In the long, slow countdown to the next round of semi-permanent migraine preventative (Botox), I'm having a lot of quiet days. This was one of them. As with several mornings lately, I sat in my favorite chair, feeling like a very large person stood over me and pressed down on my brain with his thumb. It wasn't cripplingly painful, just a whole lot of pressure that made me disinclined to perform a whole lot of activity. I even missed the first half of the third post-season football game because I nodded off, waiting for the pressure to ease. I also fell asleep in the late afternoon, as I had done once or twice last week, without a whole lot of choice in the matter.
The one other constant, besides migraines looming like thunder in the distance, has been overwhelming affection from the Crankiest Cat in the West (tm). If I sit still long enough, which translates to more than a minute, Athena shows up and tells me how I'm the only human she has ever liked, and I am to allow her to dance around my neck and shoulders until she gets tired of it. She settles across my collarbone, and presses her whole torso against my face. Sometimes cuddles turn into bites, if I don't pay attention in just the right way. (Bites only on my hands, thankfully, not my face.) When she is like this, I think back to the months when I pretended she was merely a foster kitten. She had to go back to the shelter twice a week to get dipped in a sulfurous foul substance for the tiny spot of ringworm on her tail, and it left her permanently distrustful of any human who tries to hold her and do any maintenance or treatment upon her person. She's hard to brush for this reason, so she gets mats on her back, and her nails are exquisitely long and sharp. By the time she was four months old, I recognized her sensitive nature, and her hot temper, and knew I could never turn her over to the shelter to adopt to someone who didn't understand where she was coming from. I spent years gaining her trust, and it is my experience that she doesn't throw herself at any other human like she does with me. Yeah, she'll let some people pet her, especially if food is in the equation. I have never seen her compulsively knead anyone though. She definitely doesn't like anyone else to pick her up for long.
It's kind of nice, knowing I did the absolute right thing by her to keep her and treat her gently, as she could have ended up with horrible humans who would have just considered her a bad cat and denied her affection. But at the same time, it's a little overwhelming having to wear a six pound fuzzy black mustache when I'm trying to read or watch television.
No comments:
Post a Comment