Thursday Thirteen #2: We are Siamese, if You Please

I used to own two cats that lived up to the reputation that Siamese have for being unusual personalities. Between Ilse and Hannelore (or Hani, as she was known to her fan club) and their people, I came up with thirteen unique quirks.

1. Ilse loved cantaloupe. I didn't know that cats ate fruit.

2. Ilse DID NOT love yogurt. She tried it once, and sat there licking her top lip for at least ten minutes to try to get rid of it.

3. Hani was traumatized by the sound of silverware being put away. She would scream and run for cover when the clanking started.

4. The first endearing thing that Hani did the week that she came home as a six-week-old kitten, besides making Ilse hiss and circle her, was to run up the drapes and watch us from the top of the rod.

5. When she finally got too heavy to climb the drapes, she took to sitting in that big picture window and chewing out the blue jays that would swoop by to irritate her with an un-catlike MAT-MAT-MAT-MAT ratcheting sound.

6. Ilse got irritated by people behavior at times. When she did, she'd run at the offender, pivot on her front legs, mule-kick them in the shin with surprising force, and then regather herself and run for said cover.

7. They had a set bedtime routine. Ilse would lay between my (or Mom's) knees, and Hani curled up right under whomever's chin. She'd roll over onto your face, if you'd let her.

8. Hani had herself well-positioned to do the 5 a. m. wake up call, which usually consisted of licking an eyelid and MROWWWWRing cat breath directly into our noses.

9. Ilse, who detested Hani for the first two weeks or so after she came, one day changed her mind and decided to adopt her. One day, we found Ilse tucking Hani into her side, and maybe letting her fake-nurse a little since she was Mom-cat size and probably reminded her of Mom-cat. They spent the next 13 years napping that way, minus the pseudo-nursing.

10. We thought that qualified Ilse to be a Mom-cat. We took her to her appointment to become a mother, and she decided to practice abstinence instead. Actually, she practiced abstinence, slicing, and dicing. We were very grateful that the tom still had both eyes when we got her out of there, and had them both spayed after that.

11. Ilse was the bright one. I think she had a slide rule in her head. She didn't chase mice--she calculated their trajectory and triangulated onto their projected path.

12. Hani was a bit more....cerebrally challenged. She would sometimes get this wide-eyed look when you tossed her the string, as though she needed to have the game explained first, again. She would also walk through the house letting the world know that something wasn't quite right with her distinctive, somewhat nasal MWAAAOOOOWWWWRRRRRRR. It was generally tough to get to the bottom of the problem, leading us to believe that she wasn't sure what it was either.

13. This is actually behavior on the part of Ilse and Hani's people, and is somewhat poignant as well as a little amusing now that we've gotten some distance from it.

My Mom became their caretaker when I moved to a place that wouldn't allow me to keep them. They were her companions as I slogged through my weird marriage, and she had such guilt when the time came to put them down because of the ravages of old age that it aggravated some preexisting health conditions and she spent a few days in the hospital. My aunt, trying to be careful not to put her through any more heartache, picked them up from the vet and put them in her freezer until Mom could tell her where to bury them. In the meantime, Thanksgiving rolled around, and one of her daughters that had come home for the holiday went to the freezer for some pre-Thanksgiving supper, and....

Don't worry--they're lying safely under her willow tree.