Cats At Large

There’s no argu­ing with a cat.

Hand to heaven, I can’t say no to a furry face. That’s how my wife and I ended up with four cats. Four of the most spoiled cats you’ll ever meet, too. Every time I open the fridge Elvira (our all-​​too-​​aptly-​​named black cat) comes run­ning into the kitchen, meow­ing at the top of her lungs. She’s beg­ging – no, scratch that – demand­ing that I give her some milk. Now.

And I have to, or else she will lit­er­ally crawl into the refrig­er­a­tor look­ing for it herself.

Now she has our youngest cat, Phantom, in on the act too. At first they’d fight over the bowl, so I had to give them each their own. Now they’ve started col­lab­o­rat­ing. Elvira meows/​yells at me while Phantom rubs against my leg and purrs. It’s a good cat/​bad cat rou­tine that works every time. Since they’ve teamed up, they also share the spoils. Both heads plunge into the bowl simul­ta­ne­ously to enjoy the not-​​so-​​hard-​​won booty. And occa­sion­ally Phantom lifts his face from the milk and gives me this look that’s all like “I totally own you, man.”

Phantom is one of those cats that gets this look on his face like he knows some­thing you don’t and there’s no way he’s ever going to tell you, because hon­estly, it’s just bet­ter that you live on in your bliss­ful igno­rance. It’s like a com­bi­na­tion of wis­dom and pity. It’s really disconcerting.

But he’s the sweet­est cat in the world. He’s so ador­ing, in fact, that he often wakes me in the mid­dle of the night to express his love in the form of head butting me in the face.