Day 29 of 365: Scaredy Cats

This will be a post about cats.  You have been forewarned.

Everyone says their cats are special.   And that's perfectly okay.  Our cats are special to us, so, like a parent thinks their kid is amazing and unique, we think the same about our cats.

But, the same way some kids eat their crayons or get sent to the principal's office, some cats are just not that great.

I've had friends talk up their cats, telling me how great and "not like a stereotypical cat at all," only to have the cats behave exactly like stereotypical cats.

I adore my two boys: my two rescues from the ARL in Boston.  I love how sweet and social they are, even to strangers, and I love how they act like brothers,  even though they were adopted two years apart.  I would definitely like to think that I'm the equivalent of the mom whose "wonderful kids" are actually decent, making honor roll and volunteering at a nursing home, but I could very well be the mom who loses her mind at parent-teacher confrences because, "how DARE they say my son acts up!"

This is a long walk for a short drink of water, but what I'm trying to say is that cat talk -- much like children talk -- is almost never as interesting to the outside world than it is to you.  Unless the person is a crazy cat person, too.  And even then, there are limits.

So, if you are not a crazy cat person, this is where the entry ends for you.  For the nuts who can haz cheezburger now plz, continue on.

Cut to my cats and the new house.  The boys have lived their entire lives in small, one-floored apartments.  Suddenly they are given two floors and a basement to call home.  Two floors and a basement with stairs.   And, even with getting used to only one room while the move-in happened, the boys had a tough time acclimating.

My littlest one -- Milo -- would follow me from room to room, crying out in a way that he had since he was a kitten every time I left a room and he didn't know where I had gone.  They would both retreat upstairs and watch the world from the top step, meowing very time we left the top floor.  They skittered at every noise.  They would burst into purrs when they would hear our voices. 

They have slowly been getting braver, but they still are at our heels.  If I am stationery for any length of time, I'll have one, if not both, cats laying down next to me.

In a sense, it's incredibly heartwarming.  Instead of doing the usual "cat" thing of hiding in a new territory until they feel more secure,  they have been turning to us for reassurance.   At the very least, it shows that they trust us to keep them safe.  And it makes the times when they are willing to explore on their own that much more satisfying.

I fully recognize this was a cat equivalent of, "today my son had spaghetti and he got sauce ALL over him!  What a little trickster!"  But, fuck it.  My blog, my stories.