The cat lady

I am responsible for the love and care of four cats over the Christmas holidays. Four.

I don't understand it, really. I'm not a cat person. I guess I do in some ways - people are desperate for cat-watchers, I am a lonely single person who happens to be willing to go out of her way to help people. And I do love animals, although cats are not my first choice.

The main cat is my cat, Dakota. I say "main" in the loosest sense of the word. She lives in my apartment and is feeling seriously deprived right now, as my roommate has been away quite frequently for work. He gives her all the love. He feeds her each morning. I feed her when I notice he hasn't been around to feed her.

So basically, she is following me like a lost puppy looking for ANYONE to love her. I also gave her a piece of chicken so she is currently queen of my fan club, but I'm thinking that was somewhat of a mistake as I feel like I've suddenly become the stereotype of the single girl that has a cat always around her. Really, it's the chicken. I'm not that nice.

The other three cats may seriously lose their minds in the next week. Two are at one friend's house, the third is at my cousin's. The pair are used to getting fed, three times a day.

Fortunately, I am not expected to feed them three times a day - but I can't imagine it going over well. No attention and only getting fed one time? If I were a cat, I would be seriously mad at my owner. Of course, I'm a bit of a storyteller, so as I'm being given the extremely elaborate instructions for how to take care of the cat (which by the way, is perfectly fine - if I agree to do something, I will most certainly do it well!), I'm sharing all these stories which pretty much portray me as the worst pet-sitter ever.

"Oh, did you not hear about the time I managed to lock my keys in my car? No, no, it wasn't my fault, I swear!"

I stopped myself at sharing the story about the time I was dog-sitting and managed to lose the dog. IN MY DEFENCE, they don't have the dog leash-trained and he loves to wander off to meet people, and within 5 minutes of him wandering away someone had brought him indoors and called the humane society. Seriously, five minutes. I knew exactly where he would go, so I went there, and called him and called him - but they were indoors, with him, so no one heard me. I searched for two hours until the people who took him noticed my car (which had driven by them at LEAST 25 times) and told me they called the humane society. But, I digress.

I also stopped myself from saying, "You know, this would be a whole lot easier if we just put all the cats in one room and I fed them all together in one place". From what I heard, cat lovers don't take kindly to that kind of talk.

I actually worked at a kennel once (it was a short-lived stint), and I will never forget this one time a lady dropped off her cat and insisted we not say the "B-word" around it ever. We are sitting there thinking, "what B-word?" and that there is no way she means the one we are thinking about, so she pulls us aside and whispers so quietly that we can barely hear her, "breakfast".

It took everything we had not to break out laughing, but she eventually left on her vacation and there we were, with the apathetic cat, thinking only one thing.

"................ breakfast.........."

Nothing.

"....... BREAKFAST!"

Still nothing.

Hate to break it to you lady, but the cat only responds to your voice, and even then, probably more so to the tone than the actual word, if not the movements that go with it. I envision her going "Breakfast time!" in the morning as she walks towards the kitchen. What else is the cat going to think?

So now that I am officially hated by all cat lovers, I will finish up by saying that I promise the cats will all be the picture of happiness and health a week from now, and that I really wish we could have dogs in our apartment building. Big dogs, not those small, cat-like ones.