A Cat's Life

Our cat Daddio has changed over the years. As a kitten, he was a brownish tabby, adorable as he stumbled around our family room, batting at the abundant toy mice and glowing balls we stocked for him. By young adolescence, he had transformed into a sleek black beast with merciless green eyes who dashed about the house scratching up furniture, leaping onto windowsills, gazing at birds with yearning, although as an indoor cat he would never get to touch them. A year later, in late adolescence, he was undergoing an identity crisis, having become calico. Furthermore, he had firmly decided that he was really a she (although since she/he had been neutered such terms don’t really mean much). Demanding the new name of Mammio, she was a tiny lion padding the night, menacing the mice that infested our house.

Shortly thereafter, Mammio became a they, although that lasted only a brief while. As a young adult, he was back to a male, although perversely remaining calico, but now with a copious white belly. We pointed out that calicos are always female and, after some protest and a bit of switching back and forth, even briefly becoming a Manx, he decided he was really Persian, an exotic creature with hair shedding crazily, with whiskers that curled and stretched to the heavens. As a Persian, he hid in the shadows a bit more, was shyer around company.

A couple of years later, having put on weight, slowed down a step, no longer the superb athlete of his youth, Daddio was a marmalade. As always, he gazed longingly out the window at the birds he would never get to gorge himself upon. Dependent on food from cans his entire life, he’s now back to being a tabby, fat and placid, swollen with affection. Indeed, he's curled in my lap, purring, even as I write these words.