Slugs and bulldogs

Writing about my cats is easy. As cats, they have no expectation of privacy, so I can tell everyone their dark, dark secrets. They’re soft and cuddly, and have a built-in audience, slightly smaller than the audience for dogs, slightly more than the audience for other people’s children. And, since I spend an inordinately unhealthy amount of time with them, I know my cats’ personalities better than I understand my own. My cats can’t surprise me, but I often surprise myself.

That being said, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Jinx and Indy on the bed. Indy wonders what I am doing with that black thing above his head.

Jinx is the larger, black cat. It’s no optical illusion. She’s big. She got up to about 19 pounds, but with a very relaxed diet regimen, we got her to about 16. She’s got huge paws and a huge head, and I believe if we exercised her everyday, we’d probably get her to about 14 pounds, but no smaller. She’s just a big cat.

She jumps, scared, at everything, and walks around the apartment as if she suspects that something will pop out and attack her. The casual observer might think that this has to do with the much more energetic grey cat, Indy. And Indy does actually pop out and jump over Jinx every now and then. But Jinx is a year-and-a-half older than Indy, and she did her creeping and reflexive jumping long before Indy. She’s just a very nervous cat.

Odd, to me, is that she’s friendlier. She hangs out with people and tolerates touching. Indy takes a little bit of time to warm up to strangers in the house. He runs under the bed for a few minutes to make sure that no one else is coming in, then cautiously circumnavigates the room where the strangers are. Eventually, he’ll come up and sniff them. His major sticking point is that he thinks that hands at his level are play-toys, and he’ll eventually start to swat at at anyone who reaches down to him enough. He’s not aggressive though, and his initial swats are without claws. Of course, being a little boy, I will tend to continue to taunt him and evade his swats, so he’ll get riled up and eventually go into that grab with front paws, bite, and rabbit-kick with claws-out back paws thing that cats like to do. My hands and arms are a testament to his perseverance. Because I play with him this way, he does assume that all humans play this way. You’ve been warned.

Jinx plays less often, but she’s always interested in swinging strings and thrown small objects. Both our cats fetch. They will bring back the toy mice or plastic rings that we throw, more or less to our feet, but with random longevity. If Indy is somehow preoccupied, Jinx will fetch for several minutes, but if your throw lands short and is too close to Jinx, she considers the game over; she likes long-distance throws. Once Indy gets involved in anyway, again, the game is over. If Indy is fetching, he usually gets bored faster but has a much faster turn-around time. He can fetch 3 or 4 times in a minute, whereas Jinx usually takes a full minute to chase, then stalk, then pick up, then make sure no one is going to pop out and scare the bejeezus out of her, then jog back, then look around again to make sure that no one is going to pop out and scare the bejeezus out of her, then drop the object and meow that it’s our turn again.

Throw the object into something, and you can really see the difference in their personalities (felinalities?). Indy will jump in or at the object with gusto, absolutely no fear, but if the object isn’t readily available, Indy gives up after a few seconds, and returns, looking expectantly at the thrower. You can deny that you have the object, but Indy doesn’t believe you. Jinx, however, will run up to the place where the object landed and begin to do some detective work. She crouch before the box or chair or where ever the object is hidden, and, with ears back, peer over the edge to see if she can see the object. She’ll pace around the area, checking things from multiple angles. She’ll sniff the air to attempt to catch a whiff of it. It’s highly amusing. If she can’t find it, she will give up several minutes, and usually sit in the box or chair or where ever, and begin to do a sing-song meow that reminds me of throat singing, because it resonates and sounds like she’s trilling.

The photo above shows the two cats in a rare moment of proximity where they are not licking each other or wrestling. They don’t fight that often; although, my wife insists that any time they do is too much. But a couple of times a day, Indy will go up to Jinx and start licking her. Jinx licks back. They do this in an increasingly aggressive way, giving each other dirty looks. I find it extremely amusing to see aggressive licking. It reminds me of two people giving each other increasingly nasty backhanded compliments. If one of the two doesn’t back off, they’ll begin to wrestle. This will end relatively quickly, and the worst that happens is that Indy gets a clump of Jinx’s hair stuck into his mouth. Jinx sheds like mad, and I assume that she uses her shedding ability as an analog to the quills on a porcupine.

As noted, Indy usually goes up to Jinx to start the licking fight, but I’ve seen Jinx go over to Indy and just smack him in the face. She also has this one move where she rears back, hunched on her hind legs and one front paw lifted, and thump rapidly on Indy’s side, one-two-three thumps. I find that one hilarious. These will usually regress into quick wrestling matches and then guttural grows and a pathetic high-pitched meow from Indy. He’s clearly dominant in these situations, but it reminds me of Michael Jackson in the “Bad,” video yelling, “You ain’t bad; you ain’t nothin’!” Jinx finds it convincing, and will roll on her side in a submissive position. Indy, clearly unschooled in the etiquette of catfights, will jump on her. They’ll roll around with Jinx making an awful screech which actually scares both cats (and any humans in the area), and they’ll jump off each other with that embarrassed, “I don’t know what you’re looking at” position house cats are so good at assuming.

I do spend too much time with these furballs, but they amuse me endlessly.