This one's a repost from FB Notes. Original is by Subroto Bhattacharya, my uncle (my father's first cousin). With his permission of course. I should have probably asked Miss Fuzzball's permission instead but she isn't on Facebook!!!
The Cat that ate Croissants
Well, I ain't always right but I've never been wrong.
Seldom turns out the way it does in a song.
Once in a while you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right.
My eldest, the philosopher has insomnia. We had always suspected this was the case, but being laid back parents we felt we could sleep on it a while and only address the issue if it got out of hand. He has a room on the very top floor of the house and his door is almost permanently locked. We found it easier to just let him be, as long as he did his academic work reasonably and did not get into trouble.
Well, this summer we found out in a very unexpected way that he does have insomnia that is pretty noticeable. He was involved in a motor vehicle accident and for two weeks had a pair of very sore knees that prevented him from climbing up the three flights of stairs to get to his room. For the time, he slept on the sofa in the family room and I slept on the adjacent sofa to be sure that if he needed anything during the night, I was right there to get it for him.
Our two cats are sisters from the same litter. Indoor cats that are ten years old, they are as different from each other as chalk and cheese both in size, weight as well as personalities. However, they can both sense when something is not quite right, especially with our philosopher. You see, Miss Fuzzball, the skinnier one, absolutely WORSHIPS my son. We firmly believe that she is really a dog masquerading inside of a cat’s body!
While Miss Furry, is the fat slothful one who loves to sit on the sofa and watch TV while having a warm body (any warm body) next to her to cuddle too, Miss Fuzzball has eyes just for my son. She would sit like a sphinx (since he locked his door to keep her out) outside of his room all day until he came back from school. Once he did, she would follow him wherever he went. There was no mewing or pawing or vocal token of her love. She was just glad to have him back and be his shadow. For his part, he accepted her adoration with a naturalness that we slowly realized was what was so endearing about him. He was a natural through and through. He would never perform to please you, nor fake it for the limelight.
On the rare occasion that he left his door open she would climb up and sleep on him when she could. Early mornings, when I woke him up for school, I would find her curled on his back looking at me with the “don’t you DARE disturb him!” look. Well, this summer, when he was injured, Miss Fuzzball hung around him and often got in the way in an annoying sort of way. I sighed and gently pushed her away every time she tried to get on top of him. Not surprising, I thought, seeing that the last year we have had ALL kinds of issues with Miss. Fuzzy.
Last year Miss Fuzzball lost almost two pounds in weight. We wondered what was wrong but came to no real conclusions. And then it all got stranger. The cat, that was much less selfish and food obsessed than her sister, started climbing up on counter tops and eating human food! Now that really got us all worked up, perhaps not so much for the cat’s benefit as for concerns for our own safety and hygiene. What I did not remember is that last year my son left home to go to college.
And so Miss Fuzzball was packed into a carrier and off we went to the vet, who interestingly was Dr. Bird at the Feline Hospital in Salem! I simply adored this woman. She had an instinctive understanding of animals and came across almost like a cat magician!
With a variety of needles stuck in a variety of places, blood and urine samples were drawn, that all came back normal! But in the course of the exam Dr. Bird asked if the cat had shown a preference to any particular type of food. I thought about this and did have an answer – Croissants and Pasta! She would sniff around other things surreptitiously on the counter top but these two things were the things she really loved.
After an entire year of dealing with this we got a little fed up with it all. But it all changed when my son was injured. The cat just wanted to be close to him and I, afraid that she might hurt him who was already hurt by car and long board, pushed her away in some exasperation. In the month that he took to heal from the initial worst of the injuries, I totally ignored the cat which, now that I recall, still hung around although at a more respectable distance, now that she knew my lowered tolerance for her behavior. Strange, isn’t it, how animals understand unspoken language so much faster than humans do??
Well, he went off the college the same week that the cat went back for her physical and rabies shots. This time, my niece accompanied me to the vet and since Miss Fuzzy had lost more weight, we went through the routine of the expensive blood tests yet again. Not expecting any new answers, I asked the vet that we saw, Dr. Ternes, why Fuzzy would eat pasta and croissants. She looked up and said “Looks like that is what your son fed her. Now that he is not here, it’s one way for her to connect with him”
I left the vet’s office quietly. I was simply blown away. In twenty seconds, this woman who worked with cats all her life had easily pointed out the answers that were right under my nose!! How could I have NOT seen it?? Of course I realized now, why Miss Fuzzy ate pasta and croissants. She must have accompanied my insomniac philosopher downstairs to the kitchen on many a late night while we were fast asleep and he must have fed her a few scraps of whatever he was snacking on at the time. And I do know for a fact that my philosopher loved croissants!
What I had not noticed was her pining at my son leaving home and going off to college. Her behavior, her loss of weight, her trying to eat what my son must have surreptitiously fed her was seen by me as annoying behavior (that had cost a fortune in expensive blood tests) without realizing the love and devotion even a cat could have. How could I have been so blind??
The more I thought about it the more I could understand why I had not seen Fuzzball’s behavior for what it really was. We can sometimes be SO wrong in reading emotion. There are those who do not indulge in drama, those that are stoic and those that hate sharing their feelings and they are the ones that are often thought of to be cold, distant and unfeeling. Little do we know how loyal their love and devotion can be and how quick we are to judge, simply because their hearts are not worn on their sleeves (or paws for that matter)
The other piece of this puzzle is the fact that we tend to believe that our own emotions are more intense, more credible and need more attention than anybody else’s. Little wonder that this is one of the foundations of disagreements when relationships fall apart. People tend to be so caught up in their own feelings and emotions, they have little time or desire to acknowledge, let alone understand how the other person feels. And when we read the other person wrong, so much of what we feel is based on false perception or sadly even hearsay. I know it was with me. I was so caught up in my own fears and anxieties that I stopped to even consider that a cat could have just as much love for my son as I did and I had taken the strange expression of her love and devotion as nothing more than annoying behavior.
It is easy to love and admire the beautiful and the perfect but it takes a deeper understanding to love and respect the strange, the bizarre and the annoying. But if you look deeper into these behaviors you may be surprised by the depth of feeling and the constancy of purpose carefully hidden away. I reached home and let Miss Fuzzy out of her travel cage, getting her some kitty treats for being such a patient traveler. I looked into those inscrutable green eyes and envied the love that she had for my son while a part of me was embarrassed at my doubting it in the first place
Standing there in the kitchen it was as if I was seeing a new cat for the first time. Fuzzy must have sensed what I was thinking for she came up to rub around my legs. In my heart I silently thanked her for her love for my son and the lesson that she had taught me today
Although I still wish she would not climb up on countertops and eat croissants to be the teacher that she was
Just sayin’………..
