The Best Cat

My cat is the best cat. She loves me for no reason at all and always shows it. She sleeps all afternoon, then wakes to give me hugs and kisses. First she cries out, in her high pitched trill because she never learned how to really meow. I hear it across the apartment before I see her. I think she’s confused about where I am, calling out to me, or just announcing that she’s no longer asleep. Then she comes jogging out of her den, usually my partner’s room where the good cat tree is. We set it up there because the windows are better and she loves the sun. Plus her incessantly shedding fur coats the ground like snow, and I’m terribly allergic to cats.

You can tell she just woke up because her icy blue eyes are squinty slits. Slow blinks. She sways on her tiptoes, back arched, enormous ringed-lemur tail curled into a perfect question mark as if to say “What the hell is going on?” Then she sees me, it doesn’t take her long, and she picks up her pace until she’s 2 feet from my socks, which she’s still convinced must be a pair of mice she one day might catch. She pulls the e-brake like a stunt-show stock car racer, and drifts frictionless across the vinyl flooring, careens into my shins at full speed, a brutal T-bone collision. She’s already purring. I reach down to pet her because it’s what I want, and surely it’s what she wants, but she slinks away. The ritual has a rhythm and timing outside of my comprehension, and I always mess it up.

Sometimes I see her sitting alone in our living room. Her head just a few inches above the ground, looking out a window at nothing in particular. Her muscles are relaxed, her expression intrigued. I think, in that moment, how happy I would be to have a child someday, something I don’t often consider, if this is at least in part what it’s like. Watching them look out at the world. Confidently curious. And I could stand back and see ordinary things brand new. Explain the world to someone new to it. See wonder on their face. My cat’s face is neutral. Ears at attention, eyes wide and pupils thin. Her fur makes dark lines pointing to a pink nose, beneath it a thin pink mouth obscured by two tufts of white whiskers. If I’m lucky, I get twenty seconds to watch her in secret before her tiny neck turns. It amazes me how she always goes right to my eyes, right to my face just like I look to hers. Her expression doesn’t change. We stare at one another. She looks away. I look away too. Like the oldest of friends, confident in our silence. We both know we’ll cross paths again.

She’s behind me now, another long blink on her half-shuddered eyes and she’s on approach again. She scrapes her cheek this time across my hairy calf: I can already feel the hives forming. I reach down again but it’s still too soon; she shies away. She circles me like how I imagine a shark would, seemingly disinterested until it strikes, swims past, and circles some more. Her cheeks rub on anything that passes within a 2 foot radius. Door-frame, check. Chair leg, check. And then she’s ready, and I pick her up without protest. She may not know how to meow but she’s mastered her purr better than an operatic singer. I hold her in front of me and she rumbles like a lawn mower.

But suddenly she’s higher up in the apartment than she’s used to and she forgets I’m there at all. Her eyes open up to perfect circles. She scans the apartment like she’s just crash landed on a strange alien world, lips pulled slightly back in some kind of olfactory-enhancing expression. She puts all 4 feet on my chest as I arch my back and become a level platform. I’m still holding her torso but she never tucks in her legs, ready to leap off me at any second. She likes to feel prepared.

After a few moments of cataloging this peculiar place she sees me again, the purring rev’s back up and those furry eyelids threaten to shut completely. We rub our noses together. She smears the corner of her mouth across my face. I think this is nice. I hold in a sneeze and repeat in my head 3 times so as not to forget: wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.

But then she’s over it. She’s said hello, I’ve said hello. She squirms and twists around, her legs coiling, ready to launch off my chest. I set her down, and she circles me a few more times, but bends beneath my hand like razer wire. Petting time is over.

I don’t think it occurs to her what I am doing when she starts this ritual. I tried to ignore her once, head down in work, but she’s persistent. I know about what time each day she’ll likely swing by, and I can plan out my tasks accordingly. I’m overjoyed every time I see that stoic, focused expression, hear her rumbling purr, and then rub my watering eyes. Damn it, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.

I’m certain I’m not the first person to say their cat is the best cat. I know I’m not even the first to write it down. I bet there are hundreds, maybe thousands, who even used the same title, descriptive and ordinary. But every one of those idiots is dead wrong and I feel bad they’ll never get to meet the real thing.