watched us leave our apartment in our car. Every couple days now, he shows up. The other night, Michael walked to the liquor store and the cat was waiting for him when he got back. Twice now, I’ve come home from work and found him sitting on the stoop, waiting for me. Either someone has lost him, or left him, or he’s just a pig with a second dinner. I can’t tell. I hope it’s the last one.

Inari is jealous of the attention the new kitty gets. She should be on her best behavior, lest she be replaced.

I don’t mean picking up a paper and reading through the classifieds. I mean, we studied advertisements, how they appeal to the audience, what advertisers are really selling us. I guess those skills come in useful everywhere when you’re trying to sort out what’s credible and what’s bologna.

But they also come in useful for reading things into something nonsensical. For example, this Halloween decoration a neighbor places outside every year.

You will notice that there is a cat peeking out from a jack-o-lantern, there is a spider looped around the cat’s paw like a yo-yo and the letters RIP, known to stand for Rest In Peace float above the cat.

Well, Michael and I decided that since the cat is supposed to be dead (given RIP), it’s a zombie cat. Somehow this cat was Resurrected In a Pumpkin. The toothsome spider is the cat’s right-hand man, probably he had something to do with resurrecting the cat. Spiders are crafty.

Anyway, watch out for resurrected cats this Halloween. And stay the hell away from jack-o-lanterns, as they are being used by spiders to resurrect cats, and those cats will eat your brains because that’s what zombies do. In fact, maybe the smartest thing to do is stay inside with a bowl of candy and some apple cider and just try to forget about how spiders are planning to take over the world by resurrecting cats, who are known enemies of mankind.

Edit: I wrote this entry last weekend. As it turns out, our cat has rapidly become our nemesis overnight. Michael replaced her silica litter with pine litter the other night. I feel it necessary to note here that I disagreed with getting new litter, but told Michael he could do whatever he wanted to, so long as he handled the consequences (I only note this because I have a little, bitter ego). She has used this new litter for pooping but apparently is angry enough about the litter switch to pee elsewhere. First, she peed in the living room last night. I attributed it to her being unable to reach her box at the time since I was in the shower and the door was closed to keep steam from damaging the property.

However, this morning she pulled a pair of my jeans into bed and peed on them IN THE BED, ON TOP OF ME. So our blanket is full of cat pee, it soaked through to our bed, she peed on my jeans AND she peed on me. I woke up and chased her around the house, caught her to give her a bath (since she pees all over her hindquarters) and then had to shower myself again. She is currently locked in the bathroom for the day. At least then she can only pee in a small area and may even be tempted to use her box. In any case, she’ll get her damn silica litter back, even though it costs twice as much as the pine litter (the original impetus for Michael to switch litter was cost, of course). Evil cat.

We frequently get into situations where we’re annoying poor Inari: trying to snuggle with her, trying to pat her head, trying to make eye contact with her, etc. This frequently leads to me grabbing her and petting her while she meows in protest, because I am Just That Sort of Person. As you might imagine, this occasionally leads to full-on Kitty Warfare, in which Inari decides that I need to be educated in the matter of cat-handling by way of having my eyes clawed out.

During one evening of particularly violent Kitty Warfare, Kara and I started singing to the cat in an effort to calm her down. It did not, generally speaking, go well — until we started singing “Hats for Clowns” from this Weebl and Bob cartoon. (To answer your question: No, I have no idea.)

The effect on Inari was nothing short of remarkable — she lay down on me and relaxed. Since then, we’ve been singing the song to her whenever she gets worked up, and it seems to calm her down.

Now, rational person that I imagine myself to be, I did not assume that the song itself was responsible for the effect. Surely it was just some particular aspect of the way we sang that particular song, or the way I held her while we sang that particular song, or some such unknown variable.

So last night we got into Kitty Warfare again. Kara happened to be using her laptop at the time, and she put on the extended “Hats for Clowns” mix from this site. Inari curled up on my chest, closed her eyes and started purring — the same effect, even though this time there was instrumentation with the vocals, and Weebl was singing, not us. After a couple of minutes, Kara stopped the music, and the cat immediately sat up and looked at Kara and her laptop. As Kara put it, it was as though she was saying “What happened to my jam?” When the music started again, down the cat went again. After a few minutes she was asleep.

So that’s pretty much the story. Apparently our cat finds “Hats for Clowns” incredibly relaxing. I don’t know how or why — I don’t usually think of music appreciation as extending to other members of the animal kingdom. I suppose the next thing to do is to expose additional cats to “Hats for Clowns” and study the effects. If you would like to exploit your cat for science, please do so and post a comment.

Incidentally, Kara believes that Inari is also partial to early Dylan, though I am not yet convinced.

Super Cat

Michael has demanded I post this picture of Inari in the blog. Picture this thing nudging you awake in the morning and try not to be a little terrified.

We’ve been getting a lot of bugs in the house lately – big old flies, little bitty wasps… Inari has been taking care of most of them. She catches the flies and bats them around. When they stop moving, she nudges them with her paw gently and when they start moving she leaps onto them, taking them into her mouth and then spitting them out. The other night she let a fly crawl under a box in the living room just long enough for it to believe it was safe, before she knocked the whole box over, took the fly in her mouth and then ran off with it. If our cat was a human, she would be terrifying. I can picture her raping and pillaging entire villages, just to watch people squirm. Luckily, she’s a cat and the most damage she can do is kill bugs that we don’t want in our house, anyway.

Last night we got a new and totally awesome vacuum cleaner. The cat was terrified of it, and yet drawn to it. My first cat was scared of vacuum cleaners but would eventually curl up on a chair in a safe room and sleep. Inari follows the vacuum cleaner, keeping her distance. I tried to pet her and she shook me off with a glare. Obviously, she needed her full attention on the intruder.

I try to carry Inari onto our balcony every day. We like to watch birds together. She is used to this activity and generally is well behaved. She knows that the second she misbehaves or just gets frightened, I will take her inside. I know she knows this because she will attempt to move briefly and then sit back down on her own. I don’t have to warn her vocally or anything. Eventually, though, something is just too exciting and she’ll get fussy. Or a human being will walk by and she will become terrified. Inside we go.

I think cats are a little bit evil, which is all the more reason to keep them on your side. But if I stopped feeding Inari, I don’t doubt that she would eat my ears while I sleep.

I could go on and on about how she is the most awesome cat ever to grace the planet. But instead, I bring you pictures of her in her birthday present – an Ikea pet bed.

Vicious Inari

Inari in her Bed