- Joined
- Jul 19, 2019
- Messages
- 4
- Purraise
- 9
I’ve been hooked on everything. Name the drug or chemical, I’ve done it, and I know what it looks like when someone has discovered that one thing which will always make them feel better…and our cats, those guys we love and depend on, are the biggest junkies you will ever meet. I'm lucky in that I get to live with the single coolest, hardened, feral female cat you could ever meet that turned inexorably into a complete rub junkie.
I have a garden I built in my back yard—pavers, trees, plants, wicker—and I hung this finch-feeder, you know, the long cylindrical ones that you fill with black seeds that get bombarded by Gold Finches and House Finches. I thought I had hanged it high enough. I’m 6’2” and the feeder hung right in my face, but one morning I’m in the wicker chair, enjoying my tea, and Harikari, that’s her name, a young, BIG, medium-haired red tabby—an anomaly if you know anything about red tabbies; they’re almost always male—was camped out directly under the feeder, looking straight up at it. And she wasn’t even doing that clicking thing with her jaw, or violently swishing her tail. She just sat there, watching, eyeballing, as they do, as the finches accumulated on the feeder. I got to feeling kind of uneasy and almost stood up to make everyone scatter, diffusing the situation, but I was too late. She never even wiggled her backside the way they do before they jump. One moment, I’m enjoying my English Breakfast, and the next, Harikari has leapt straight up over five feet and, with one paw, plucked a Gold Finch halfway up the side of the feeder, like an NFL prospect at the Combine jumping and reaching during the vertical leap test. The finch never made a sound as Harikari then squatted under the feeder and devoured everything but two tail feathers, all the while staring me down with that evil cat eye, daring me to stop her.
Took me two whole years before Harikari would even let me touch her when I fed her, but then, only a month after I gave her that first back rub—you know the one, right in front of the tail with the ass straight up in the air—until she was splayed out on her side in front of my back door before every feeding, demanding that I stoop and scratch her back for a few minutes, all the while purring like she never knew she could. And this from a cat that rocketed across the street like a scud missile, knocking a rival female stray almost ten feet across gravel into the side of a house. Never saw a cat run away so fast, Harikari right on her ass.
But they love their rubs.
I have a garden I built in my back yard—pavers, trees, plants, wicker—and I hung this finch-feeder, you know, the long cylindrical ones that you fill with black seeds that get bombarded by Gold Finches and House Finches. I thought I had hanged it high enough. I’m 6’2” and the feeder hung right in my face, but one morning I’m in the wicker chair, enjoying my tea, and Harikari, that’s her name, a young, BIG, medium-haired red tabby—an anomaly if you know anything about red tabbies; they’re almost always male—was camped out directly under the feeder, looking straight up at it. And she wasn’t even doing that clicking thing with her jaw, or violently swishing her tail. She just sat there, watching, eyeballing, as they do, as the finches accumulated on the feeder. I got to feeling kind of uneasy and almost stood up to make everyone scatter, diffusing the situation, but I was too late. She never even wiggled her backside the way they do before they jump. One moment, I’m enjoying my English Breakfast, and the next, Harikari has leapt straight up over five feet and, with one paw, plucked a Gold Finch halfway up the side of the feeder, like an NFL prospect at the Combine jumping and reaching during the vertical leap test. The finch never made a sound as Harikari then squatted under the feeder and devoured everything but two tail feathers, all the while staring me down with that evil cat eye, daring me to stop her.
Took me two whole years before Harikari would even let me touch her when I fed her, but then, only a month after I gave her that first back rub—you know the one, right in front of the tail with the ass straight up in the air—until she was splayed out on her side in front of my back door before every feeding, demanding that I stoop and scratch her back for a few minutes, all the while purring like she never knew she could. And this from a cat that rocketed across the street like a scud missile, knocking a rival female stray almost ten feet across gravel into the side of a house. Never saw a cat run away so fast, Harikari right on her ass.
But they love their rubs.
what a story, and what a cat! 
