It's Not Easy Being Gray

Just ask Louise. Once she was the apple of my eye, my cherished and spoiled kitty. Back in the day when I was single, I used to love coming home from work. (And who doesn't?) Anyway, in the darkened bay window I would see the outline of her pointy ears as she sat there waiting for me. To me that was even better than a brass band heralding my arrival. Now the poor girl is lucky if she can manage to squeeze her oversized derriere into my peripheral vision once every few days. Tonight Daddy Mac working late, and Sam is in bed, so she's curled up right here next to me, catching up on some long overdue attention. Poor Louise. I just had to stop and give her a guilt-induced rubdown.

How did she fall from so far from grace? It has nothing at all to do with her furry self per se --she is still my favorite feline in the history of the universe. Well, two things happened to shake things up, and I will list them in chronological order -- drumroll please:

1. Bernie

and -- you guessed it --

2. Sam

As you probably would guess, Louise was none too happy about Bernie hanging out at "our" pad. So for a few weeks, she did what any right-minded kitty would do -- she peed anywhere and everywhere she thought would annoy me. (That's a lot of places, including a garment bag I had just finished packing to go to a wedding.) Needless to say, her nefarious plan was quite successful -- I was annoyed, very annoyed. Don't get me started... However, she soon came to a realization, a kitty "aha" moment. She actually liked Bernie. Cool! In fact she decided she liked him even better than me. Not so cool, but I got over it with some therapy. Ingrate kitty.

With Sam's arrival a few years later, it was like a tidal wave crashing down on her, wrenching her previous life away from her with its undertow. Buh-bye! Louise was freaked. (So were Daddy Mac and I for that matter, but that's a whole other story.) She not only had no desire to befriend the new babe, she had no desire to even be on the same floor as this wailing creature. So she hid. And she moped. And she hid, and she moped, and so on. And then the baby became a toddler, and she liked to sit close and watch him get into trouble until he started to grab her fur -- and her tail. Ouch. So she learned to observe his antics from a bit farther away so she could make a getaway if necessary. She wasn't always successful in avoiding torture, but she was quite a good sport. She never scratched Sam or even hissed at him, although I couldn't have blamed her if she had. (And I might have been tempted to cheer her on.) Poor Louise.

Now she and the Saminator are the best of buds. He even pets her nicely! Ah, domestic tranquility reigns once more, but it's nice every once in a while to have it just be us girls again.

LibbY