Those of you who have read my earlier posts know that Minkey likes to read in the bathroom. Well, today I caught him with one of my psychology books – “Secrets Of Face To Face Communication”, by Peter Urs Bender and Dr. Robert Tracz. I am sure he was mortified – smart cats are never caught plotting to dominate the entire human race. (Which in Minkey’s world, consists of yours truly, and the Occasional Visitor.)

I wouldn’t have noticed what he was reading – except that he managed to look both guilty and outraged. Ears laid back to his skull, nostrils flaring, eyes wild.

And a gurgling sound that swelled from a moan to a yowl, in less time than it takes Sigmund Freud to leap to his favorite conclusion.

I had absolutely no trouble understanding what he was saying.

But I took the book away from him, anyway.

Yesterday I read in the news about a “vampire” unearthed in Europe – some poor woman buried with a rock between her teeth, a victim of a plague that swept across Europe in 1560 AD.  The writer concluded with the inevitable pondering over whether or not vampires existed.

Vampires… teeth marks… waking up with little holes all over one… Hmmm….

Just take a look at this completely unaltered photo of my Siamese cat, Minkey, and tell me – what do you think?

I once had a ghost cat. No, I mean, a real ghost.  And I don’t think it was one of my past pets.

We lived at the time in a century home in Aurora, Ontario. I used to see a little grey cat running along out the corner of my eye. When I turned my head properly to look, it would always ”melt” into the floor or furniture. And it particularly seemed to like to run along my piano keyboard.

Since my dad was terminally ill and I was under a lot of stress, I put it down as a figment of my imagination. Then my friend Rosemary brought her mother to visit. I had never mentioned my little ghost to either of them.

As I was making tea, Rosemary’s practical mother suddenly piped up with: ”Did you know you have a ghost cat?”  She went on to cheerfully relay how she had seen it run into the dining room and “melt” into the floor.

That’s when I first realized my ghost cat might be “real”.  (It was eventually seen and commented on by 4 or 5 incidental visitors.)

Now, a ghost cat is the sort of paranormal phenomenon I don’t mind at all.  I even invited it to come and live with us, when we moved. It didn’t. I think it was part of that particular house, which produced two other paranormal experiences while I was there. (In spite of that, I have to admit, it was one of the most pleasant houses I’ve ever lived in.)

They do say that animals sense supernatural phenomenon.  But having had a Siamese (namely, the Minkmeister) I now have another explanation.

I think they just like suddenly freezing and staring intently at Nothing with their hackles raised (usually while one is watching “Ghost Hunters” or “Most Haunted”). Every self-respecting cat automatically knows, it’s fun to scare the bejabbers out of your owner on a dark and stormy night.

Besides which, Minkey is a little softie, for all his attitude. At the first sign of a real ghost, he’d probably run up my shirt and hide!

Babies and cats DO go together – and Leo and his pet cat, Flea, are living proof. 

Leo is a rambuctious, happy, little (human) bundle of energy who just turned 2-years-old  the other day. Flea is a lot older and wiser, and as gentle with his human toddler buddy as Leo is with him.

It’s all about parenting. I’m sure that left to his own devices, Leo would happily grab Flea and traumatize the heck out of the poor old fellow. However, Leo’s mom devotes unlimited time to teaching Leo how to relate, share and consider the feelings of other living beings.

I’ve seen living proof of  this myself in the way Leo interacts with Lily, the younger baby his mother provides with full-time day care 4 days a week. Lily is as fair, quiet and gentle as Leo is dark, loud and rambunctious – but the two of them outdo each other in affectionate cooperation. It’s really lovely to watch them being generous with each other (though Leo does like stand beside Lily and open his mouth wide, when she’s getting fed her dinner).

Besides, even though Flea has never actually met Minkey – Leo has.

And when it comes to babies and cats, Leo is the only baby in the world that Minkey isn’t afraid of.

My friend Abi and I concocted this cartoon, back when Minkey and Elli were going through their terrible twos.

13 years later… Now we know: It’s permanent.

A few years ago, I went through art college and managed to land a Fine Arts Advanced degree With Honors.  I have to admit, however, that Minkey is a more creative artist than I’ll ever be.  I came home from school one day to discover that Minkey had somehow got a sheet of paper I’d been using to make a charcoal transfer from, and had Adapted it into his own interpretive piece of artwork. 

He seemed to be busy smudging it. I was hugely entertained – till I saw the focal point of his piece de resistance. 

A tiny fieldmouse, dead. I didn’t know whether to be more horrified that a mouse had made it in from the winter snows, or amazed because Minkey was doing a Salvador Dali.

I sent several photos of his antics to my drawing teacher, who didn’t deign to reply.

Personally, I think he was just  jealous.

I wrote this on a Valentine’s day years ago, after Minkey tried to wake me up at 4 a.m. by dropping tinfoil balls on my chest and screaming affectionately in my ear….

Valentine For A Yowling Siamese Cat, 4:00 a.m.

Romeo and Juliet
would not have died,
had they a pet.

A puppy to be fed and brushed
would not have left them
quite so crushed.

And if not that, at least a cat
to occupy and plain distract
from morbid thoughts of death and gloom
—A Siamese would leave no room,
its plaintive love-song not denied
by man or beast (lord, how I’ve tried!)

A Siamese — cannot ignore it —
just expects you to adore it.

Copyright 1997, M.F.Miller

From Guest Blogger Skadi:

Malinka was rescued during a terrible thunderstorm some years ago. It took her two weeks to come out of hiding and begin to trust.  She quickly learned that dogs could be warned off with the dreadful Siamese Hiss, which ones does showing as many sharp, pointy teeth as possible.

As soon as she became used to other cat and dog members of our family she began to relax. Her message was: “I’m Malinka and I’m the baddest girl in town”. Nothing was safe from her, and she knew all the ways to draw attention to herself. The bed became her Queendom, and any other cat coming up was subjected to the savage leap and rush, paws and claws before her, to knock her rivals off the bed. Then she would roll.

It became impossible to read a book in bed. As soon as I started, this wicked seal-painted she-devil’s face would pop up above the book, and puncture it with a fang before disappearing again. Many is the time I came home to find a new or cherished book, with corners neatly chewed off, and numerous puncture holes in the front cover.

I named her for an old movie poster: “Malenka the Vampire”, showing this fierce, yet free, woman, her mouth open to display large and wonderfully fake vampire teeth. It suited the temperament of our Malinka perfectly, Although there was definitely nothing false about her little vampire fangs. But in all this, we love her; how can we not?

Skadi

It seems Minkey has made some NEW friends, whether he knows it or not.  He has never met Malinka, but we are honored that she has come to “visit” our pages. The next post will be her story.

I would love to hear from other cat owners about their special friends. “Guest bloggers” are fun!

And yes – that’s Malinka, (left) doing what Siameasles do best.  Taking over her owner’s house.

Minkey’s friends, while few and far between, have been memorable. Take Ginger, for instance. (Nicknames, “Gingie”, “Gingivitis”).  This chunky big fellow was one of the many strays my mother adopted (not all at once, thankfully!) (Well, okay… sometimes all at once…)

When my mother was preparing to move several hundred miles away to live out her lifelong romantic dream of log-housing it in the far Northern boreal forests, she had a minor heart attack and was put in hospital for observation. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law arrived with the moving truck to load up furniture and cats.  Whiskas and Lucky both docilely got into their cages, but scenting imprisonment, Gingie made a violent break for it.  I was not even in the room at the time, being busy routing a nest of spiders out of my mother’s spare bedroom closet ceiling.  But when I visited her that evening and admitted we hadn’t been able to pack Ginger off to The Great White North, and that he was still sulking in the shrubbery, she bemoaned that she couldn’t trust me to do ANYTHING right, and promptly had a major heart attack on the spot.

So there I was, while she was in surgery, thinking I Had Killed My Mother.

But as one of her surgeons cheerily put it, “she’s a tough old bird.”  She survived.  And I kept on trying to find Gingie.

The day that (unbeknownst to me) she cheerily turned down the convalescent home in favor of my tiny 500 sq.ft. cabin in the woods and me nursing her 24/7, Gingie strolled calmly into the cat cage. They both took up residence at La Casa Minkey.  I moved onto the couch, and mum got the bedroom, the bed – and the cats.

The friendship did not start out well.  Minkey was clearly both frightened and aggressive.  As the visiting V.O.N. nurse thoughtfully put it, “My, I didn’t realize your Siamese cat’s fangs were that long…”

There was a lot of hissing; all of it from Minkey. Gingie was unfazed.  He adopted a policy of calmly ignoring Minkey.  He was a tough old bird.

Minkey kept trying to sleep on the bed, Gingie kept Willing him off (it worked.) My mother found their little passive-aggressive skirmishes endlessly entertaining, and finally began to recover.

By the end of several weeks, Gingie and Minkey had developed an uneasy truce at best.  The Minkey’s Friends page photo of them both on the attic stairs is the closest they ever got, physically.  Gingie resented being an indoor cat – but there was no way I was going to let him out to give my mother a third heart attack by disappearing again.  In protest, he lustily shredded all my furniture – something Minkey had never done, discreetly preferring to use his special custom deluxe wall-mounted scratching rug.  To my eternal relief, Minkey virtuously refused to participate in such uncouth behavior.

My mother and Ginger thrived.  Minkey and I quietly began to develop strange nervous habits. I began to choke on food (too tired to swallow), develop high blood pressure and tremble a lot. Minkey began to choke on food, dart haunted, wide-eyed glances continuously over his shoulder, and tremble a lot.

Minkey voluntarily spent a lot of time in Ginger’s cat cage. (I – alas – couldn’t fit…)

Neither of us could eat much.

By the time Mum and Gingie were deposited in their new Northern paradise and I got back home to Minkey, we were both nervous wrecks.  Minkey developed skin problems, which turned out to be (according to the vet) “purely nervous”. Eventually his skin magically cleared up, but to this day, I continue to have high blood pressure and sleep on the couch, since I now can’t sleep more than 2 or 3 hours in a row any more, anyway.  Which Minkey thinks is a good thing.

I managed to replace the most damaged pieces of furniture that Ginger had shredded, and finally eliminate his last left-behind flea.  Gradually, Minkey and I settled down to our old peaceful “indoor cat” routine.  Sort of…

One day I bought Minkey a little fluffy ginger toy cat.

I found it the next morning, drowned in his water dish.