The worst thing ever happened this week. Mommy and Daddy brought home a mammal, and he’s smaller than me. And I can’t eat him. He goes by the name Ziggy to the humans. He’s a new kitten. I do not like this one iota.
Tuesday, it seemed like a normal day. Daddy and Mommy went to work, I had the run of the house, and then Mommy came home and got the carrier. I hate the carrier, I hid immediately under some furniture to show my displeasure, and then Mommy took it away. At last, I thought, she’s acknowledged that outside is not a place for me, and she’s disposing of it. But it took her a long time to go to the dumpster, and when she came back she had kibble, a new poopy box, and the carrier.
And said carrier was meowing.
This interloper got out of the carrier. He seemed to think it was okay to approach me, the feline queenpin of this condominium, and try to pounce on my tail. I spent the next several minutes chasing him around the house and explaining, as only an angry cat can, exactly what I thought of that policy. He spent the next couple of days sequestered in the second bedroom.
In some ways that was fine. He stayed away from my stuff and my other rooms. It did mean, however, that I couldn’t go into the second bedroom. Mommy also spent a lot of time in that room, and even Daddy spent some time in there. It’s like they forgot there is one mammal who has the right to demand all the attention she wants. (My name is Mina. Vote for me on Nov. 6.)
They sometimes opened the door a crack and let us negotiate our relationship.
Two days later, Daddy came home and opened the door. We were mostly okay until Daddy fed me. When I heard the sweet siren song of the gravy can, that little furball stuck his head in my way and started eating my food. Daddy laid a second bowl down and called for me, and when I tried to go for it, little mister claw-fodder tried to go for that. It was so irritating I had to go to my mango box to clear my head.
I stopped, did a little Sphinx-position Mina Yoga, and realized I’m three times his size. I Halloweened out and hissed till I put the fear of me in him. That seemed to work. He ran across the room and hid behind a bookcase, which is a human piece of furniture with shelves for me to climb on. When I don’t like what he’s doing now, I just issue a little angry hiss and he immediately falls on his back and shows me his belly fur.
If hissing takes too much energy, I cuff him in his damned-fool head. That can also be satisfying.
But here’s the worst part about the new kitten: He’s messing up the pecking order. I’ve spend years conditioning my humans to do whatever I like by being mercurial and unpredictable. I control their access to my soft fur, and they do what I want. But the kitten, he’s nice to my humans.
He climbs on their laps and lets them pet him. I do that sometimes, too, but only when I think they want to get up. He doesn’t claw Daddy’s hands in the middle of a scritching session. He doesn’t scream and fight back when he’s picked up. He does what they tell him.
It’s like he’s not a cat. He panders. He does as the humans want. I keep trying to tell him he can’t be like that. Not only is it undignified, disruptive to our feline-run household, and counterproductive, it’s something even worse — it’s DOGLIKE!
It looks like I’m going to have to teach this kid everything.
Need more Mina? Of course you do. Browse the Mina archives for some high-grade feline contempt.
