Once I lived in a home with three cats. There were people living there too, obviously. This story is not about them however. I might write about them some other time because they all had some very interesting issues. There are a couple of good posts there, just waiting to happen. Some other time.
I never considered myself a cat person, but these cats became my friends. Marcus, Lucas and Theodore. (I lived in a preacher's house at the time, a fact that might explain their Biblical names.) These cats were a bit strange, all three of them. They were all Siamese. That means that when they meow (is that even a word...?) they meow extremely loud. These three were no exception. They all had blue eyes. Beautiful. Lucas eyes were, well, wait for me to google this since I seem to be lacking the vocabulary... Again. ...Lucas suffered from esophoria. According to Wikipedia this is characterized by inward deviation of the eye. Poor Luke. He was so cute but he used to walk into things. He used to scare me half to death too, in the mornings, jumping from the floor, right up on top of innocent old me still asleep in my bed. It was like being punched right in the chest. He was one heavy cat. Kind of fat, really, to tell the truth. But I loved him.
Then there was Marcus. He actually belonged to S, the 13 year old son in the family. I think Marcus was afraid of S though, beacause he didn't go anywhere near him. He seemed to like me enough however, and in the evenings he's curl up in my lap when I sat on the couch with B, the father in the family, when we watched old black-and-white horror movies on TV. That is, Marc would curl up there if Luke wasn't already there... Marcus used to meow rather wildly, even for a Siamese cat, and chase his own tail around the house a lot. It was a big house. And Marcus was really fast. You never knew where he'd turn up...
And then there was Theo. Theo was like one of those really old men that you see sometimes, and you're not really sure if they're still alive or not. Wait a minute, is he still breathing, somebody call for an ambulance...! Yeah, that kind of old man... But a cat... He used to walk in slow motion. Slept almost all the time. Didn't eat much (well, actually I suspect Luke ate his food before he had time to walk up to the bowl...). Theo enjoyed a piece of fruit every now and then, though, he preferred banana as far as I can recall.
One thing that was really sad with these cats was that they had no claws on their front paws. They had all been surgically removed. This was done to save the furniture. I was a Swedish exchange student living in a very strange country for a year, and had never heard of such a thing before. I always felt so sorry for Marc, Luke and Theo beacuse of this. They were never allowed to go outside. They never saw the sun, felt the rain, chased mice - how could they have? They never felt the grass under their paws... Poor things. They were indoor cats. I mean, how cruel is that? I'd say it's horrible. Anyway, had they been allowed to go outside they wouldn't have been able to do normal cat stuff. They couldn't have climbed trees. They couldn't have defended themselves against other cats. They would've been so out of their elements. So I felt really sorry for them. When me and S got home from school they'd sit there and beg with their blue eyes for us to let them go outside. But no.
I am still not a cat person. I'd really like to have a dog one day though. A big one. But my family has troubles with allergies so there won't be a dog in this home, unfortunately. Unless somebody comes up with a cure for being allergic to fur... I will always remember what it was like to live in a home with three cats, and I know I'll never forget their interesting personalities. These cats are all in cat heaven now, and I hope they are climbing trees like crazy up there.
