Three years ago, when we first moved into the Park, we were surprised on a trip to PetSmart to buy cat food. There were two giant tents in the parking lot, and big signs that said "Adoptathon." Every animal shelter in the tri-county area was represented. I had been begging the man to agree to getting a kitten as soon as we moved in the house, so when we saw the tents full of dogs and cats, I got more than one sideways pointed glance, and the question, "You knew about this, didn't you?" I didn't, and I said so, but I don't think he believed me. I went through the cat tent, looking through all of the little baby faces for the female black kitten I had been begging for. I had trouble finding the one I was looking for. But when the man removed the little tuxedo who didn't want to be held by me, and plopped down the black and white boy kitty, I knew in a heartbeat that he was coming home with me. He still gives me that same, "I'm gorgeous and you love me" expression that he did that first moment, and he is absolutely right. I turned my back to fill out the adoption paperwork (in the other tent) for just a few minutes, but by the time I came back I found that my man was already holding a little black girl kitten, saying that we were taking that one too. Who was I to say no?
Raising more than one kitten is just asking for destruction. Much as the trio of kittens that included Cricket was collectively known as Godzilla's Kittens, I began referring to this pair, Jackie and Alfie, as my Minions of Chaos. Many things broke in those early months. We used to have a much smaller cat tower where the current large one is, and I used to have a second pottery masque that I had made and was very proud of. I was stupid enough to hang it on the wall above the cat tower. I had loaned my last laptop to the man, after he wrecked his old one. He parked it on the floor, directly under the cat tower one night, when we were both out of the house. I came home from a movie, and found the Green Man masque had been knocked off the wall, landing on one point of an acacia leaf on the shell of the laptop, shattering the computer screen and breaking the masque into several pieces. It took me weeks to pick the masque up and throw it away. I don't think I really thought I was going to glue it together, but I just couldn't bring myself to deal with the loss. The sight of it reminded me not to put any more of my irreplaceable art pieces in vulnerable positions.
Athena has always been very much her own kitten. Her life story was nothing like the Minions, coming here as a three-week old foster, switching to moist canned food far too early (I think the fact that she barely even touched a bottle here is why she is so bitey now), and having to go back to the shelter twice a week for three months, getting the awful lime dip until she was finally declared ringworm-free. I think her early stresses are what made her a little wild, a little stand-offish. She wants to be part of the club, but she is just too weird, too socially awkward. I think today she was trying to prove to the Minions that she's one of them. Her gang initiation was to destroy something of mine, and it appears that she succeeded. I was upstairs finally getting back to a carpentry project that has been very difficult to finish, and I was listening to all the music I have stored on the old Model T computer on shuffle. I didn't give Athena enough attention, and she went wandering to see what trouble she could find. She crawled behind my old CPU, and started fiddling around with the tangled spaghetti pile of cords in the corner. When the modem fell off the shelf and scared her away, I realized where she was, but I don't know exactly what mischief she managed. The music shut off, the computer screen went dark, and the CPU started beeping an alarm that I can't fix. I don't know how to fix it, although I tried. So I shut it down. I no longer have access to my entire music library, nor to the bulk of my photographs that are all still stored on that computer. No, I haven't backed it up onto my portable hard drive in ages. In all this time, I have never worked out how to transfer my entire iTunes library from the old CPU to the new laptop, and without a disc drive, re-burning all my CDs is not an option.
I wonder what symbol Athena will be sporting now that she is initiated into the Minions of Chaos. A Pink Lady jacket? A tattoo? A pledge pin on her ROTC uniform? I think I hear the big kids chanting. "One of us, one of us, we accept her, we accept her..."
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