“Love me!” she screams. And we do.

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

Drusilla is visibly doing better every day. Her wound is half the size it was on Sunday and she eats loads – much more than the other cats because, of course, she is growing fast and needs twice a day food, antibiotics and healing ointment. Her bones are no longer showing through.

She is also increasingly more kittenish every day. Very, very naughty. She likes getting stuck behind the dresser drawers, managing to do so by entering a gap behind them no wider than a few centimetres. She is obviously a shapeshifter.

Drusilla also likes the hot iron but to date we have managed to avoid her playing with it. She is horrified that we take showers, expressing vocal concern that we are risking total annihilation. She hates all other cats because they scare her. She wants to eat the birds – our cockatiels – and considers us unreasonable in that regard.

She would like to try a terrapin, they look crunchy. She enjoys sitting on top of the tropical tank in which small portions of brightly-coloured food swim, teasing her. She has yet to find out how to get the dispenser to work, as tapping on the side with her paws has yet to yield results. And she hasn’t once asked to go outside as she’s had quite enough of that for the time being. Inside is a Good Place with Kind People and No Sky. It is consistently warmer and safer. That said, she is astonished when looking out the back bedroom window. She wonders at the Green and Brown Things which are so very tall, and thinks she may one day like to climb them. She has food twice a day but she would like more and has no suspicion that it contains medicine. Indeed, she sees the opening of the pill bottle as the sign that feeding is about to commence. She does not connect the bottle to the food, only the sound.

Drusilla knows she is beautiful and is, in fact, the most important creature in the entire universe and must be attended to all the time. Especially when I am trying to use the computer. She likes toes and does not understand why her new pets shout when she plays with them. She enjoys using her vocal cords, which have remarkable range and sophistication. Spitting is an effective way of telling other cats she wishes them to leave the room she has just entered with them asleep in it. She likes to be most active when the rest of the household goes to bed and the lights are turned off. Carpet is great for testing the sharpness of her claws but, again, her pets are unreasonable in making big noises whenever she makes use of that which is there exclusively for her benefit and use.

She never thinks of the Other Place or the unreliable pets she had before, and will likely never think of it or them again. There is only the moment, and the moment involves pleasure, perceived necessity or irritation. Nothing else.

categories: animals