Monday, July 24, 2006

A worrisome new development.



The baby has begun crawling over to the cat and rubbing her face on it. Near as I can figure, the baby has watched the cat do it as greeting, and is imitating. (The cat is one of those who likes to rub her face on people.) Either that or they're doing some Vulcan Mind-Meld. Can't rule that out.

The baby has also tried to give the cat toys.


The thing about the cat is, Sekhmet is a stray we picked up while in Hawaii about five years ago. She showed up at the back door one day and we kept her. ($300 USD to get a cat from Hawaii to the mainland USA, between health certificates, shots, and plane fare.) A friend of mine who knows cats SWEARS that this beast has some Maine Coon Cat in her, but we can't figure HOW. She's got all her claws and weighs 15 pounds/6.5 kilos; we joke that she's like that cat in Peanuts that communicates by slashing words into Snoopy's dog house. Until the baby came along, I was the only person she could stand, and she'd still bite me regularly (in that feline 'hi, how are you?' way, not to draw blood). So to watch this cat deliberately go lay next to the baby, put up with tail-pulling, fur scrubbing, and general baby-ness, is mind boggling. We do watch like a hawk when they're together, worried the cat will suddenly go crazy, but so far the cat's been nothing but patient.

I know they're conspiring against me.

3 comments:

Julie said...

Test post... ignore...

debsnm said...

Somehow animals just KNOW they're babies and helpless. When my teen was a baby, we got her some kittens. She'd follow them around the house purring at them, and I SWEAR they purred back - it was the freakist thing I've ever seen!!!

Catie said...

My parents tell me that when I was a baby I used to use my cat as a pillow. He would just saunter off when he got fed up. This cat was never known to scratch a child but would play extremely rough with my dad and brothers.