This is Tiger Lilly.
She came into my life when she appeared on a coworker’s carport; she was so tiny that she fit, not just in my hands, but within the length of just the finger part of my hands. Not even as big as my palm.
I always feel the push-pull when I see a tiny animal: I really, really want to take it in; I really, really can’t take any more animals. At this point, I had three geriatric cats and my super-duper dog.
This was well before Jitterbug flew the coop.
I had three cats; I didn’t want to take another one in.
But she had a bobbed tail.
A couple of years before this, one of the supervisors at work had a pair of white bob-tails. I’m pretty sure I “squeed” (which I try, at all costs, to avoid) when I learned this. “I want one,” I told her. “I’m keeping them,” she told me.
So that was that.
But then I learned that she gave them to a kid with cancer.
I couldn’t be mad at her for giving them to a kid with cancer! But I was. Just a little bit. I’m not proud of it.
I made a rule: I would not get another cat unless it was a bob-tail.
There’s something about them. I like things that defy expectations and stereotypes. Things a little bit different.
So when a coworker came to me and said, “I heard you’ll take in cats,” I said, “No, no, no.” I was firm. I was steadfast. I was absolute.
But then I saw it: this tiny, skinny thing covered in shit. I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. It was tiny and helpless and dirty, and I’d like to think I was well on my way to remaining a bastion of resolve. There was another lady who loved cats; I could find it a home with her.
But then I put it on my chest, shit and all, and it started purring immediately. I ran my fingers from its tiny head down its bony spine to discover it had a tiny stump of a tail.
And whatever backbone I had, whatever decisions I had made logically were out so far out the window, they had already flown to South America for the winter. My decisions were probably drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them.
Whatever resolve I had mustered disintegrated like teeth on methotrexate.
And so it came home with me, and it so teen-niney, I had to check out a YouTube to see how to determine the sex.
There’s a joke here about the NSA or the cops checking my computer history, but I’m not quite capable of reaching it.
Lyrical Fool 