An essay I wrote a few years ago.
The
Fraidy Cat
Out in the country, down by the
lake, is no place for a fraidy cat. Yet here I find myself, surrounded by more
creeping, crawling, flying, hopping, web-spinning creatures than ever slithered
across the imagination of a Hollywood horror maven.
They’re everywhere: wasps at the
window, ants in the pantry, beetles in the bathroom, gnats in the knickknacks. And
nowhere, it seems, is unsuitable for spiders. They loaf in the lavatory, hunt
in the hallway, clamber in the closet—you name it, they’ve been there.
I was discussing the unbearableness
of this situation with Kismet and Roswell, my feline daughters, and posed what
I believed to be a perfectly reasonable solution. “You are predators,” I
reminded them. “Go ye therefore and eat bugs.” They both gave me a look of
scathing disdain (if you have a cat, you know the look) and proceeded to get on
with the terribly important business of lounging about in a regal fashion.
It’s not that they don’t hunt, of
course. Kismet proudly brings me whatever rodent is in season. I thank her
sweetly and return same to the Great Outdoors before too much harm
results. Roswell, on the other hand,
prefers grasshoppers. She won’t eat them, naturally, just brings them inside to
madly chase. I have tried to convey to her that my suggestion was meant to
result in fewer bugs in the house, not more. She doesn’t care, being a
cat.
So, I had given up expecting my
darlings to be of any use whatever in protecting me from the ongoing invasion
of things-with-too-many-legs. I decided to let sleeping cats lie and Kismet was
doing just that on her favorite pillow, my stomach. She opened her eyes when I
scratched her head, blinked lazily at me, then fixed her gaze on a point high
above, at ceiling level. I watched her big green eyes drift slowly down, down,
down . . . when the sudden realization that there’s only one thing that wafts
vertically downwards like that had me shoving her off and rolling aside just
before the spider landed in bed. It was
brown and spindly-legged—the most dangerous kind. I dispatched it quickly, then
grabbed Kismet up in a grateful hug. “You saved me from a brown recluse,
Kizzie!”
Her look (you know the one) seemed
to say, “Of course, what else?”
Not to be outdone, Roswell, some
weeks later, hopped up next to me on the bed for a nap—and continued
hop-hop-hopping across the quilt in full predator mode, leading me to
hop-hop-hop out of the way of a large and shaggy spider. When we were all
through hopping (the spider, permanently) I exclaimed to my savior, “Rozzie,
you do care!”
To which she replied with a look
(yes, that one) plainly saying, “Care about what?”
Those two don’t fool me anymore. I know they’re my guardian angels. They just save their heroics for when it counts: when they feel like it.
Those two don’t fool me anymore. I know they’re my guardian angels. They just save their heroics for when it counts: when they feel like it.
