Saamba

i�d like to take a few moments to explain the �rants, raves, reviews and a polydactylic cat� comment above. well, the last part at least, the first three seem pretty self-explanatory.

a few years ago, i finally hit the point where if i had continued living at home my mother and i would have started WWIII, by our negative energy alone. i finally had a (barely) paying writing job and felt that it was time to take that big step- moving in to the all-encompassing �first apartment.� i wasn�t picky in my search, just something in my price range, which was, well, minimal. it was an absolute shithole- but it was home. located in a known-questionable town, in one of the not-so-nice parts of the not-nice town. the door looked as though there had been attempted break-ins. squirrels lived in the walls and sounded like they wanted to try a break-in of their own on a daily basis. mice liked chewing the electric wires and frying themselves-hell, even the mice wanted to commit suicide living in this place. the couple that lived below me had a pit bull that wanted to rip my arms off whenever i tried walking past him to get to my staircase. and the couple� she was a very large black woman who loved listening to both the television and radio at full volume-all the time, and spoke even louder to compensate, and he was the epitome of a redneck mass murder you�d hear about on a kentucky news station. ahh, good memories.

within the first week, i realized i couldn�t do the alone thing completely, i needed companionship and my frogs and my 50 cent price chopper plant weren't cutting it. i needed a cat. i�d always had pets growing up� and felt incomplete without. (�cause a cat would make this situation better, right?)

so i headed to the local adoption clinic, where i proceeded to fall in love with just about every cat there. Cute little perfect black and white kitten, two special needs kittens whose mother had eaten poison before they�d been born.

and then i saw him. a beast of a cat sitting placidly while all the other cats were playing cute trying to be the ones taken home. an orange tiger, easily more than 20 pounds, the biggest selling point: two extra toes on each of his front feet. the cat had a full paw and a half on each foot. it was too cute (and funny-looking) for words. i walked up to his cage, and he just reached out one of his huge catcher�s mitts to touch my face. i was sold.

he was two, his previous owner was going to have him put him down rather than pay the bills to have his respiratory infection taken care of (how can people be such assholes? �yeah, he�s been great for two years, but he�s going to cost us $100-f�em." but that�s a rant for another day). the vet, knowing this cat had better things in store for him, talked to owner into giving the cat to a no-kill shelter, where they would get him healthy and put him up for adoption. they did, and it was his first time being offered up at the clinic.

within a few minutes i was signing the required papers and found myself the prowd owner of coop, the cat everyone there deemed too sweet for words (the foster care-taker actually cried when she said goodbye to him). So, cat supplies already loaded in the car, i put him into a carrier and we drove back to our hellhole of a home. he was wonderful in the car, fell asleep, didn�t spend the entire trip howling. i was psyched. we arrived, and it was as though he had lived there his entire life. he wandered a little bit and just sprawled out on the living room/kitchen/dining room floor (not only was the apartment a shithole, it was a really small shithole).

he saved the good behaviour for day two. he still seemed normal enough, but as i sat there, i began to hear tell-tale �pfffft�s� followed by what was possibly the most foul odor ever. constantly. the cat had the worst gas problem i�d ever imagined-to the point my apartment had an undying cat-fart haze. but despite not being able to breathe in my own apartment, i was willing to overlook this little �quirk.�

by day three, he was comfortable enough to pull out his psycho kitty act, where he and the extra claws from hell would chase me around the apartment, fangs at the ready. it was fun. on more than one occasion i would sleep under all the covers on a sweltering august night fearing that the cat was going to cut my juggular vein with his thumb claw as i slept.

but again, i overlooked this habit, since it only happened for one or two hours a day, and the rest of the time, he was pretty well behaved (even if a little stinky).

food was another sticking point with him. any food in the house he deemed as his own. i am by no means a good cook, and proved this by living off of taco bell for 6 nights out of the week. i�d get home from work with nachos bell grande or tacos supreme in tow and sit on the sofa to wach buffy the vampire slayer (if you have cable, be thankful on a daily basis, 6 months without really puts it all into perspective). the cat would never fail to sit on my lap and drool big saucer sized puddles into my clothing, stealing food whenever i turned my head for more than a second. (i think he and the squirrels in the walls worked out a deal- "if you guys make noise and get her attention so I can get some taco meat, i won�t kill you if you finally break through the walls to this joint").

then there�s the night of our final food standoff. i finally cooked. i was proud. sat the plate on the table- mouthwatering honey-mustard glazed chicken, i was so excited. i made the mistake to go answer the phone-it was a wrong number. within the 30 seconds i was gone, the cat had wolfed down the chicken minus two bites and was sitting on the table, smugly gloating over his accomplishment. (i'm pretty sure he masterminded the phone call, and the squirrels we again in cohoots).

in that one moment, several things crossed my mind: feeding him to the pit bull downstairs (but i figured he could probably show the pit bull who was boss with his evil claws from hell), introducing him to the world of the street cats (but again, he could easily own the other street cats, and he�d adapt to that life just fine), returning him to the shelter (too much work, and they were closed for the night). so i locked him in the bathroom until his constant clawing of the door got to be too much for me to bear. i should have just eaten the food from his bowl. then he�d understand what it was like having food taken from you-i think that would be the only thing he would understand.

at the time, i had two african clawed pigmy frogs-chairman mao and ed. i was fond of them, they didn�t do much, but they were nice to look at swimming in their little aquarium. one day a few weeks after i�d gotten coop, i came home to find out that eating a frog is by far more effective than just licking it. he�d knocked the tank over and ingested chairman mao. the cat spent the next 48 hours on what i can only imagine to be the best trip ever... he chased things that weren�t there, made sounds i�ve never heard before, had more energy that a child who forgot to take his ridalin. to this day, i wonder if the cat has flasbacks...

after threatening to banish the cat to the shower stall with the water running, i gave ed a proper burial at sea. after much yelling and me threatening to sell the cat to the chinese restaurant down the street (20 pounds-i figured he'd be worth something)we came to an agreement: you can stay, just don�t eat any more pets i bring into this apartment.

that was a few years ago... the gas problem faded after a few weeks, he�s learned the difference between �my food� and �your food,� his psycho cat act has all but disappeared (except that one time we put his 22-pound lardass on a diet), and he�s ended up a really cool cat. so there you go� the polydactylic cat in �rants, raves, reviews and a polydactylic cat.�

not overly exciting, but, we're still looking to fill some space, and i�m sure he�ll come up in here again-the cat is an endless source of entertainment for us.

0 wrote to say im an idiot.