Tabby cat doesn't give a $^%+

You know what needs to happen?  Someone needs to film our new kitty, and have a fabulously flamboyant-sounding man narrate her behavior.  She is the honey badger of the feline world.  She seriously doesn't give an s-word.

Let me back up and tell the whole story.  Long ago and far away, in a dark and frozen land, this cat chose me. 

It all started the Monday before Christmas.  It was a bitterly cold, malodorous night in Utah.  An inversion of polluted, stagnant air had settled over our little valley, and the smell that filled the air was not chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or peppermint, or gingerbread or anything remotely festive.  In fact, the smell was not unlike the odor of a dumpster full of hamburgers left open during a downpour.

I set out for the state liquor store to obtain a bottle of wine for our friend who would be taking care of our cat, Ajax, the gentle giant, while we visited New Jersey for the holidays.  When I left the store, brown paper bag of sin-juice in hand, a little tiny kitty was loitering just outside the door.  I'm a sucker for baby animals, and become totally oblivious to possible diseases and perils when an opportunity to pet one arises.  So of course, I crouched down and put out my hand, and the kitty bolted over to me. 

I pet it for a minute and then I realized two things: 

OMG, it's way too cold for something this tiny to be outside exposed to the elements

and,

OMG, dirty stray animal!  Fleas!  Rabies!

So I stood up to call Andy to see what he thought I should do about this cat.  It was super cute, and I wanted to keep it, but there were multiple reasons why that would have been a bad idea, including the illegality of harboring a stray, and the logistics of getting a new pet right before going on a long trip.  I was wearing a long knitted scarf with fringe, and the kitty starting batting at the low-hanging yarn.  CUTE OVERLOAD.  Then, it jumped up on the ledge of a raised flower bed and stared at me intently.  Before I knew what was going on, I was standing in the liquor store parking lot with a phone in one hand, paper-bagged booze in the other, and a cat on my head.  If that doesn't scream classiness and mental stability to you, we might need to have a talk.

Andy talked me down from the ledge of cuteness-induced poor judgment, and I called the local Humane Society.  They were closed for the night, so I had no choice but to call Animal Control.  It felt vaguely wrong, since I was essentially calling the cops on a baby animal.  I also felt a twinge of shame telling the dispatcher that I found the kitty outside the liquor store, because the odds that I was talking to a Mormon were overwhelming (and I know, I know, super nice people, they probably weren't judging me, and all that jazz...).

The dispatcher told me an officer would call to arrange a pickup, so I scooped up the kitty, plopped it on my backseat, and drove home to wait for the officer's call.  Little baby kitty obviously had to explore this moving vessel, so it wandered all around the car, which could have been the first warm, soft place it had ever experienced.  After about two blocks, it settled down in my lap where it curled up and started batting at the keys dangling from the ignition.  I had to think about some seriously awful things to block out this second cute overload, or I would have driven straight off the road .  Must.  Fight.  Cuteness.  With thoughts of nuclear holocaust.  And Comcast customer service.

Thoughts of wiping out civilization and/or having an stroke from severe anger and frustration got me through the ten-minute drive unscathed, but once I was back in my driveway, all bets were off.  I sat in the car petting the kitty and hoping the Animal Control guy wouldn't show up.  Unfortunately, he did.  He told me they'd keep the cat in jail for five days, and if no one claimed it, it would be turned over to the Humane Society to be put up for adoption.  Jail!  A kitty in jail! 

I pushed aside thoughts of taking it some Fancy Feast with a nail file in it, or busting it out myself and becoming the first human-feline crime duo.  Once it was gone, I regained some perspective on the situation.  Two cats?  Did we really need two cats?  With two litter boxes?  And two shedding coats?  When my mom and most of our friends here are highly allergic to cats?  I don't want to be a crazy cat person...does having an equal librarian to cat ratio in your household automatically make you a sad stereotype?  It might.

I decided I had done my good deed for the year.  Turning the cat in was enough, so I went inside, stripped down, and threw every article of clothing in the dryer while I took a hot shower to ward off a possible flea infestation.  I would later find out this was a pointless exercise, because it's way too cold here for fleas to thrive on outdoor animals.

The days passed, we flew to New Jersey, Christmas drew closer, and I tried to put this hilarious, adorable encounter behind me.  Andy, however, had different plans.  He was adamant that we adopt this cat so Ajax could have a friend.  I wasn't sold at first, but then I realized this cat could be MY friend, too.  Ajax is our cat, but he's not really our cat.  He's always been more Andy's cat than mine.  He just uses me as a food provider when he's hungry and Andy isn't around.  So basically whenever Andy isn't around.  Because Ajax is never not hungry.

After a flurry of correspondence with the Humane Society, we found out our cat was there, it was a girl, and she was in alleged "good health".  They posted her picture online with the other adoptable cats.  All the other cats were decked out for Christmas, some wearing Santa hats or posed in front of festive displays of wrapped gifts.  Our cat was photographed through the window of a smudged, cloudy plexiglass box.  The other cats had fun names and quirky write-ups about their personalities.  This cat was just 'unknown stray cat, age 1 year'.  We thought there was no way anyone would adopt her in such a state, which was a relief, because there was no way to put a deposit on her or reserve her in any way while we were still back east.  Then they updated her profile with a mind-blowingly adorable picture of her perched on the shoulder of a shelter volunteer, looking alert and curious and fuzzy.  They named her Bonnie, because she seemed to be so happy. 

That was it.  She was going to be gone in five minutes, for sure.  But luck prevailed, and she remained in the shelter until the window of opportunity arrived during which we could place a 24-hour hold on her.  Once we were fairly certain she would be ours, I immediately set about the task of renaming her.  With a real-life awesome human friend named Bonnie, it would have just been too weird to keep the name the shelter gave her.  Something booze-themed seemed only natural, given her place of rescue, but I didn't want to be obvious and name her 'Cabernet' or 'Kahlua' or something.  So I devised the best possible mash-up:  Alcohol and literary references. 

After much deliberation, I decided to name her Hadley.  She is named after Hemingway's first wife, whom he often called 'little cat'.  It's no secret that both Ernest and Hadley were big-time boozers, so it works on so many levels.  Or two levels.  But so many.

We brought Hadley to her 'forever home', as shelters love to call it, on Monday.  The woman at the shelter assured us she was healthy.  We asked if she had been tested for feline AIDS or leukemia.  "Oh, well, we don't test for that here."  Exsqueeze me?  How can you be sure she's healthy if she might have AIDS???  Is this little hussy going to infect the perfectly healthy cat we already have?  But it was too late; we were in too deep.  We took our possibly FIV-ridden new fur-child home and kept her in isolation in a spare room until we could get a vet appointment.  It turns out she's clean, but she had some nasty ear mites and a runny nose.  So, thanks, Humane Society, for giving us a cat that could have had the FIV, and did have some gnarly business in her ears.  I guess 'healthy' merely implies alive and not bleeding or vomiting.

Now that Hadley has been in our house all week, we've had some time to really see her personality shine.  This cat is fearless.  All she wants to do is play, and she will play with anything that moves.  She tries to attack my hair, and she has tried to eat it the way a human baby might.  She has jumped on my head several more times since our first encounter.  She has also punched me in the face.  Seriously.  She batted me in the eye.  On my eyeball.  A cat touched my eyeball.  I can't even tell you how disgusting it felt, or how quickly I tore out my contact and flushed out my eye with water.  I don't know how, but she hit me so hard that it left a tiny bruise under my eye.  A 5.6 pound cat gave me a black eye.

She is also desperate to play with Ajax.  She wants nothing more than to be his best friend.  He is three times her size, and could destroy her if he had the slightest inclination.  But she does. not. care.  We haven't officially let them interact yet.  However, she escaped her area the other day and bounded right up to him.  She was all 'Hai friend, let's be friends, let's be the best of friends, forever, and let's play!'  And he was all 'OMG, HISS'.  And then he ran away and sulked. 

I don't get it.  Does he not understand that he is enormous?  Does he not realize this is a David and Goliath situation, only nothing important or 'righteous' or mythical is at stake, so, as the Goliath figure, he could probably eat her or sit on her or otherwise decimate this tiny adversary?

As I write this, surly old Ajax is sulking under the bed while Hadley bounces back and forth between me and Andy, batting at our iPad screens, biting Andy's head, and shoving her entire head in a coffee cup that recently contained milk.  Earlier this evening, she tried to scale the curtains on the sliding glass porch door.

I'm so glad this 5 pound tornado clawed her way onto my head and into my heart.