Loki

Seven years ago, a skinny gray cat appeared in our yard.  He rushed from bird to lizard to rustling plant, not focusing on any single thing, except for our feral cat, Mommy, the mother of all but one of our house cats.  Rudely, he nosed her out of her food dish, he appropriated her favorite sleeping shelter, and plopped down in the middle of every one of her sacred sunny spots.  He duplicated her every move.  Yet, despite the invasiveness of his actions, the young gray cat seemed not so much aggressive as desperate to belong.

In the evenings we were accustomed to Mommy watching us through the screen of our sliding glass door, as if watching us watch TV were her TV.  Her sons Bruce and Skid mark would join her from inside the house. She would rub against the screen and purr. Though both were huge, 5-year-old, male cats, Bruce and Skidmark would wo-ow in response.  It was an evening ritual we all enjoyed. Now, only the gray cat appeared at the screen door in the evenings. Mommy had taken to hiding and came out only at meal times.  Although she had lived in our yard for five years and had earned the right of first choice, we discovered she was sleeping in her second favorite shelter. For her sake, Tom and I trapped the gray nuisance and took him to the vet to be vaccinated and neutered.  Like many other cats that had come through our yard, we planned to socialize him and find him a home.

As was our custom, we confined the gray cat in the guest bath so he could get used to us, but this little cat didn’t need that seclusion.  He purred, head butted, rubbed our legs. If either of us looked at him for more than a second, he spoke in a squeaky, high-pitched “Eee-eek!” He was elated to be inside. He skipped phase one of our plan and we transferred him to phase two—the guest bedroom.  There he could get used to the noises in the house. He’d have more room.  It would be easier for us to visit him.  Best of all, we would switch the regular bedroom door for a screen door so he and our other cats could converse.

Tom and I were proud of ourselves for having thought to replace the bedroom door with a screen door when we socialized strays. To get a new cat used to the resident cats in a home, every set of instructions we found on the internet recommended stacking baby gates in the doorway of a spare room.  But three baby gates did not equal the height of one door and you had to block the last bit of space at the top with some kind of material a cat couldn’t claw through.  Plus, baby gates were hard to remove and put back when you needed to go in and out of the room yourself.  When Tom and I were socializing felines, we each went in and out two to three times a day. Thus the screen door was a real triumph for us, something we thought set us apart as clever.

We switched the doors, deposited the gray cat in the bedroom and played with him a while. He was so friendly—and he purred like a freight train. We were sure there was a home for him somewhere. We left him in the room and went down the hall to the den, hoping our cats would discover him.  We expected some hissing, but the screen door would keep the newcomer safely separated from our gang of house cats. We plopped down on the sofa. Mommy was at her post, rubbing the screen and conversing with her sons.  Tom reached for the TV remote and we were just beginning our usual slightly contentious discussion about what to watch when we heard, “Eee-eek!” The gray kitty was standing right in front of us.  Apparently, he knew how to open screen doors. So much for us being clever.

In the weeks that followed, we closed every cabinet door and drawer in our house several times daily. Hisses resounded from hidden cavities we didn’t know existed in our home, as our cats tried to escape the gray cat the same way their mother had. He pawed them from behind and when they turned to complain, he acted like he’d been doing something else. He nudged them out of their sunny spots.  He moved from food bowl to food bowl to see whether anybody had something better than he did, but because he was smart, the gray cat was careful not to annoy Bruce or Chicago, our two very large cats.  In fact, this new cat’s saving grace was his intelligence. He was trainable. We were already feeding Bruce in Tom’s office  because he had food allergies and it was necessary to keep him  away from the other cats’ meals.  When we took Bruce down the hall, it was easy to get Loki—the little gray invader had earned his name 12 thousand times over by now— to follow. He quickly learned to eat in the guest bath with the door securely closed. So at mealtime, we ushered Bruce down the hall for his own protection.  Loki traveled the hallway for the sake of the other cats.

Eventually, we found a couple who loved cats and handed Loki off.  Actually we, ourselves, adored Loki, but we thought we were doing the right thing.  Giving him a home where he would get all of the attention instead of a portion of ours seemed like a good thing for such a fun and fun-loving kitty, especially one that was so well-socialized to humans.  Unfortunately,  the couple had him for only 2 or 3 weeks before they returned him to us.  He wouldn’t come out of their closet.  We had told them to go slowly, to put him in a small room and let him get used to their household’s noises—and them—before releasing him.  Despite their good intentions, they’d released him into their home immediately.  Consequently, he’d found his own small place, that closet.  The husband told us, “I can pull him out and hold him on my lap. He purrs and is friendly, but the minute I let go, he runs back to hide and won’t come out.”

Tom and I were leaving the next day for our yearly vacation.  We were dejected. In the previous month we had adopted out four adult cats.  Loki was the last of the four to be returned to us.  We had thought he had such a good chance of adapting.  When we returned from our trip, Loki was still extremely stressed from his failed adoption experience.  Every time anyone came over, he hid for hours and hours, as if he thought we were going to give him away.  When he finally emerged, he walked our hall, whining loudly.  Sometimes he even vomited. We never tried to adopt him out again. His message to us was clear.

Loki’s intelligence heightened his awareness.  Besides making it difficult for him to get over the failed adoption trauma, it gave him a frenetic kind of energy and his jealousy was equipped with radar. Whenever Tom petted another cat, Loki flipped over and squirmed belly-up like a bug that could not right itself.  When he finally grew confident he was staying put in our home, he claimed the space on the corner of the sofa behind Tom’s shoulder. Strategically, this prevented the other cats from approaching Tom from both the back of the sofa and that side. If any cat attempted to approach from the seat of the sofa, or the other side, Loki could quickly step onto Tom’s lap to block.  Checkmate. No Russian genius cat or feline computer program was ever going to beat Loki at this competition for the space in Tom’s lap.

Since then, Loki’s brightness has shown through in a myriad of ways. Whenever I refill the kibble canisters, almost always, a couple of cats insist on trying to get at the food before I shut the lid. The other cats stick their heads in to take a regular-sized bites. Loki, realizing the lid soon will be shutting him out,  dives in quickly, fills his mouth like a chipmunk and takes his huge haul over to a corner to consume it.

One evening, Bruce was due a treat because he had endured an ear cleaning.  I put the treat in a cat dish and set it on the floor for him. Scraper and Skidmark, who regularly stole each other’s food bowls by sticking a paw inside the rim and drawing the bowl away, tried this with Bruce. Bruce’s head was so massive, neither of his brothers could get a paw into the bowl, much less hook the edge of it.  One-by-one our other cats also tried to hook the bowl and failed.  When Loki  arrived, he threaded his entire front leg under Bruce’s neck, curled it around the bowl and swept the food dish out from under Bruce’s head.  I gave Bruce another treat.  After that display of ingenuity, I was not going to rob Loki of his prize.

By far the most entertaining way Loki’s intelligence manifests itself is in his choice of playmates:  he badgers our tiny black cat, Pluff, constantly.  She is swift,  smart, and never disappoints him.  Unfortunately, most of the time she does not register his attention as a compliment, but this is of no consequence to Loki. To him she is the ever-changing, unpredictable and challenging target his intelligence savors.  Fortunately for Pluff, although she is five years Loki’s senior, he cannot touch her in speed. Fortunately for Loki,  to this date, Pluff has chosen escape over retaliation.

Loki’s intelligence, his need to have a home and his persistent badgering of Mommy and of Pluff, that freight train purr—it is no wonder to me that he wiled his way into one of my picture books.  I had thought for a long time to write a story about the odd places my parents often found their cat, Portulacca, sleeping.  I had tried to put the story together several times, but it never quite worked—until one day, in my mind I discovered a tiny gray kitten following Portulacca around my parents’ home.  Everywhere Portulacca settled in for a nap, the kitten found her.  She fled, only to be discovered again, never realizing the little gray nuisance just wanted to settle in and belong.

In the mornings as I prepare to feed all of our cats, our Loki purrs loudly and head butts so frequently I cannot see what I am doing.  I line up food dishes in a way that helps me keep special diets and medications straight.  Loki steps in the empty dishes as if they do not exist.  Telling me he is hungry is his primary mission.  He knocks bottles of veterinary prescriptions to the kitchen floor.  He paws first at Bruce’s food and then at his own as I sit bowl on top of bowl to keep him from grabbing their breakfasts before I can get the two of them down the hall to their  dining rooms.  He supervises me as I set Bruce’s food out and I close that door.  He makes it to his spot before I do, and he tells me I am slow as I set his dish down.  Before I finish with the other cats, Loki is whacking the spring-loaded doorstop to let me know he is ready to be released from confinement.

Such chaos and so much joy, this is Loki. When we tried to place him in another home, we thought we were doing the best thing for him.   Instead, he told us his home was here, and he did the very best thing for us.