My Pushy Cat

Crazy ideas you get when you’re feeling overwhelmed. This is the time when plants could be divided and transplanted. This is also the time to get my house ready for the summer market if we should decide to sell it, which, at the moment looks like a wise idea. And this is the time I should be drumming up business for portraits and other paintings.

On my way to sleep last night, I was mentally sorting through my priorities for the next day, when, there was Tippy glaring at me in the forefront of my brain. Tippy is our jet black cat with yellow eyes and a white tip at the end of her tail. She’s also our pushy cat. I try to love all my 5 cats equally, but Tippy is a problem: she thinks outside the box. Every morning I must hunt down the little present she has left me before I step in it. And I leave an old towel around for her to pee on. With five cats I struggle with odours as well, so I’ve been thinking of giving away the two youngest who are the best behaved, most loving. Both of them just walked in the door one day, and never left. They have doubled in size, since.

But I can’t think why anyone would want Tippy if they knew her habits. So, I've been thinking of letting her escape outside where the foxes and coyotes are. We keep the cats inside now since we have lost 4 to coyotes over the years. And then I think of all the terrible things people do to people and I can’t allow my pushy cat to be carried to a lair and be ripped apart. But what if she were drugged, fast asleep and not aware of what was about to happen? Could I find it in my heart to do that? What do I have in my medicine cabinet that could knock out twelve pounds? What about accidental poisoning? I have something growing in my garden which is supposed to be lethal. Aconite. I believe there was a play or opera in which a young nun took her own life by drinking some potion containing aconite --- also known as Monk’s Hood. But I have heard it’s a terribly painful way to go. Can’t bear the sight of Tippy writhing in pain. I think of farmers who have no trouble disposing of unwanted animals – drowning kittens by the bagfuls, or killing the excess piglet or the unwanted male calf in a dairy farm. Not to mention what they do to chickens. How hard would it be to slit Tippy’s throat or pound in her skull with a hammer? Or put her in a bag and drown her? 

What am I thinking? This is me, the person who fell on her knees to beg forgiveness after slicing a toad with a spade by accident.

So, that’s that. Tippy is my darling pushy cat, my bully cat, my half-moon-eyed cat. What’s a box, anyway?

p.s. Since posting this, we've built an out-door compound for the cats. No more odours!