forget your daughters, lock up your cats

it helps to have an innocent-looking accomplice

our fur-children were curious this morning when they spotted a new friend in the next building over. she's a big, beautiful girl, a dilute tortoiseshell with a lovely round face and persian-type cobby body [although she's short-haired, not persian]. she was obviously just as curious about our motley feline crew as well, sitting there for ages and watching them [mostly simon and lulu, who are always the social ones] and only leaving several minutes after they'd moved on. dom and i weren't nearly so interesting to her. and i'm almost certain that she was particularly checking out simon's butt. i know i would.

but what really concerns me here is my own reaction when i saw her. because the first thought that entered my head and stayed there for several minutes, being pondered when i saw how interested she was in my babies and they were in her was: "i wonder if i should go and take her."

i want to emphasise that this was a clean, well-fed [but not overfed] cat. she looked extremely healthy. she seemed calm and happy in her window. but most importantly, she was inside, in a third or fourth story apartment, meaning that she doesn't have to deal with the terrors of the urban outdoors. i wasn't thinking of rescuing a cat from abandonment or mistreatment. i was just thinking of plucking her out of the arms of people who probably love her for no other reason than she seemed to like looking at my fur-children.

it's bad enough that i was picturing myself shimmying up the rickety fire escape of the building next door, tearing my way through the window screen and then descending that same fire escape with a large cat in one arm undetected [like she'd just sit there as i banged and thumped my way up the iron staircase and bashed in the screen in front of her, since that would be such typical cat-like behaviour]. but consider my line of logic here: "she looked at me, so that means i should just go take her". that's the justification that rapists use. so if you scratch my feminist surface with feline claws, i am the enemy.

of course, it did eventually dawn on me that cat-napping the neighbour's baby was neither a nice nor an intelligent thing to do, but it kind of scares me that it took quite a while for what i'd term "rationality" to kick in. and i'm not sure that it wasn't because i started to think about the unpleasantness of ascending a fire escape in the 35c heat. like the main thing between me being the way i am now and me being a malevolent and chaotic force for destruction in the universe is my own laziness.

at least now i feel like i have a good defense for my laziness.

so the good news is, i didn't stalk and kidnap someone's beloved pet today. but just to be safe, if you're anywhere near where i am or where you think i might at some point be, you should keep your cats at a safe distance and behind at least one locked door. because, if it's not too much of an effort, i'm clearly a menace.