Life with a sour puss
Sometimes, I have to look extra hard to find something about which to feel proud. Luckily, I have fairly low standards for what qualifies.
Most people, after having worked more than a year on a challenging endeavor, would require more than a mere purr as reward for their labors. But for me, it was enough.
Sully is, in most ways, a strikingly handsome cat. He has long and shiny black hair and bright yellow eyes. But he also has a perpetual scowl.
If recognition were given for the most continuous disgruntled days, Sully would have a room full of trophies. He’s the Andy Rooney of felines. The Dick Cheney of cats.
But for some reason, his seemingly impenetrable dour mood amuses me and I’m not really sure why. I guess some might take this to mean I’m not very nice. What does it say about a person who finds hilarity in an unhappy cat? Yet it seems adorable much the same way as a small child standing with arms crossed, knees locked, brow furrowed and bottom lip sticking out. Sully forever looks and acts like a Terrible Two who someone’s told ‘No!’
Or it could simply be that I like a challenge, and Sully has provided me that from Day One.
We already had two indoor cats and a dog when Sully claimed our front porch. Although his full domain consisted of a six- or seven-house region, our porch was his base of operations. He was wild and frightened at first, but I’d sit on the step and talk to him while he cautiously ate his dry food. In the early days, my efforts at conversation with the grump were met with hisses (the cat equivalent of cursing), and he’d glare at me suspiciously, ears flattened and back. When winter came, my daughter and I added warm towels and bits of ham to our list of attractions. The ears stopped turning back. The hissing decreased.
Eventually, Sully began worming his way indoors, a development the other cats didn’t like. A long power struggle ensued, finally decided after my clawless cat, Squirt, gained enough weight that he could flatten the snaggle-clawed Sully by dropping onto his back like a cinderblock.
Once Sully accepted his position in the hierarchy of cats, things were better. He began following me from room to room, and seemed smitten with me for a while. It was a brief honeymoon, though. Soon he was back to whapping the dog on the forehead, attempting to swing from Gypsy’s tail whenever it dangled, and refusing to budge from the highchair where Squirt eats his meals.
Sully quickly went from treating me like the love of his life to treating me like his automatic door and can opener. Outside, he was the self-designated wildlife control expert. Inside, he specialized in sour looks and hair relocation.
We entered a frustrating phase. Having Sully around was like having all the expenses and labor of owning a pet with none of the perks. While my other two cats were often so clingy I referred to them as “lap fungus,” Sully rarely gave me the time of day.
And then a month or so back, I was standing at the sink when I noticed a blouse slowly disappearing through the crack beneath my bathroom door. Once it was gone, a black paw appeared, feeling this way and that, hoping to snag something else. From my side, I began handing him things–a sock, a hair band, a belt. When I peeked out at him, his eyes were glowing with mischief rather than wrath.
It’s become our routine. Every morning I shut the door, and he shoves his paw underneath.
It wasn’t food or warm towels or a dry place to sleep that crumbled his wall, but a simple game. One that belonged to just him and me.
The other day, a good hour or more after we’d played, I was walking past Sully to pick up some clothes when I heard something I’d not heard before. Sully was purring. I wasn’t touching him–I wasn’t even looking his way–but he had begun to purr loudly anyway. He’s done it many times since.
In the days since then, he’s reduced his scowling to maybe 80 percent of the time, has not hissed even once, and has permitted a few belly rubs without causing me to loose that much blood.
To most, they’d be milestones too minor to mention. But for me, they count very much.
