CC at night

I know my cat can take care of herself.  When she first came into our lives she was just past kittenhood (catolescence?) and was hanging around with a clowder of other feral cats somewhere in this neighborhood.  (I got the term clowder from the Big Bang Theory and if you haven't seen the episode with Sheldon's cats, watch this - its zazzy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWhAeI7sGzI)  The cat started coming in our garden for goodness knows what reason - we didn't encourage or feed her and the others at first.  Maybe it was getting crowded in the clowder and she decided 'hey, its a big old neighborhood - let's expand.'  Anyway, she's been with us ever since that April in 2009 when she first showed up and that same June when I came back from holiday and my husband said, 'she just followed me inside, so  I let her sleep here.'

Since then, CC, (crazy cat because of her predeliction for climbing to the very top of trees and trying to catch birds, whom she still hasn't figured out can fly), well, she has become like the child we've never had.  We argue about her like you would a child crying in the night, 'you let her out,'  'no its your turn.'  We talk to her in baby talk (well, really just my husband does that) and I worry about her like you would a child on her first day of kindergaraten or a teenager on her first date.

CC is an indoor/outdoor cat.  Since we don't own our house we can't put an animal flap in the door, so we have to let her in and  out manually.  I have never seen our cat go to the bathroom.  She goes  outside and not in our garden.  She  loves our garden, but being a nocturnal creature, loves it most at night.  So either she goes out when we go to sleep or sleeps with us til 3 or 4 when she starts scratching the box spring, poking one of us in the back with her paw or claw, or as a  last resort, starts running across our pillows and on top of our heads until one of us gets up and lets her out.

When I wake up at 4 or 5 am and my husband has somehow sleptwalked through the process of letting her out without waking me, I begin to worry.  What if it's too wet or cold? What if she's in danger, hungry, being tormented by the rotten children of the neighborhood?  I have heard nightmarish stories about what Irish kids do to cats around Halloween, so now that holiday is destroyed for me because I spend it trying to keep my cat indoors and terrified of what will happen if she goes out. Or, the worst case scenario, what if she has another family she goes to at night? 

There can be reason to worry, though.  Our friends' cat Smokey (whose family's last name is Robinsion - I know Smokey Robinson and CC Gardner - they should form a cat band) -  is like our cat, indoor/outdoor, but comes home every night.  About a month ago, she didn't come home for four days and when she did she was injured and hadn't eaten in days.  Who knows if she got in a fight,  got hit by a car (unlikely, because I think most of these type of cats know to stick to back yards to get around) or something else.  She has recovered from her ordeal and continues to go out.

So I am going to insist that we build her a little warm/dry/safe shelter she can stay in at night during the winter (which has already started here - its 30 degrees right now).  I'd love to get one of those cat cameras to see what she gets up to at night - meeting a secret boyfriend? a kitty coffee klatch? staring at the bushes and trees for six hours until she spots a bird/shrew or bee?  Who knows?  But she has never had a collar so I wouldn't want to put her through that.

I know I worry too much about her.  I worry needlessly about her.  She's a cat.  But cat lovers everywhere will know what I mean.  While my husband doesn't worry about her like I  do, he dotes on her like crazy as do most of his  male friends, especially ones with cats themselves.  I've discovered this demographic of men between the ages  of 23-60, who are addicted t o icanhascheezburger and send cat videos all day and just love cats.  They come over and call her pet names like 'meowzer' and tell my husband 'that's a good-looking cat' or ask, as any woman would about another's child 'is she gettinig bigger?'  Yet, like with most things, the men don't worry so much, especially if they are Irish  - 'ah sure, she'll be fine.  She spent a year in the wild without us. '   Yeah, when she was with her clan - and since when is Donnycarney the wild?

So, of course, he's infuriatingly right. I've been sitting here since 430am for an hour and a half, really worried because its so cold, waiting for her to come  home.  She finally does at 530 and does not feel as cold as one would think she would be.  (She does NOT have a second family!)  I feed her, she eats and immediately wants to go out again!  Ungrateful beast!  Can you imagine what a basket case I would be if I had children? Ugh, the sun is up in an hour - I'm going back to bed.


A few pics of our cat