Portrait of a cat

I’m working on a real post, but it’s going to require some more field research than I had anticipated…so here’s a cheap post about my cat!

Here she is. Her name was very nearly Soap, Stegosaurus, or Cow. But instead her name is Pixel.

It’s actually Pixel Cowbell Smidget Cowbell. Because she had a fever, and there was only one cure.

Majestic. When I went to the animal shelter, I found her in the group play room, hiding in a carpet-covered cylinder. She had a ridiculous freckle nose. She had a silly little nubbin of a tail. She had a look on her face that cried, “Get me the hell away from these idiots.” It was love at first sight.

Yep, that was the look.

One of the chief reasons I wanted to get my own place was to get a cat. On my lunch hour I brought a cat carrier to the animal shelter, they inserted the kitty, and I brought her home. I was SO EXCITED. I got home, welcomed as-yet-nameless kitty to my apartment, and opened the cat carrier. She walked out cautiously, one paw after another. Then she kept coming. Too much cat came out of that carrier. One tail too much, to be exact.

I was HORRIFIED, and immediately called the shelter. “I–THINK–YOU–GAVE ME–THE–WRONG–CAT” I said as calmly as I could. “Oh really? What makes you think that?” Listen. I chose the one cat with a distinguishing feature. It is not that hard to pick her out of the lineup. “Well, we don’t see one with no tail, are you sure you don’t have the right one?” “YES I’M FUCKING SURE.” I brought tailful kitty back, trying to assuage my guilt for introducing a sweet cat to freedom only to take it away immediately by telling him, “You’re a nice cat. You have a lovely long tail. No one will be able to resist you.” At the shelter, the nice people did find the kitty with no tail and I took her home, crying all the way.

But all’s well that ends well. She is a silly cat. She is painfully shy until she is comfortable around you, and then she won’t shut the hell up. And she’ll probably fart on you. She has some weird quirks, like demanding that you slap her in the backend until your hands go numb. Every single night she gets lost when I go to bed, and wanders around the house crying in the dark until I shout, “Pixel! I’m in bed you dumb fatty! Same place as last night!”

She likes to help me arrange my drawers and re-purposes them for better uses.

She watches her figure…

…watches it expand.

She always poses prettily for the camera.

She’s a good study buddy.

And a good nap buddy.

She’s pretty much me, in feline form. Which, let’s be honest, it’s pretty much just me.