THE CAT MAN COMETH

Some people seem to like this sort of thing

It's been a big week, and it's only Wednesday.

Since Sunday, I've found love and lost it again and now I'm clinging to a desperate hope.

Talk about your emotional roller coasters.

And believe it or not, it's all because of a cat.

I don't know how these things happen. I don't know why Domestic Manager and Older Monster kept calling into the pet rescue place. I don't know why they kept coming home and telling me about the latest waifs and strays on offer. As I've made it perfectly clear in previous glogs, I'm no animal lover. 

What I DO know is, the pet place is on the way to a lot of other places, so I figured, what harm could it do? We'll drop in, they'll show me this pathetic feline they've been mooching over, I'll start sneezing, end of story.

Little did I know, that's where the story would actually begin, and it would be a tragic love story of Shakespearean proportions.

I met the cat they wanted me to meet. I'm not going to lie, it was a cute cat. It liked a cuddle, I like a cuddle, there was some common ground there. But then we were asked if we would like to meet Jedi as well. I didn't care, I was having cuddles. The newly introduced Jedi was handed to Domestic Manager and she tried to strike up a conversation. (a bit one-sided - mostly loud purring on his part) 

Then a crazy thing happened, something I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't been there myself. Jedi looked over at me and the cat I was holding, and lunged over, nuzzling his way into my arms and pushing the other cat, who I instantly forgot all about, out.

Call it destiny, call it kismet, call it temporary insanity, what can I say, we bonded.

Before I really knew what had happened, I was home, on my favourite armchair with a kitten called Jedi asleep on my head. His kitty litter, bed and food bowl set up in the downstairs bathroom, a newly purchased cat-tunnel askew in the middle of the dining-room floor. Jedi had moved in and I was (as Nicki Minaj would say) obsessed with him.

How could one 16 week-old kitten have melted my tired, old, sarcastic, cynical heart so instantly and so completely? Black magic? Voodoo? Some kind of virus, perhaps? All I know is suddenly I was trawling TradeMe for reasonably priced cat poles to keep Jedi from scratching the couch.

This was that thing soppy pet owners were always bleating on about, wasn't it? And now, overnight I'd become one of them. Who saw that coming? As far as I could tell, the feeling was mutual. Jedi would follow me around the house, always up for a cuddle, sneakily trying to eat my lunch when I wasn't looking, basically being as kitteny as he could.

The sloppy turds in the litter tray were a little offputting though. And those random blobs of blood were downright worrying.

Extensive uninformed interweb research threw up two opposing diagnoses; either it was perfectly normal cat shit, or Jedi was infested with some kind of parasite and possibly moments away from an early demise.

I rang the pet rescue place and described our sticky (not to mention stinky) situation. They suggested bringing him back in for a few days so they could keep an eye on him. Although I secretly believed they were just missing their share of his highly addictive cuddles, I reluctantly complied, leaving a very confused Jedi right back where we started.

Now it's a nervous waiting game. Will he just get better? Will he get worse? Is he thinking of me? When, oh when can I bring him home? McDonalds should sponsor a place for me to stay next door so I can be there if he needs me. 

What the hell's happened to me? I'm a mess. Maybe, just maybe, a cute little animal can teach big dumb man a lesson in humanity.

It's a bit of a worry, after all, I've got an image to maintain...

This picture got quite a few comments on Hosking's Facebook page...
some were even about the cat