El Gato Diabolico

I have inherited a cat. Not your run-of-the-mill type feline, mind you. I’ve inherited an evil cat.

Back in the fall when the deal was still in the making, the cat appeared innocent enough, all rural-looking and smelling daisies.

But now that I have moved in, the cat has lifted the veil of pretense, and is showing his true colors. All day long, he darts on me his evil eye contemptuously, as if I were a mere annoyance in his field of vision (he has only one evil eye, the left one; the right one is regular.) Sometimes I feel compelled to apologize for my presence.

I will be honest with you. At first, I attempted to buy his love with the most expensive tiny tins of gourmet cat food, and when that failed miserably, I resorted to tuna crumbs which Monsieur Boyfriend tried to steal for himself. Here is the thing though: that cat can’t be bought. He likes the cheap stuff. And lots of it too. That cat is FAT.

Zora the housekeeper mentioned the other day that he should convert to Islam and observe Ramadan. I tend to concur.

Definitely not the type of cat you carry around under one arm. It takes two. With muscles.

Obviously love has been previously purchased from the cat with quantity. It reflects in the protruding belly of the beast.

Now in all fairness, unbeknown to me, in South of France, a fair amount of lard around one’s bones may come in handy during the snow storms (I kid you not.)  During the last one, Evil Cat seemed completely unaffected by the dreary weather conditions and guarded the house perimeter, moving like a wild animal on the prowl…

The irregularity of the hair you may notice on the above photograph derives from Monsieur Boyfriend’s idea of a haircut. He has promised time and time again not to approach the animal with a pair of scissors anymore but I’ve caught him red-handed a few times. My theory behind the cat’s troubled soul is that he has long been ostracized by the South of France feline population because of his unbeseeming  hair appearance.

This shunning has resulted in a fear of abandonment which materializes itself in the weirdest possible ways. When you want to take a bath…

The cat beats you to the tub. The evilness part comes in play when…

He makes a point of licking his nether regions right where your bottom would be moments later.

And try to brush your teeth…

With a cat in the basin. Kind of difficult to circumvent, wouldn’t you say?

If you watch TV, he lies on the mantel, eyeballing you from above, with a face that tells you he disapproves of your choice of program.

The cat has also claimed the bed.

I am lucky if I manage to have a little room on my pillow at night.

And he has claims on the car too.

Since humans, on top of dexterous opposable thumbs, are supposed to have slightly more cerebral activity than Birman Cats (Myanmar Cats presently), I concocted a plan designed to give us all some space: the installation of a cat door big enough to accommodate all his extra pounds. Monsieur boyfriend and I waited with bated breath for the cat to make his first exit. And we waited. And we waited.

Let me mention at this juncture that this cat’s means of egress used to be limited to windows… which his human servants had to open and close for him 10,000 times a day, human servants beaten into hurried submission by the constant scratching at the glass. So where was I? Ah yes, so we waited. We baited. We shoved through the hole. We cajoled. We faked meeow on the other side of the cat door… To no avail.

He now waits in front of it. Annoyed-looking. Displaying his usual typical crunchy mood and expecting us now to get on all fours and push the flap open because God forbid he should make any effort with his precious noggin. Intellectual or physical.

I have pretty much given up. My dog will join us in three weeks and eat Evil Cat anyway. Or it will be the other way around. It will probably be the other way around. At any rate, I’m shitting with y’all people. That cat may have failed rocket science in school, but I do like him a lot. He is an acquired taste. And he has redeeming qualities. Let me rephrase that: he has one redeeming quality. I just don’t get tired of waking up to that spectacle every morning…