Common Sense, Dancing

Let me say right up front, before I go any further, that I believe people can be divided into two teams: Team Dog and Team Cat. I play for Team Dog, enthusiactically. I have never been a Cat Person, and I can honestly admit that I never really understood the attraction of a cat. (It might be my one failing.) My bar is set fairly low, I think, and yet cats fail to make it: If, when I walk into a room, someone/something else immediately exits, well — I’m suspicious of them. This rule applies in equal measure to relatives, children, and so-called family pets. You all know who you are.

Now, onto today’s story. We have friends, Joanne and Christopher, who have two cats that are long-time members of their family. The cats are long haired orange Persians, and they are siblings named Zsa Zsa and Aslan who are declawed and live the happy lives of house cats. Although they have sort of a grumpy appearance (what with that scrunchy face), I will admit that they are adorable to look at…that is, when they remain in the room long enough to be gazed upon. They normally don’t hang around to be entertained by random humans who happen to stop into their home.

This is neither Aslan nor Zsa Zsa, but you get the idea. Furry, fluffy cats.

At any rate, this is a story about Zsa Zsa. She’s old — and no, I don’t know how old. She’s just old. Not ancient, freakishly-old-for-a-cat old, but not a kitten anymore. In the past several months when I’ve stopped in to see Joanne and Chris, Zsa Zsa was lurking in the next room, sort of in a crouch position as if daring me to gaze upon her. One time, as the light reflected in her eyes, I remarked to Joanne that her one eye looked really scary-glowy, and what was up with that? And then Zsa Zsa twitched her tail at me and left. But Joanne and Christopher continued to notice that in fact there was something funky going on with that eye.

They took her to the vet, and the vet pronounced her blind. Turns out her retinas had detached due to high blood pressure issues, and she was now permanently blind. Although this was hard news for my friends the Cat People, the vet reassured them that Zsa Zsa could indeed have many long, happy years, and that she’d be just fine. There would be the inevitable bumping into furniture and somewhat less-than-graceful catlike maneuvers as she got used to her new situation, but all would be okay.

Well, Zsa Zsa seems to have rallied just fine. She continues to turn on her sibling, Aslan, when the mood strikes her (she bumps into him and he gets hissed at as if it were his fault {I have to say, I kind of like that attitude}), she negotiates the stairs up to bed, down to the litter box and over to her food. Impressive adaptive abilities.

But the most impressive thing? She’s been catching mice in recent days with renewed zeal. To recap: she’s blind. And declawed. And catching mice. When Christopher first told me this, I mocked him. I wondered what kind of field mouse he was inviting into his home, if his blind, declawed cat was able to catch it. Seriously, this must be an evolutionary event at work: the less-abled field mice are picked off by the blind, declawed cat, thus ensuring that the weaker mice genes don’t replicate. I basically told Chris that obviously she caught the one slow mouse in the area.

But then she did it again. Still blind, still declawed, and obviously just as lethal as a cat might be expected to be. But come on….What kind of mice are we growing here in Princeton that they can’t escape from a blind cat? Clearly they’re not over at the University, frolicking in Nassau Hall.

Seems to me there’s a New Yorker cartoon in this story somewhere.