When my roommate was given Kirra as a gift, we were told,
“she is an awesome, cute female kitten. Here you go.”
So little and petite and dainty.
So despite the fact that I hate cats and am an avid “dog person,”
I went over to the dark side, I grew very much attached
to the cat.
You can say I’ve spent a lot of time with Kirra, and that
we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well. And that basically
started when I realized Kirra is male.
Not to mention utterly confused by his name-to-gender situation.
It would have been weird to just change his name after a few
months, so we kept it. My roommate and I have an unspoken
battle of how to spell his name. She always writes “Kyra”
which I think is girly and stupid. I figure writing it as “Kirra”
at least gives him the benefit of being named after a skateboarding
company, something slightly more emasculating.
Whatever, poor guy.
Kirra is cuddly and soft. He always likes you to hold him or
pet him and is a major attention-seeker, especially from men.
Whenever a man in nice cologne stops by, he forgets I’m his
best pal and takes no time jumping up into their laps and curling
into a ball to fall asleep.
If you refuse to sit and let him do this, well you’ll still know
he wants to sit on you because he’ll reach up with those tiny
little cat paws and stare at your face until you pet his furry little
head.
The thing about pets is that they really don’t care about
social taboos the way we do. I call his pestering moments,
“Now’s a good time to play with the cat.”
It also helps that cats do really weird things. And as someone
who has grown up around dogs, I find their behavior
amazing and entertaining to watch.
The other day I was getting dressed for class, when I heard a
huge crash followed by an “uh-oh” sounding meow.
I went to investigate, but not only could I not find a disturbance,
but my cat was MIA too.
Fifteen-minutes pass with me hunting for him, worried and
shaking a bag of kitty treats, before I give up and finish getting
dressed. Once I get back to my room, I hear a long, very
unhappy, “Meeeeooooooowwwwww.”
This makes me worried and I go into my living room to see
my cat on the floor, splayed out and stuck half-way at his
abdomen in a paper bag handle.
I debated whether or not to film his predicament, but I
decided against it because he was super peeved about his situation.
Instead, I scooped him up, carried him into my room
and took a pair of scissors to that mean-old-paper-bag-handle.
I did catch on film many of his freak-out moments of running
with near super-hero strength around my apartment.
The 8-foot jump into the air to slap a ceiling-hanging decoration.
The time he got his head stuck in a tissue box.
The time he crawled up into the shade of my lamp and
popped out the top.
The time he balanced on the top of a chair to catch his tail.
The time he Matrix-style ran up the wall to sit on the highest
possible ledge of the window.
How he always lays on the crossword puzzle I’m doing or
the book I’m reading.
“Hey,” I think he thinks to himself, “now’s a good time to
play with the cat.”