There's A New Cat in Town

My cats have a new arch nemesis.

They'd finally settled down into their usual happy relationship and were getting along fairly well when, a few nights ago, my slumber was interrupted about four o'clock in the morning by someone sacrificing small children in my living room. At least, that's what it sounded like-- high pitched screaming, snarling, and something that sounded like drumming. I threw open the bedroom door and rushed down the hallway towards the unearthly noise. Here's the scene that met my eyes:

In the center of the room, Cricket stood spitting and skipping sideways in a pose that looked exactly like one of those cats you see in all the Halloween decorations. I always thought those were exaggerated parodies of cats, but evidently not. Periodically she'd stop, crouch down, and emit another blood-curdling screech, the volume of which was vastly out of proportion to her body size, in the direction of our sliding door. Then she'd arch back up and starting another series of hissing sideways hops.

My view of the sliding door was partially obscured by an enormous snarling mass of fur, teeth and claws. Loki, who somehow had managed to triple in size-- an impressive feat for a twenty pound cat-- was hurling himself at the door in some sort of berserker rage, creating the rhythmic thumping noise we'd heard from the bedroom. His entire body vibrated with the most extraordinary baritone growling. This was especially surprising coming from a cat who usually has a ridiculously falsetto meow.

On the other side of the sliding door, maybe a foot away, a tuxedo long-haired cat sat on his haunches, evidently unperturbed. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying the entertainment. Whenever Loki or Cricket looked like they were winding down, this cat would twitch a paw towards the door and send them into new paroxysms of fury.

Well, this would not do at all. I marched towards the sliding door, and the stranger cat glanced up, saw me, and sauntered off, waving his tail in a nonchalant taunting fashion as if to say "I'm leaving because I want to and not because you tell me to."

Since then the cat has appeared on a couple more occasions, each time prompting Armageddon in my household. While Loki seems more or less unscathed by these incidents, Cricket now has a bad case of paranoia and transferred aggression. She slinks around corners, growling and hissing at me, Loki, and any inanimate objects that look at her funny. I'm assuming she'll get over it eventually, but in the meantime we're learning some interesting life lessons, such as the fact that listening to periodic blood curdling screams in the middle of the night gives you some really, really weird dreams.

~Jess