it was mid-august when she arrived, meowing loudly at the fence while katie and i played with the children in the backyard. she simply showed up one day, enthusiastically and expectantly, and never left.
i've never been much of a cat person. all my life i've had and loved a dog. dogs are in my blood, my bones. cats, not so much. they kind of scare me. i don't really trust them. but emmy insisted. and insisted. and insisted.
we began to feed her morning and night, and she made our bushes out front her bed. with every crack of the front door she dashed to meet us, meowing and purring along and around our legs as we walked to the car.
she also bit us. and scratched us. first me, then colin, then my dad, and my mom, and the plumber, and then me and colin again and again. we acknowledged that it was a problem. it is a problem.
but most of the time she wanted love and affection, actually seemed to need love and affection, from some desperate place inside of herself, and we couldn't help but feel like the chosen ones.
then, as they do, the nights began to cool, and we began to worry about our wild little friend. and so, after the kids were asleep, and bean was in bed, too, we let emmy in. it was a little dance at first - in and out, a treat here, some catnip there. colin spent the night on the couch with her a few times, and then she seemed to settle on the chair. she was always out by four or five, gently meowing at the door, escaping before anyone else was up, and returning to her bush for a long days work.
colin and i did our own dance, too. should we keep her? we can't. not with the kids. not with bean. i cannot handle another mouth to feed right now, or more poop to clean up, for that matter. absolutely not. no. she's going to a shelter. we're attracting skunks with all this cat food. maybe we should feed her inside? how do we feed her inside? well, she seems to be settling down. she really wants to be here. i'm starting to trust her. i'm not. i am. i'm not. and so on.
and then, we started to worry about her getting pregnant. a certain black cat has also been lurking around the neighborhood, and emmy acted particularly wired when he came her way. we started to envision little emmys all around, and we got scared. so yesterday, colin took her to be spayed, and like that, the decision was made. emmy is ours. emmy is here.
she's up in colin's office at the moment, recovering from her surgery, which ended up being entirely pointless, as the vet found no ovaries after making that big, brutal incision on her belly. poor girl was either born without them or was, more likely, fixed at some point in the past (though they couldn't find a single scar to prove it). i'm sneaking in when i can to give her treats and a pet, and though she was disoriented and scared yesterday, today she seems calm.
i've found myself wondering throughout this ordeal, who is this cat? who was she in a past life? did i know her? did colin? why did she choose us?
probably, because she smelled a sucker and knew we were keepers once we fed her. but i like to think there was something more to it. something mystical. something magical.
i also realize this makes us crazy. i mean, really, taking in a stray cat when you already have a dog and two little ones? crazy. i suppose we're willing to wear that hat.
so anyway, please welcome emmy, now the newest, and the littlest, moynihan.
