Josie (Josefina von Chubs), My Second Cat

Josie is my second cat. She came to live with me as a companion to Tungsten. But Tungsten didn't want a companion, other than me, that is. My orange one guarded her domain jealously, and she and Josie fought on and off for weeks. Thus are good intentions used for paving stones.

When I met her, Josie was a very excited cat. She purred and purred, couldn't sit still and butted her head against everyone and everything. I didn't want a cat that would try to dominate Tungsten. Josie was and is an easy-going girl with a friendly attitude. Even when being assaulted by Tungsten, my new cat's expression was one of incomprehension as to why someone would want to hurt her. The fighting was so bad that I despaired at keeping Josie. She had come from a caring but crowded environment, and I think that, despite the hostility from the queen of the apartment, Josie liked her new semi-loneliness. So I persevered, and so did she. A few months later, she and Tungsten were sniffing noses and the white one was sneaking on to the bed early in the mornings to sleep there.

Josie is a fat cat. She isn't tremendously big, but she weighs almost two and a half times as much as Tungsten. Chubs loves her soft food, and I try to restrict that diet a bit, but I hate to take away something that means so much to her.

Her weight doesn't keep her sedentary, however - being a cat does that. No, she can be quite active, and she will chase and be chased in a game as fast as the next cat. She likes being on the top platform of the highest cat-tree I have, usually jumping there from the top of a lower one. That's where she will settle, snoozing, gazing out the window or simply watching what goes on in the apartment.

Early on, I found her a nervous animal. My Chubs would start at every noise, no matter how small. This was a contrast to Tungsten, who wouldn't worry if a grenade exploded next to her. Playing with Josie was frustrating because she was so easily distracted. Gradually, she relaxed and came to jump at only every second sound. That's how she has remained. She can see me approaching from across the room, yet still give her trademark squeak when, as if by magic, I appear beside her.

Like most cats, however, she can be silent when she wants, vanishing and materializing when the need arising. I wouldn't have thought such bulk could be teleported so simply. Yet most of the time, she can be seen ambling into a room, her round sides wobbling. If spoken to kindly or coyly, she will pause and rub up against furniture, as if she's embarrassed.

She's always been friendly. She is often the first to greet visitors; she loves to smell the insides of their shoes. But it has only been over the last few months that I have received the impression that my Chubs has become my friend. She now will roll over when I come near her; that's her way of asking for a face-rub. She purrs more than she used to, and more audibly. She's still not a lap-cat and may never be, but she does like stepping onto someone while they are sitting or lying, and kneading with her forepaws. Why she gets so happy at such a situation, I don't know, but I encourage it, despite the damage her weight and periodically unclipped claws will do to a person.

She sleeps at night with her big rear end against my side, and facing one edge of the bed. She annoyingly gets up whenever I do, but her ponderous return, usually after I've fallen asleep again, no longer wakes me up.

Tungsten is now most tolerant of her, and though they may never be friends, they are companions, and play together. While my orange one may look devious at times, may use her influence to selfish purposes, Josie never appears sly or mischievous. Her eyes narrow only in sleepiness, never in anger; even her hisses and growls - at foster-cats, for instance - are the least menacing sounds you will hear. I understand Tungsten more, and she has the more human face. But Josie's usually wears a very satisfied expression.

Tungsten, My First Cat

I believe that the more intelligent an animal is, the more personality it has. Dogs, cats, horses, each member of these species has its own characteristics. It can be as basic as what it likes to eat, which is why many people who have more than one cat also have more than one type of cat-food in their homes.

Tungsten, for example, started showing her personality soon after I brought her to live with me. She loves her comfort, for one thing. A few days after she came to live with me, she was curled on my armchair; I wanted to sit there. I thought that we could share. She was fine with that, as long as I didn’t move her. I decided to lift her up and replace her on my lap. She bit me. Well, no, she didn’t bite me, but I thought she was trying to. I was convinced that I’d brought home a malevolent animal that would become vicious whenever she didn’t get her way.

It was ‘her way’ all right, but her way of showing displeasure. If I try to move her from a comfortable spot – which usually coincides with somewhere I want to sit – she will put her teeth around my fingers as if she’s about to tear them apart. But she doesn’t close her mouth. She will do the same with her claws: they will come up, but she won’t use them. It’s a manner of protest. How good natured must a cat be to demonstrate that she could hurt you, but won’t? Whynot? It’s just her way.

Sometimes, the claws come out for fun. One day, I was petting her and her paws gently grabbed my finger; the claws came out and she looked at me, purring. “Go on, take your finger away, I dare you. Hehehe.” Cat humour and human humour don’t always meet.

She’s a bit of a whiner. I didn’t realise this until Josie came to live with us. Until then, most disputes could be indicated in a quieter fashion. When Josie arrived, Tungsten wanted to kill her. I’ll discuss that another time. After she grew used to the new cat, Tungsten still didn’t care for her proximity, so she would whine, as if to say, “There’s that fat white cat again. Get her away!” Tungsten often did this when I would lift her up, as if she suspected that I would deposit her closer to the unwanted roommate.

My orange one is a light eater. She weighs about six and a half pounds, so there is little stomach to fill. She eats half the soft food that I give her, as long as I put the dish in front of her four or five times in a row. She will drink from a bowl if she must, but she would prefer a thin stream falling from a tap, and will wait by the bathroom basin for hours to receive it, if need be. Is that patience or stubbornness?

When she sleeps at night, it is usually on my legs, in the crook of a knee, though sometimes she crawls up toward my face, turns around and lies against my nose, nearly suffocating me with that orange fur. The feeling, when one is half-asleep, of something light and unidentified, creeping up toward one, can be startling. Once in a while, when a few inches from my face, she’ll purr and put her paw on my cheek or mouth. Perhaps I was snoring. But I like to think she’s petting me. Tungsten is a bit of a baby, even though she’s now ten years old. She’ll wake suddenly during the day and cry out, not stopping until I come to see what the matter is. My opinion is that she’s had a nightmare and wants to be comforted. Alternatively, she may just like to see me run when she calls.

As you can read, the motives for much of what she does are open to interpretation. But I’ve learned to know my cat over the past three years of living with her. I’ve learned what the different meows mean, the one for water, the one for lap-time, the one for unspecified attention. She even has one to let me know she wants the closet door opened, a box moved and the top of a dresser cleared so she can jump onto a high shelf without interference. It takes less time for her to say it than it does for me to write it. There are disadvantages to living with someone who is sometimes a surly, middle-aged whiner. (Yes, I’m still referring to the cat.) But these pale when Tungsten greets me, purring, as I return at the end of the day; when she asks to lie on my lap though there are a dozen more comfortable places; when water goes down the wrong way and I have a coughing fit and she hurries in from wherever she was to meow with concern.

That’s the sort of cat I can live with. That’s the sort of cat I do live with.

How I Came To Have Three Cats

As the title - which may be temporary - states, I have three cats. Two are mine and one is in my custody as a foster-cat. I never meant to have three cats. One seems to collect them, like knick knacks on the top of a bookcase, though they tend to need more than just dusting.

I didn't know much about cats when I brought home my first one. As it is about life in general, I seemed to know much more before I became involved with them than I do now. Previously, I barely liked cats. Well, that's not true. I liked them, and would stop to pet one if I saw it. But I didn't think they were for me. I thought them inscrutable. But, like books, one just has to learn to read in order to understand them.

My first cat is Tungsten. The name was about the only thing I was sure of in regard to a cat. I figured it would be a good name for either a male or a female, and it's my favourite element.

Then came Josie. I would have re-named her but she'd been living with me for half a year before I decided to adopt her, so the name had already stuck.

Temporarily living with me is Ren. He's a big boy with hair longer than the others. That doesn't mean it sheds more, however. It doesn't mean it sheds less, either.

I suppose it would be useful to give you some background on how I came to acquire these animals. Tungsten I adopted three years ago from the PAW Society in Lethbridge, Alberta. I had no idea of animal rescue groups at the time, and figured I'd see cats in rows of cages. Instead, I was greeted immediately upon entering the Cat Compassion Centre (as it then existed) by a long, low, friendly cat named Mister Irving, who came out at the sound of the door opening. He greeted everyone in a similarly chummy manner, I was told.

I met quite a few cats there, and though I had a notion of what sort I was looking for, I was naturally apprehensive about taking home the wrong one, the kind that makes you wish you'd never heard of the feline species and hates you as much as you come to hate it. There was Pearl, who was older and sedate; Thumbelina, of the extra toes; Jessie, who was round and grey; Terri, black, frightened and difficult to meet. Some have since been adopted, some continue to wait for the right person to take them home.

Some cats lived in PAW's Compassion Centre, a haven for cats on the north side of Lethbridge. It has since had to close. At the time, some others, and since then, all of PAW's cats lived in private homes, foster-homes. In one of these homes, I met Tungsten.

Tungsten is a tiny orange and white cat, six and a half pounds at most. She's symmetrical, with pale outlines of circles on each flank, brown, elongated patches on the backs of her feet, a ringed tail and a bunch of white lace at her throat. Her left eye has a damaged pupil. When I met her, she was in a cat-bed on the top shelf of a closet, from which she could look out a window. She was a little put upon in her situation, nothing too bad, but not near the top of her house's hierarchy.

I held her and she started purring. It may have been anxiety, like nervous laughter, but I took it as a good sign. From what I was told, she seemed to be the sort I was looking for: quiet, healthy but not too active, playful at times but preferring the sedentary life. I should have realized then that she was a little too much like me. After my visit with Tungsten, I told a friend that that cat 'went to the top of the list'. After thinking about it for a week, there was no list, just Tungsten.

I started buying all the things one needs for a cat - or rather all the things it seems obvious a cat needs: litter-box (with hood, to prevent the tossing of litter (a vain hope in some cases)), litter (made from pine - that was new to me), a perch/scratching post, two kinds of food (hard and soft), toys of various kinds. My neat and tidy apartment began to take on the slightly frayed look that would eventually leave it almost completely unravelled.

Then Tungsten came to her new home. She wasn't called Tungsten then. She was Presley. That name was adequate, but it wasn't my cat's name. She was initially excited, and explored. But the first night, she was melancholy; she realized that this new situation may be lasting longer than she'd thought. She sat alone in the bedroom. She was home-sick, and living with a stranger. But that night, she slept on the bed.

After that, it was simply a matter of getting used to each other, which we did, and of getting to know each other, which we are.

Josie is my beautiful Chubs. Fifteen pounds of white cat with tabby spots and a ringed tail (though there is a black line down its top) and a light brown bum. I brought her home about a year and a half after I got Tungsten. I thought Tungsten might be lonely with me away all day. She was lonely - for me. The presence of another cat in the apartment was resented, and Josie was hated. There was hissing, and growling, and fights. But now, Josie is accepted, if not loved, by Tungsten. She is a little more vocal than Tungsten yet more reticent. It's only lately that I feel I've become her friend, though she's always been friendly. She sleeps on the bed, too, but it took a long time before Tungsten would allow it. She squeaks more than meows and is a pacifist at heart.

Ren is my latest addition. Temporary, I keep telling myself. He deserves to go into a separate article on foster-cats I have known. He's a gentle fellow, a softy, and is quick to make friends - after hiding from you for the first few hours.

These are the three cats I have.