Cat Tail

What! Another picture of some nameless fool’s cat? Well, Saudi is a bit special. Of course he is special to me, my constant companion. Very demanding for a cat.

But, what is interesting about my pal, Saudi, is where he came from. My step-son, Jon, spent two years in Saudi Arabia in the town of Riyadh as a teacher. Fluent in their language, he was actually teaching English to Saudi bureaucrats. Well, he got along OK there, but we could tell that he was still pretty lonely.

One day he discovered a rather mangy little kitten trying desperately to get into a dumpster in the alley by his apartment. Jon has a theory about the evolution of Saudi street cats. He believes that only cats with long enough legs to get into a dumpster survive. This has bred a lot of long legged cats.

Anyway, Jon took the little guy home, cleaned him up and had all the veterinary things done to him. (Ouch!). His name at that time was Eyeball, in honor of the street he was found by. After being Jon’s companion for a year or so, Jon’s contract was up. For a guy who generally frowns on emotional attachments of any kind, he was completely hooked into Eyeball. He must have been, for when we picked him up at the O’Hare airport, included in his baggage was a cat carrier covered in stickers and labels and documents. Inside, of course, was one mightily pissed off cat.

After staying with us for a few weeks, Jon decided to move to another town. Since his circumstances were, at best, a little unclear, it was mutually decided that Eyeball would stay with us. We already had two cats and a dog, so it seemed like it would be fine. I mean, after all, how much trouble could one more cat be?

HA! The first thing we did was name him Saudi. Eyeball just wouldn’t do. So Jon departed and we were left with integrating Saudi into our lives. My experience with cats is that they are pretty fickle. If you become the “food guy” or the “cleans the pooh box guy”, you are pretty much guaranteed at least some kind of relationship with a cat. Not so with Saudi. For almost a month, he would hide in my wife’s office, only sneaking out late at might to eat and do his business. Any other approach was met with a snarling, hissing shredding of whatever appendage was put near him. I still have scars from those early days.

We spent literally hours getting mauled by this guy, trying to convince him that we could all get along. Day after day, I would don my work gloves and a long sleeve shirt and spend some time “playing” with Saudi.

While this experiment is going on with the humans, our reigning gang of cats and dog were also sizing him up. Rosie, our wonderful Chow / Retriever mix was pretty disgusted. She has an excellent relationship with our other two cats and probably grew pretty tired of getting her snout scratched whenever she approached him.

The other cats chose, in large part, to ignore him. Buffy, our 18 year old tabby (since deceased) really didn’t care what her relationship was. At 18, her world pretty much consisted of sleeping, eating, pooping and peeing. All over the house. But that is another story. Unix, our black stray, was the pretty passive guy who generally could get along with anyone or anything. No so with Saudi. You see, Unix was de-clawed long ago. There was a time when policy was “If there is a cat in this house, he will be de-clawed”. I don’t know that I was totally on board with this policy, but in such matters, I defer to my wife. Well, part of the deal with Jon was that if we kept Saudi, we would not de-claw him. Actually, for all his viciousness, he was not really destructive. This did upset the balance of power, however. Unix, quite rightly, assumed he would remain as top cat. Saudi had no such aspirations, but wasn’t getting with the program. Another nose scratched.

Slowly, very slowly, however, things began to improve. One day, he finally allowed me to pick him up without the need for protective armor. There was suddenly no guarantee of a fight whenever he entered the room and one of the others were already there.

Why have I rambled on so about this cat? Well, as I said, he is pretty much my constant companion. Unix has actually gotten a little distant from me, gravitating towards my wife after my betrayal.

But the moral here is actually pretty spiritual in nature. You see, I am an impatient person. It is a definite character defect. It has made me less of a man and less of a member of our human community. I believe in a Higher Power, God, if you will. I believe I can ask for help in prayer. I believe that answers and insights can be given. I guess I thought that by asking for help with my impatience, I expected that I would be granted this gift, like some spoiled child at Christmas. But my Higher Power has a sense of humor. Instead of granting me patience, he put Saudi in my life.