Why I’m Thankful to a Born-Feral, Kinda Ugly Rat-Gray Cat

Our first sight of Little Sweetie Pie was telling. She was tiny, eight weeks old and the size of my hand. She was a little crazed looking, gray like a rat, and the runt of the litter. And she had her big brother – probably 25 percent larger – pinned on his back and was biting his head.

For a while the kids and I wavered as we stood in the Big Bad Woof. Should we get the docile female in the litter with the cute marking over her ear like a beret? But she was a tad skittish and the man holding her was in love. 

We asked for the gray cat, and Daughter named her Little Sweetie Pie.

I told the LSH (long-suffering husband) what we had done, and he pushed for us to go back and ask again for the cute one. But it was too late. She was taken and the rat-gray cat was ours.

She arrived, to Buddy’s horror. He sat behind the living room chair and looked murderously at us – the betraying jerks who brought this interloper – and at the tiny interloper herself.  

We put Little Sweetie Pie, who was shorter than a stair step, into a quiet room where we thought she’d make the best transition to a new home. She hated it. Alone – perhaps alone for the first time in her short, sibling-filled life – she set up a fuss. Loud, baby meows.

We felt sorry for her, but not so sorry that we didn’t talk about how ugly she was. Her face was long and asymmetrical. Kind of cock-eyed. “She isn’t very cute at all,” LSH said when he got home.

It was Son’s last day of kindergarten, and there was a block party. Sweetie Pie wailed ferociously when left in the room. And climbed the door screen when we left her alone in the house. I finally put on a jacket and slid her into the sleeve. She spent much of the party in that sleeve, sometimes watching from behind my wrist and sometimes sleeping. 

Clearly, with my babies growing up, I had a new baby.

She spent evenings with me, getting a second dinner as I washed dishes after the kids went to bed and LSH watched TV. In bed, she nuzzled me and had to be petted before she could drop off.

But she wasn’t just friendly. Unlike Buddy, she was a furious hunter. She cleaned the mice out of the kitchen – and we’re talking mice which had evaded Buddy, humane traps and snap traps. Despite being on a leash, she cleared the field mice out of a nest in the tiny front yard.

And she was naughty. She tackled Buddy as he walked to nap, attacked his tail when it twitched in a dream and drove him to furious distraction. She snitched cheese, finished milk in cereal bowls and tugged on flowers in flower pots – dumping over the whole mess and spilling water all over the kitchen.

As she was naughty, and as we scolded and loved Sweetie Pie, Daughter, adopted from India at almost aged three, watched and learned what our reassurances and legal documents never could teach her. That we didn’t get rid of naughty cats, and we wouldn’t send naughty girls back to India. Daughter relaxed with us, in a way I hadn’t felt previously.

 Sweetie’s affection pervaded the house. Once, on a cold Saturday morning, Daughter was snuggled in my bed telling about some unhappy incident in school involving mean friends, and Sweetie jumped onto the quilt. Rita reached a long ,thin arm out from under the covers to pet her. “Sweetie Pie makes everything better,” she said.

Tellingly, LSH within a year couldn’t remember that there was ever a time he didn’t think Sweetie was cute. If you ask him now, he’ll deny that he ever said such a thing.

She died, in a freak accident just about a year ago at age three. I’ll miss her forever. And I owe her more than she’ll ever know.