Kind of an Asshole
A Christmas cat story
The male cat in our house is kind of an asshole.
My wife and I have two cats: Mimi (a tortie, full name Mimi Rose Howard) and Wallace (black cat, full name David Foster Wallace, named after a man also reputed to be an asshole, at least part-time). They are siblings. We’re pretty sure they are runts from the same litter, and when we got them, about five years ago, they were very tiny. They were scared of us for the first month, and during that month they were inseparable. Wallace scouted out territory first, and, if was deemed safe, Mimi would make an appearance, taking steps into the unknown, one tiny paw at a time.
They’re certainly separable now. They still hang out a lot, but Wallace has been pretty aggressive with his sister, attacking her, chasing her around, mounting her. We mentioned it to the vet, who told us to try sprinkling kitty drugs into their food (don’t worry, we were using mild, vet-approved drugs).
The kitty drugs didn’t make any noticeable change in behavior. Next next visit, we brought it up again. She suggested a collar. The same drug (I think) was on the collar, but it would be focused on one cat (David Foster Wallace), and be on his neck 24/7.
Worth a shot, right? We bought a pack of two collars. They were break-away collars, so it seemed unlikely they would cause any harm.
Here’s where things get interesting.
My wife was leaving town to visit her Mom. The night before she left, we decided to give the collar a try (pro-tip: don’t ever do this). We were in bed. I held Wallace while my wife put on the collar. That part was easy. For a few charged seconds, nothing happened: Wallace was entirely still. Something was happening.
Then, he sort of jumped back and shuddered, and suddenly BOOM! he was off, tearing down the stairs into hiding. We went to sleep, and all night long we heard BOTH cats, every hour or so, take off zooming and howling throughout the house. They get the zoomies from time to time, but never like this.
During the next day, as my wife was preparing to leave, we pieced the new dynamic together. Wallace was NOT being the aggressor anymore. Mimi was. Whenever she saw him, she hissed and went on full offence, chasing him and attacking him. These attacks were pretty intense, as we kept finding tufts of hair around. For the rest of that day, Wallace hid. Mimi found him a time or two, and gave chase, but basically he went into hiding from all of us. We’d occasionally see him and try to coax him to out laps, but Wallace wanted nothing to do with us.
Clearly, the new scent on Wallace had convinced Mimi that there was a strange new demon cat living in our house. She attacked with full force whenever she saw him. I’m not sure Wallace recognized his own scent either, adding to the chaos.
We called the vet. She said it was a break-away collar, so there was no real danger. Just wait it out. Either a) the collar would break away, b) Mimi would get used to the scent, or c) the collar scent would eventually wear off. There was no way he’d let us close enough to take it off.
My wife left town.
For the next full day, I barely saw Wallace. Normally he spends half the day lying on my outstretched legs while I write or watch TV. This day: nothing. When he saw me he ran away. Whenever Mimi saw him, total cat mayhem resulted.
Next day, same thing. No Wallace. It made me sad. What made it actually heart-breaking was that when I finally saw him and tried to coax him out with a “pspspsp” that evening, he hissed at me. My little kitty buddy actually hissed at me!
Two hours later. I was bringing laundry up the stairs. A set of upright balusters separated the steps and the main floor. As I walked toward the top of the stairs, he met me from the other side of the balusters, howling. I reached out very gently to pet him. Now, Wallace LOVES being petted. He hadn’t been petted in over two days. As I reached out my hand, he pressed himself against my fingers, hard. He still had the balusters between us, so he must have felt he had some protection.
I petted him for several minutes.
The entire time, the collar was inches from my fingers. I wanted SO HARD to just grab it and slip it off him. Arguing against that impulse was this: I didn’t want to traumatize him with a violent grab right after he finally started trusting me again. I probably wouldn’t see him for another week.
I didn’t grab the collar. He continued to press his head and body forcefully against my hands. I kept being tempted to grab the collar, and kept restraining myself. He was pressing his collar against my hand, as if daring me, even going so far as to lower his head.
I slipped one finger under the collar, expecting him to bolt. He didn’t. I slipped a second finger under it. I psyched myself up to take the collar, trauma be damned. The collar had to come off sometime, right?
I went for it. Gently, I pulled the collar forward.
He stayed absolutely still, head lowered.
The collar slipped easily off, and it was all over. Just like that. I stayed and petted him for several more minutes, feeling a little teary at finally having solved this three-day-old problem.
The tears came, I think, from the profundity of our cross-species communication. We’d tried for days to get close enough to the collar to take it off. At some point he must have figured out at least part of the solution. He needed one of his owners’ hands to get the collar off. As we stood on each side of the balusters, he was resisting every catty impulse to run and hide, knowing he needed to stand still to get the job done. He trusted me.
I showed myself worthy of trust.
Both of us lowered our guards and found a way to meet in the middle, and solve the problem.
Two days later, with my wife out of town for a week, my knee went out, and I was for practical purposes bed-ridden. My daughter came over and helped me with my biggest chores. But my continuing comfort was Wallace, newly returned to daily life, sitting on my legs, napping for hours.
He was a constant companion until my wife got home.
Is this a Christmas story, as promoted in the sub-head? I don’t know. But 2025 looms on the horizon as a potentially dark and calamitous time, and so I share a story about love, and how our love for each other can push us toward each other, for comfort, for safety, for peace.
Love, I have found lately, can rescue us when all around us feels dark. I’ll speak more about that in the coming year.
Merry Christmas.
Peace.