Animals

     “Stormy, do you want a sister?” This is a question I ask my cat on almost a daily basis. She simply looks at me with a seemingly distant stare. It’s as if she is pondering this question for a moment. Then, she resumes with whatever she was doing before I interrupted her: Licking her paws, stretching out on the stone tiles of the kitchen floor, or munching out on her dry food.

     Stormy is the only remaining cat in my home. She has outlived her three foster siblings: Moky, Gypsy, and Bella. Stormy is nine years old in cat years (52 in human years). Like most cats, Stormy is weird, but she comes by it honestly as her human is equally strange, at times.

     Stormy has certain quirks. She loves anything that’s plastic. For example, she enjoys, or rather, she is obsessed with the plastic slats on my horizontal window blinds. She can’t seem to leave them alone. She doesn’t just play with them; she tries to bite them. As a result, a few of the edges of the slats have been repaired with white duct tape. To dissuade her from further curiosity, I made a slim white box that slips over most of the taped slats. I put that on every night after I lower the blinds. During daytime hours, I raise the blinds about 12 inches and bunch them up so that I can slip a white cardboard cylinder over them. Doing that keeps Stormy from playing with and trying to eat the slats.

     Since June, Stormy stares down the hallway for several minutes every day and night. This is especially creepy at night. A few nights ago, she was so mesmerized by whatever she saw that I could not persuade her to look at me or come to me when I called her name. About 20 minutes later, after I walked into the kitchen to tend to my steeping tea, she finally jumped down from her chair and head-bumped my leg. Then, she slowly walked toward the hallway and stared, once again, toward the front door (at the end of the hallway). She wasn’t staring at the door; she was staring at something on the wall or near the wall.

     I turned the hallway light on and stared down the hall, in the direction she was looking. I couldn’t see anything. At one point, Stormy was startled when I inadvertently made a noise. Ordinarily, I would look more closely at whatever she stares at because, in all likelihood, whatever it is is probably a bug or a spider. However, when she was spooked, I thought better of venturing into the hallway to look for the so-called critter. I still have no idea what it was that she was staring at, and she has not had that same fascination since that one night. She does, however, still stare down the hallway. During the day, she lies on the floor in the hallway and stares toward the front door and stairway to the second floor.

     Perhaps, one day, I’ll discover the reason for her stares. Hopefully, it won’t result in scares.

     I know she will not be pleased when I have to be away for a few days or weeks. She’s not a people-cat; she loves me, and that’s about it. She’s afraid of the doorbell and whoever it is that stands outside my door. She’s not crazy about my friend who cat-sits while I’m away, but she is kind of used to her. Since my friend is the one who sets out the food, Stormy knows that that’s the go-to-person when she is hungry. I suppose, in the future, I’ll get another cat, but right now, Stormy and I are content to be in the company of each other.