Riley

Riley

For anyone to survive long in my world, it helps to be a bit odd. If you are someone who is weird and astonishing, then you fit nicely into my eclectic mix of acquaintances. I’ve been told that I’m the kind of person who collects oddities. It’s not as if I set out to find the weirdest in the bunch. Apparently, it just happens to me! This holds true for both humans and animals. Take for example, my cat Riley.

Riley’s story begins with two mothers, Linda, his birth mother, and Diane, his surrogate mother. They were given to my daughters by my then boyfriend, Anthony, as kittens. Neither of them liked me very much, but that was fine with me. My daughters adored them, and spoiled them rotten. Diane, the more outgoing of the two, occasionally tried to make friends with me, but Linda was skittish from the get-go. She spent a lot of time hiding behind the couch. We often referred to her as the “ghost cat”, because not many visitors even knew she existed, until she popped out from behind wherever she was hiding. She spent a lot of time running away in those days, almost as if her life depended on it. Perhaps it did. It takes a certain amount of fortitude to tolerate existence in my house.

One day, way before I thought they were old enough to go into heat, both Linda and Diane escaped. They came home two days later in the “family way”. On the morning of April 5, 2003, Diane woke everyone in the house, frantic to find a place to hide, and insisting that we all join her in the hunt. Diane gave birth, in my closet, to four little boys a few hours later. She was an excellent mother from the beginning. She knew exactly what needed to be done, and only requested that I stay with her while she tended to the birthing process. My daughters were fascinated with the entire prospect, and hung out in the closet too. It got very crowded.

Linda, on the other hand, decided not to announce her impending motherhood. The girls and I spent the next five days watching her very carefully, with no luck. Finally, On April 10, 2003, Linda was nowhere to be found. My daughter Katie eventually found her under my bed. As the day progressed, I periodically checked on her, only to be hissed at for my trouble. Considering this was also my birthday, I thought that was particularly rude.

After dinner, I decided that hissing cat or no hissing cat, it was time to convince Linda to come out from under the bed and lay down in the nice comfy box we had prepared for her. Unfortunately, I was too late. My after dinner nap was interrupted by the piercing screams of my daughter Katie informing me of Linda’s new arrival. As I poked my head under the bed, Linda had already popped out her first kitten, a girl, and was well on her way to expelling the second, also a girl. “Damn,” I thought to myself. Now there was icky stuff all over my comforter, because she had pulled down the edge and made herself a nest on top of it. No amount of bleach ever got all of it out.

In between contractions, I pulled Linda and babies out from under the bed, only to discover that something was terribly wrong. Linda was not doing the gross things associated with the birth process. The two kittens already born were still in their birth sacks. I’m not sure who was more surprised, Linda or me. She obviously had no idea what she was supposed to do next. She seemed to be shocked by the whole thing. Well, this did not look good to me, so, having had three children of my own, I felt qualified to help her.

Katie and I quickly leaped into action to save the babies from suffocation. Diane, alerted by the commotion, jumped onto the bed to watch. Now here comes the really gross part. Linda had five kittens, three girls and two boys, in the space of about an hour. While I broke the sacks and tied off the umbilical cords, Katie dried off the babies. Then Diane promptly ate the afterbirth. Disgusting. I guess she thought she was helping.

Riley was born on the heels of his twin brother, Charlie. Unfortunately, Riley had to wait a few minutes while I tended to Charlie, which deprived him of much needed oxygen. Linda, who was not helping, just stared at the kittens as if they were aliens. She spent a great deal of time staring at them after that. I think they confused her. She definitely would not win any Mother-of-the-Year awards.In her defense, they cried, a lot. As a result, she smacked them, repeatedly. Diane decided to take matters into her own hands, err… paws. Whenever the babies screamed, she would calmly take a few into the closet and nurse them, along with her own. Linda didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I think she was a bit relieved.

Whenever I discovered Diane with kittens that didn’t belong to her, I promptly put them back in Linda’s box. Diane then gave me a withering look, and took them back. I gave up after a while, and it became hard to tell whose kittens where whose. The kittens didn’t care which mother was which. If either mother was near, they nursed from the one they could knock over. Diane loved all the babies and spent much of her time with them. Linda disappeared for hours on end, secure in the knowledge that they were someone else’s problem.

Riley was small and sickly from the start. Diane took special care with him, mostly because he was also loud and obnoxious. Even she gave up after a while. She began jumping onto the bed with him in her mouth and dropping him on my head. Apparently, she felt he should be my problem now. I gave him back to Linda. She didn’t want him either. It soon became a vicious cycle of “pass the kitten.”

When he was about three weeks old, he caught what is commonly referred to as the cat flu. Not sure if I was doing the right thing, I stuffed him in my shirt to keep him warm. I carried him around like that for two weeks, wiping his snotty nose every time he sneezed. He looked awful, and I thought he was a goner. Fortunately, he began to recover. Unfortunately, I noticed that he had absolutely no desire to be removed from my shirt. He had developed a skin fetish, and would scream bloody murder every time I tried to put him down.

As he got older, Riley’s slightly oxygen deprived brain fixated on me. Wherever I went, Riley went. The rest of the kittens followed him, and I had my own entourage. The nine of them began to follow me all over the house; although I was sure most of them had no idea why. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Mothers and babies lived in my room for the duration of their time in my home. Diane and her brood lived in the closet. Linda spent much of her time moving her kittens from the box to under the bed. Riley took exception to this, and alerted me to his predicament every time she did it. This usually produced an earsplitting racket from the rest. I learned to live with the noise. The shrill chorus became so loud that my daughter, Erica, wrote a poem about them. “Kittens to the left of me, Kittens to the right, Kittens underneath the bed, Squeaking all night!”

After awhile I got tired of fishing them out from under the bed. They learned to come running out whenever I tapped my nails on the floor and called, “Come here Mini’s!” in a high-pitched voice. This annoyed Linda to no end, and she escalated her middle of the night moving sprees. Needless to say, no one got much sleep. Once they learned how to climb up onto the bed, she gave up. I ended up with nine kittens and two mothers on the bed. Anthony was just thrilled. They slept on his face in a squirmy pile. He would put them back in their box, only to discover that the first ones were back in the bed before the last one was in the box. It was a loosing battle and he lost. He learned to live with it and we got a bigger bed.

When the time came to give away the kittens, Riley was supposed to be one of the ones to go. I had explained to my daughters that no matter how much they loved them, there was no way we were keeping eleven cats. Secretly, I wished we could keep all of them too, seeing as how I was just as attached to them as the girls were. In the end, we gave away five, with liberal visitation rights.

Riley was passed over repeatedly. That was just fine with him. He had made it his mission to remain as close to me as possible, preferably in my shirt. He even went so far as to learn a trick to ensure his place in my heart. When prompted, Riley will sit at my feet and leap straight up into my arms, purring loudly. Isn’t that just adorable?

As far as cats go, Riley is an odd duck. Two years later, he still has some serious issues. The skin fetish is becoming a problem. Try explaining to a twelve-pound tomcat that he is too big to stuff himself into my shirt anymore. For the most part, I lose this argument. He also has a problem with squirrels. They chase him whenever he ventures out into the yard. This usually results in his insistence that the world is a safer place when viewed from inside my shirt. It’s hard to argue with that.

I don’t think anyone has sufficiently explained to him that he is not human. More likely, he just doesn’t believe it. To tell the truth, some of his stranger habits seem very human-like. For example, he loves Chinese food, and eats it off of my fork. Yes, you read that correctly. He eats off a fork. The girls have begun setting a place for him at the table because he insists on having dinner with the family. He tastes my coffee every morning. It’s not that he likes the coffee, he just feels it’s his duty to sample every food item I put into my mouth. He’s also partial to Fritos and dip.

Riley seems to feel that his water should have ice cubes in it. If anyone has the audacity to fill his bowl without the required cubes, he won’t drink it. He just stares at you as if you are the world’s biggest moron. If you have the nerve to ignore his contempt, then the yelling begins. He has plenty to say on the subject. Actually, he has a great deal to say on almost every subject. He has got to be the loudest cat I have ever met.

When talking to me, which he does often, Riley makes this high-pitched trilling noise in the back of his throat. To me, it sounds like he’s saying,” BROOFFF?” which is how he got his nickname, Boofy. He flatly refuses to answer to anyone but me using this nickname. Apparently, he considers it a term of endearment and in view of the fact that he only loves me, no one else is allowed to use it.

It is very easy to upset him, and an upset Boofy is never a pretty site. Commotion of any kind will send him into fits of fur licking. Normally for a cat this would be a calming habit, but not for Riley. He feels it’s necessary to lick his fur in the wrong direction, and even worse, pull it out by the mouthful. If he happens to be on my lap at the time, and any yelling I do to alleviate the turmoil results in my getting my lips bitten, accompanied by a chattering noise. Anthony used to take sadistic pleasure in upsetting him.

Anthony and Riley had a strange relationship. It’s almost as if they were rivals for my affections. Whoever was near me first got a dirty look from the other. They would argue, literally. It was hilarious to watch man and cat having very loud and verbal argument. Riley’s solution to this problem was to immediately sit down and lick his butt every time Anthony walked into the room. This usually resulted in a rude hand gesture from Anthony. They seemed to spend an extraordinary amount of time scowling at each other. Bedtime was when the worst of the squabbling occurred. I would usually end up sandwiched between two surly Toms.

Occasionally, they would call an uneasy truce and watch TV together. Riley tended to sit on the floor in front on the TV, voicing his protest when the channel changed. Anthony would usually tell him what he could do with his opinion. It was an odd relationship, but it worked for them.

For the most part, Riley does not like to be away from me for longer than a few minutes. I can’t even go into the bathroom alone. If I let him in, he sits in my pants while I attend to bathroom business. If I happen to be in the tub, then he sits on the edge and cries. Heaven forbid I leave him on the other side of the bathroom door.

Actually, Riley has issues with water in any form. Filling a glass of water for myself will result in it being tasted suspiciously. Watering the plants just confuses him. Once, I washed my car and I thought poor Riley was going to lose him mind. Floating in the pool requires Riley to share my floating chair, his tail dangling in the water, with a disgruntled look on his face because he couldn’t convince me to vacate said pool.

Living with a cat that has so many issues isn’t always easy, but I wouldn’t trade my Boofus for anything. He makes life interesting, to say the least. Life has a funny way of aiming pot shots at the back of your head. If you aren’t paying attention, you won’t know when to duck. Riley reminds me that sometimes you need to take time out to laugh at the cat. Just don’t ever do it to his face, it could result in fur licking.