At his weblog today, my Patient Husband tells the story of how Stormy came to live with him. I was the cat-person. He was not. I figured we’d talk about getting a cat after we got married. Instead, she came to him three months before in one of those “God sent me a cat” moments.
I happened to be home from work that day when he called, sounding uneasy: “I’m looking at a kitten in my bathtub.” I couldn’t help but laugh as I talked him through her immediate needs, and then all day I got little updates. She was jealous of me when I moved in. The first time my Patient Husband stayed overnight for a work trip, she let out a piteous wail when I shut the lights to go to sleep: “You forgot him! You always go get him, and tonight you forgot!”
When we got a second cat, she was stunned: what was this thing? They never fought because what she should have been the dominant cat, it simply never occurred to her, and the other cat knew better than to rock the boat.
The final blow for her self-esteem was when we had a baby. Until that moment, she thought of herself as a larval form of human.
She was a funny and sweet cat, and I wanted to say thank-you for all the condolences and well-wishes yesterday.
