Rosie the Cat

Whenever I open the freezer door to get an ice cube, Rosie the Cat appears at my feet… She looks up at me with her big sad eyes and gives me her best pan handler’s look. Please… Please!!!

I always act as if I’m going to shut the door and ignore her… She cries out desperately as though she really believes I could ever resist her charms.

“Okay Rosie,” I begrudgingly say. “But just this one last time...”

I reach back into the freeze and pull out one more cube, one just for Rosie.

I drop it onto the linoleum floor and it spins around as Rosie pauses to watch her prey for just a split second. And then she strikes!

A slapping sound as her paw hits the side of the cube, followed by a thud as it crashes against the wall on the opposite side of the kitchen. It always the same.

She flies across the room and slaps the ice cube back in the direction it just came from.

She spends the next 30 seconds or so expertly dribbling it across the floor with the reflexes that only a young cat can deliver… and then the panic sets in.

Her love of the ice cube is so great that it overwhelms her and she becomes afraid she’ll lose it… That someone might take it away.

She drags it into a corner and picks the cube up in her tiny mouth. I always think that it will be too big, but somehow she always manages to hold on to it.

She gives me a skeptical look… Even though I just gave her the ice cube she thinks that I might take it away. Anything as marvelous as an ice cube must be too good for her to have as her own.

Her eyes search the room for my sister’s cat Ozzie. Surely he could be the one to take her cube… She gives him a growl worthy of a pitbull… Ozzie looks confused. He has no interest in the ice cube.

Then she makes her mad dash up the stairs and under my bed… She’ll be there until the cube has melted.

Rosie has a lot of quirks like that… She also has a fetish for plastic grocery bags, and women’s earrings.

When everyone is in the living room watching TV she likes to sneak up behind my wife and chew on her hair?!

If you leave a glass of juice unattended for too long then she can’t help but to try knocking it over… We’ve tried everything we can to break her of that habit but NOTHING works and I now truly believe that it’s true; she just can’t help herself.

The other habit we can’t break her of is her obsession with going outside… She will sometimes sit behind a chair near the front door and wait for it to open. When it does she springs out and tries to make a run.

Once outside she doesn’t really know what to do. She’s afraid to go too far, but at the same time she doesn’t want to go back inside right away either. The only thing you can do is leave the front door open and chase her up and down the street until she gets bored and decides to run back inside… It’s like a game to her… Not to the person(s) who have to chase her however.

Those are just her quirky issues… But as annoying as she can be at times, the positives far outweigh the negatives.

I start every morning by opening my bedroom door to find a sleepy Rosie waiting for me patiently. When she sees me she gets up and lets out a long meow as she stretches her back. She purs as I scratch behind her ears.

Then she follows me throughout my morning routine until I leave. As I get in my car I can see her little face pressed up against the window begging me not to leave her.

When I get home from work she’s right there at the same spot. As though she’d been waiting all day… Once inside she always races me up the stairs to my bedroom. She’ll until I’m almost to the top of the steps and then springs up the stairs zooming past me at the last second.

Sometimes I cheat and grab her before she can get past me… but I’ve never been able to beat her playing fair.

I also love if you pick her up and hold her, she will reach her little paw out and try to softly pet your face… I’ve never seen a cat do that before… In fact I’ve never seen a cat be so willing to be picked up and held. You can hold her for long periods of time and the most she’ll ever do is wiggle around or meow when she wants to go on her way.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well when I got home from work yesterday Rosie was sick… Very sick.

She had been refusing food for the better half of 2 days and was very weak and lethargic. She had a large sore on her neck. And worse yet, she was bleeding from places where you shouldn’t be bleeding. When I picked her up her eyes were dull and lifeless. She tried to meow but nothing came out. She’s less than 3 years old.

My mom took her to the vet’s first thing this morning… I waited for the call trying to stay optimistic, but knowing very well that things weren’t looking very good for Rosie.

I thought about the game she plays with the ice cube and it was almost too much for me.

Finally, mercifully, my mom called… The vet does not think it’s anything too serious. His theory is that it’s a mix of stress, a skin infection, and a stomach ailment of some sort... (I have no idea of what would cause a cat stress)

He gave my mom some medicine and wants to change her diet for the next few days. It sounds a little too simple of a solution if you ask me, but I really want to believe that he’s right. But I’m still worried.

I’ll probably feel much better when I can get home and see her little face waiting for me at the window.