THE RETURN OF FABULOUS FELINE FRIDAYS!

MY SWEET SUGAR COOKIE

Blue-eyed baby

Back in September 2007, when we lived at the house before our current residence, I went out in the back yard one evening to take out the trash. I heard a small “meow.” I couldn’t tell exactly where it cane from, or whether it was far away or nearby. I stopped and listened and heard it again, but still couldn’t locate it.

I went back to the house and called to Jurate. She came out and we both heard it again. It took about ten minutes for us to triangulate that the sound seemed to be coming from the pile of empty garden pots over by the fence.

We Went over and I peered into the shadows of the pots. I saw what seemed like a dark shape move, and reached inside. A small something jumped in my palm and when I pulled my hand back, there was a very small black kitten sitting in my hand. The kitten meowed again, hungry.

Computer kitty

We went inside and put the kitten down on the table. There was no fear - this wasn’t one of the ferals that lived on the property back in the landlady’s award winning native plants garden on the back half of the property.

I opened a can of wet food and put some in a bowl. The kitten attacked the food ravenously and asked for more, quickly eating everything. With hunger satisfied, I picked it up. There was no fear of humans; this was a domesticated kitten. A quick examination revealed that “it” was a “she.”

You say you want this bag?

I took her into the living room and sat down to watch TV. She curled in a ball in my lap and purred much more loudly than one might expect from someone this small. I wondered where a beautiful, obviously cared-for, domestic kitten as young as this - I estimated her age at six weeks - had come from and how she had gotten over, around, or under the fence into our yard. It’s a question I’ve never answered.

That wet stuff goes somewhere!

By the end of the show I was watching, I had decided I wasn’t going to look for her owner. Anyone who allowed a kitten this young to be outside at night in a southern California neighborhood frequented by coyotes was too irresponsible to return her to them, even if I could find them.

That night, she curled up on my chest in our bed with her head on my shoulder. It’s the place she’s taken most every night since.

Copper-eyed lady

In the morning light, I looked at her and realized she was not a common breed. I looked in a cat photo book I had and found a photo of a cat that looked like her, with the same short flat face, which was idenfied as a Bombay, a black cat created in the 1960s by breeding a Burmese with a black American shorthair. She was even more uncommon than I had thought.

Having decided she was coming to stay, the next thing was to find her name. I tried a few, but they didn’t seem right. Then Jurate called her “Cookie,” and she glanced over when she heard it. “Cookie” she was and is.

It’s all mine!

Right from the start, she established her independence, that things would be done when she wanted to do them, the way she wanted to. In truth, she’s a willful, spoiled litle lady who can sometimes be a brat, but she always gets away with it. She established herself with the older kitties as someone of consequence in Cat World as it exists here at Le Chateau du Chat. When Biggles, the previous leader of the pride, died, she assumed that role and none of the others ever questioned her.

All those kitties were older at the time, and they have crossed the Rainbow Bridge, leaving Cookie as the oldest kitty here, with the feral kittens having grown into a new cat society. Her regal position is sometimes contested by one or the other of them, but she maintains her throne.

It’s tiring being wonderful

All cats are wonderful, but some are very special, and Cookie is one of them. The amazing Pyewacket, previous black queen of the house, had died 18 months before Cookie arrived, and I sometimes think reincarnation is possible, when she does something that reminds me of her predecessor.

One cute cookie

Cookie is now 15, which is getting old for little black Bombay cats, but she still doesn’t suffer fools and she’s definitely my special girl. Jurate was once watching the two of us interacting and exclaimed she was now a believer in “interspecies miscegenation.”

She’s the kitty who meets and greets everyone who comes in our house, passing judgement on their worthiness. So far, her judgement hasn’t missed.

I’m quite happy to be owned by Cookie.

Fabulous Feline Fridays will now be a regular feature at That’s Another Fine Mess because we all need to be reminded that life with cats makes life dealing with our daily cares and worries bearable.

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