I hate my cat

I hate my cat.

This guy. Yeah, fuck him.

I suspect that point needs clarification. Cat people always argue that I couldn't possibly hate my cat because he's so damn fluffy. And they're right. But only because he's not technically my cat.  Not in the 'you can't own an animal' kind of way, either. I've owned the hell out of some animals, with ownership here being defined as being the person primarily responsible for picking up its shit. He's not my cat in the 'my roommate’s freeloading girlfriend insists that she'll move out if her can't live here in spite of the fact that I'm allergic' sort of way. And I hate him, but not just for that.

This is not to say that I hate cats, which is apparently a distinction people have trouble making, so I’ll illustrate it with this Venn diagram:

I would add so much more to the "Things I hate" category, but there are limits to the visualization power of computers.

I loved my first roommates cats that I lived with before. One of them was old, blind, and brain damaged from the time someone sat on her head when she was a kitten. Mahena was a being of pure, malevolent evil. She has been known to sit in front of a water bowl and deny other animals, including multiple dogs, the right to drink from her water. She would take a swipe at anything that moved near her, and she regularly sat on the head of the other cat that lived with me. But she was my little girl, and I loved her. She would sleep on my bed all day, and wake me up for pets in the middle of the night by nudging me and onomatopoeically purring (which is to say she said “purr” rather than doing it). One time she even tried to give me a little kitty handjob.

Lesson learned? For cats, dicks = pincushions.

I put up with the fur, the allergies, and the fact that they fought like, well, cats. But I still liked them. Well enough. But not this cat. He doesn’t even have a single name because his terribleness can’t be contained by just one. His owner calls him Sherman (which is a stupid name for a cat), I called him Oscar for a while, and  my other roommate decide that “Bitch Face” was much more appropriate. For the most part, we call him “cat,” but recent evidence suggests that his true name is Mr. Snuggles. Since this is the most degrading option, it’s the one I use.

Why I hate him:

1.) He’s just made of ginger and awful

Mr. Snuggles is a demanding son of a bitch. He decides what he wants and he finds a way to get it. Most of the time this is about food. When anyone cooks chicken, he saunters into the room, and starts a complicated weaving through the cook’s legs, in an attempt to murder someone so that he can both get chicken and human eyeballs (I am convinced, above all else, that the cat wants to eat my face). When that doesn’t work, he just stares at you:

Mr. Snuggles demands chicken. His desires don’t even make it halfway through the first line of the Meow Mix song!

And it bothers me when he just looks at me. Look at this picture again:

See how imperious he is, right down to his little bitch face, which is one of his dominant features (bitch-facedness, which I didn’t even know was a thing until I lived with him)? That is a look that just screams “I’m better than you, so you’d better pet me,” but…

2.) You can’t pet him without body armor

To further his attempts to get my eyeballs, the cat is slowly trying to turn me into furniture, you know, the kind with a massaging option. Occasionally, he’ll hop on the couch, lie down next to me, put his paws on my forearm, and look at me in a pleading manner that I’ve dubbed “pet the kitty.” If I pet him when he does this, he’ll be happy for five minutes, then he’ll roll on his belly. At this point, I need to stop petting him because after a minute of petting his belly, he’ll bite me.

 “I wuv you! And now Imma gunna fucking eat you.”

If I don’t throw him against the wall at that point, he’ll start scratching. That’s right: he begs for attention and then gets so happy that he draws blood. You know what else does that? Nothing! Nothing else does that! Maybe if there were a mosquito hooker, but I like to think I’d get more out of that exchange.

If I give up on common sense all together and attempt to pet him, he will usually start by licking my hand. At first I thought this was a sign of affection, but soon grew to realize that he’s cleaning me so that I don’t touch his glorious mane with my grimy hands. If he doesn’t clean me first, he’ll instantly start cleaning himself after being pet. There’s nothing like obsessive sanitation procedures to let you know that you’re only as loved to the degree that you adhere to health codes.

Then again, maybe he has a point.

His favorite thing in the whole wide world seems to be when he licks my hand and then I rub that bit at the top of his head that he can never quite reach. That’s right, he’s turned me into an organic loofa.

3.) He has a little bitch voice

I once read an article that cats can meow at the same frequency as a crying baby, a frequency that they find through trial and error until they discover the most effective way of getting you off the couch. Mr. Snuggles doesn’t sound like a crying baby, but he seems to know what types of sounds push my buttons. He usually meows to get me to let him outside. He used to be allowed to go out on the balcony where he’d lord over the flies and moths that were drawn by the light at night. Our intrepid hunter killed so many moths that he earned himself the epithet of “Mothbane” and a sour stomach. Cat is liked to eat all the bugs he could find, which made him sick all over my carpet, so he’s no longer allowed outside.

But in his heart, his cold, black and ginger heart, he knows that if he bothers me enough, I’ll let him outside. At first I could just raise an item over my head and make a throwing motion to scare him off, but he quickly learned that I would not throw some things, like my remote, leading him to look at what I had in my hand before running off. So, every day it’s a struggle between whether he gives up meowing or I run out of things to throw, and I lose every single time because he’s a persistent mother fucker. In the end, I have to get up to pick something up to throw at him. At one point I adopted the use of a squirt bottle, but he no longer fears of it unless I can squirt him in the face. I am surprisingly good at hitting a cat in the face with a stream of water from fifteen paces.

And it’s not just when he wants to go out or show his hatred of me, he is loud and obnoxious all the time. Mr. Snuggles was neutered when he was very young, and like most neutered toms, Mr. Snuggles has a little bitch voice. It’s just so… God dammit.

4.) He’s cute, and he goddam knows it

I spend most of the time working at home, only occasionally going to campus to teach class and abuse copier privileges. Well… truth to be told, I spend most of my time on the same spot on the couch in front of the tv, only occasionally getting up to go to the bathroom. The cat also spends most of his day at home, and while my roommates are out, he won’t shut up. I spend most of the day growing increasingly furious. When his owner gets home, I tell her what an asshole her cat is, and he instantly flomps on his side and uses his cuteness to overcome her sensibilities, which aren’t all that great to begin with.

 Cute, maybe, but not so bright.

In fact, my roommate is incapable of disciplining him at all. I get that you can’t really discipline a cat, not properly, but she doesn’t even try because he’s “so damn fluffy!” All of this sounds like a complaint about my roommate, but the fact of the matter is that he knows that he’s bulletproof. He will actually space out his obnoxiousness and intersperses it with shows of cuteness and affection. If other animals learn his tactics, we will soon be overrun.

5.) He’ll only let me pet him when no one else is home

It turns out these pet me/bite you/grooming sessions are quite intimate because nine times out of ten, Mr. Snuggles will only play “pet the kitty” when no one else is home. I believe he does this because he hates me and will only deign to ask for attention if there’s no one better, and he wants to make sure that no one can hear me scream.

On rare occasions, he falls asleep in my lap before he thinks to play with my blood. This would be very sweet and endearing, but the second he hears someone turning the doorknob, he gets off of my lap and pretends that he wants nothing to do with me. So, even if I wanted anything to do with him, he’s made it clear that he’s a fair weather friend at best and a vampire at worst.

Obviously, it could be worse.

“Pet the kitty” isn’t the only thing he does differently when I’m alone with him. He yowls constantly when his mistress isn’t home, and he redoubles his show of misery when both of my roommates are gone. The yowling sounds like he’s lonely and he’s looking for someone to love him, so when only one of my roommates is gone, the other will call out to the cat, which will prompts him to trot off to find his buddy. When I’m alone, I will tell the cat that he’s not alone because I’m there. At that point, he invariably stops, considers me, and then starts yowling twice as loud, even after I rubbed him with his own saliva.  

6.) He fucking hates me

I’m sure there’ll be some deranged maniacs who will read all of this and conclude that Mr. Snuggles loves me and we’re cute together when we play. I assure you, this is not the case. To illustrate this point, I have included a log I kept last year when my roommates went away for a week.

Day 1: Cat is largely unaffected. He doesn't seem to notice that they're gone, though he does occasionally look at the door, presumably anticipating their return. I don't have the heart to tell him they won't be back until Monday.

Day 2: Cat has noticed that Something Is Wrong. He "ma-rrow"s nearly nonstop, stalking from room to room trying to find someone who isn't me. He clearly has no interest in interacting with me, scratching at me after I pick him up and refusing to play with his toys. He sleeps fitfully, and only in places where he can keep an eye on both his jailer and the door.

Day 3: I woke up this morning to find the cat on my bed, staring at me with disdain. I get the feeling he slept with me and hates himself for it. Once I got up, and went to watch some tv, he curled up in my lap for forty-five minutes while I pet him absently. When I got up, he gave me something the look akin to that of someone with Stockholm syndrome crossed with a victim of domestic abuse. He no long looks at me and seems to be pretending his extended fit of purring while I stroked him never happened. Rather he focuses all of his attention on the door. He seems to miss being with anyone who isn't me.

Day 4: Cat assaulted me upon returning from the store. After attacking my feet a couple of times, he strode about MA--RRROWing with a ferocity seldom expressed by one so furry. I eventually discovered he was out of food and had maliciously knocked over his water dish. Expecting a jailbreak, I attended him very cautiously.

When I was done, he continued to follow me, loudly meowing and refusing to eat. At this point I realized he wanted me to clean up after him: he had vomited a foot from the food bowl and refused to eat while it was there. After he consumed two bits of kibble, he disappeared, only to return more incensed than ever, running around and making a racket. Upon investigating, I discovered he was taking a post-bathroom victory lap to celebrate the fact that he had, once again, gotten a human to clean up after his shit. I can no longer tell which of us is the prisoner. I sleep with my door locked and a knife clutched in my fist.

Day 5: My decision to not talk to the cat anymore has produced interesting results. On the one hand, I anthropomorphize him a lot less, but on the other hand, it has led to a lot more contentious staring and I can feel his hatred of me brimming over. Regardless, I can't let him win this one.

Day 6: The cat is up to something. The other day I woke up and could hear him purring from the other room; when I approached him, he rolled over and showed me his belly. His uncharacteristic happiness has led me to believe he has stolen someone's soul. This bears further observation. I fear it’s mine.

Day 7: Last night, the cat hid in my room as I prepared for bed, which led to him being shut in my room. He snuck up on me as I was half asleep. He put his face near mine and started to purr. He kneaded my side and then curled up on my chest and slept there. I was too afraid to move for much of the night. Today he follows me everywhere, and sleeps near me. He meows constantly when I'm out of his sight. It has become clear that the cat's madness is presenting in a disturbing new way: if I didn't know better, I would say that he now loves me. Lacking his usual source of comfort and affection, he is using me as a surrogate. Until his mistress returns, he is mine. God help us both.

Day 8: My roommates have return. Once they opened the door, my buddy forgot about our long struggle through detente and toward friendship. Where once he purred at the touch of my hand or even at a casual glance, he is now cold and distant. When we cross paths in the hallway, he doesn’t even look at me anymore. My conscious mind struggles to ascribe meaning to the events of the past week, but deep down I know the truth: it’s Chinatown.