Now I am a cat person. Never thought I’d say that, but I have evolved over 86 years into an honest to goodness cat person.
We had a dog, Teddi, who we loved and who loved us in return. When she passed, we had gotten older and couldn’t really handle another dog to walk several times and properly care for.
We did without a pet for a few years, but one day we heard that Charleston had roof rats to deal with. We, actually saw one in our unit once. Hence, we hired an exterminator to do an “exclusion” project. That means he plugged up every visible entry in our unit to keep the rats out. In casual conversation, the exterminator said, “If you guys had a cat, the rats would sense it and go to another location.” We immediately started a search for a cat.

Nicole was our first cat; a ragdoll; a breed that’s relatively calm and a good match for an elderly couple like us. She was a great pet. We got her when she was about two years old. We gave her the whole apartment to live in, which she did for about 11 years. She stayed on the floor and didn’t jump up on everything, including the sink and stove.
Nicole, however, was “allergic” to her carrier. She just hated it. Whenever we needed to put her in the carrier to take her somewhere, like the vet, we needed to allow at least an hour. She would run from us and hide under the bed to avoid being put in the carrier. After a few frustrating efforts, we learned that we had a way to get her out from under the bed. It’s called a vacuum cleaner. Just running it near the bed would get her to run out and enable us to catch her. Then shoving her into the carrier was another major effort. We’ll visit this later, when discussing our next feline pet.
Nicole did her job. In addition to being a fine, lovely, furry companion for Marjorie and me, she warded off any possible roof rats from our apartment (we didn’t have any elephants either).

Looking back, we weren’t her owners. We were her staff. She was the boss of us. But after about 11 years comfortably in charge, Nicole passed on.

Enter our latest feline queen, Ziva. We got her as a kitten from a breeder of ragdoll cats. We named her for one of our favorite TV heroines, Ziva David of NCIS. Ziva is still very much with us. She’s now about 3 years old and a super companion for seniors like Marjorie and me.
Like most cats, Ziva is not a lap cat. If you pick her up and sit with her in your lap, she may stay still for 10 seconds, but then she’s off. She does want to be in the same room with us, just not too close. She sleeps at the foot of my bed and when she feels like it, likes to knead the skin on my side. They call that “making biscuits”. It doesn’t bother me until her nails get too big. Then it hurts, so I take her to the groomer to get her nails clipped. Yesterday morning she got groomed and had nails clipped. So knead all you want, Ziva. In fact, she just finished this morning’s biscuits about 5 minutes ago.
Luckily, Ziva, unlike Nicole, is very docile and cooperative when it comes to the carrier. She seems very comfortable in it.
That’s the good news. We need to keep her primarily in one room of the apartment; our bedroom. Why, you ask?
Because she won’t stay down on the floor. She’s up on everything; including the sink, stove and tabletops. She could easily hurt herself on the stove or break things. Ergo, she stays in our room.
Another Ziva idiosyncracy. She likes me to pet her with my foot. I need to remove my shoes before going into “her” room. She’ll lay down in front of me and turn over to be petted. She’ll tolerate hand petting for only a short time. Weird cat.
Finally, she seems to have a built in alarm clock. Between 530 and 6 AM every mornin, she’ll jump on the bed and come right up to my face. She’ll stand with her face almost touching mine. I can usually feel her whiskers.
She doesn’t meow, lick, or bite me. She just stands there on the bed with her face right into mine, until I awaken.
It’s like she’s sayin,”Get your ass outta my bed and feed me, Dummy”. Which, of course, I do. After all, that’s what staff is for.

Enuf