The Fraidy Cat

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.