My daughter and I have three cats—all rescues:
There’s Snow White, our 16-year-old queen and my daughter’s consigliere, who, despite requiring thrice-a-week medication injections to keep her kidneys functioning, rules this place absolutely.
There’s subtle Mango, whose first year of life involved struggling to survive—and avoid human contact—in a weedy vacant lot adjoining the United Nations Secretariat building, and who, since entering our family, spends nearly all day, every day hiding. He hides under my bed until it’s time to hide in a closet. Once hidden in a closet, he becomes magically invisible until he chooses to reveal himself, hours later, staring at us from the end of a hallway, meowing softly, or waking me for cuddles at 3:00 am. (Somehow if I am on my back, asleep, I am less frightening to him than when standing or moving, and this lessening of fear allows him to settle near me and assure me that, despite all his hiding, he loves me.)
Jasper the kitten
But today’s story is about the junior member of our feline menagerie, Jasper—discovered at age two months, challenging death by dashing back and forth across car-and-bus-and-bike-ridden East 34th Street in Manhattan, apparently quite lost. We adopted him pronto and eased him into his elders’ company. He’s now nearly a year old, is longer and bigger than his elders (with huge paws—mark that—indicating how much larger he will grow), is curious about everything and fears nothing, loves people and two particular dogs as much as he loves Snow White and Mango, and is keen-witted beyond his years … and beyond most people’s guess as to the limits of a cat’s intellect.
Want proof? Slightly after dawn this morning, Jasper did something very smart (but also quite disgusting). So set aside your coffee and crumpets while I tell the tale:
A morning surprise
All three cats share one giant litter box in my bathroom, giving the room less-than-spa-spotlessness. I never feel completely clean on stepping out of the shower, because, at the very least, my preternaturally alert yoga feet will provide detailed feedback on every speck of cat litter that somehow inhabits the floor, no matter how often I sweep and mop it. If I owned a house, I could stash the litter box somewhere else, but I live in a New York apartment, so my potty casa is their potty casa.
I cleaned the cat box yesterday. But somehow, despite the relative freshness of its sands this morning, Jasper got cat shit on the bottom of his paws.
There was also cat shit tracked all over my bathroom floor and the hall between my bathroom door and the door to my room.
I suspect that Snow White (who is, after all, saddled with sick kidneys, and who pees on “puppy training pads” about ten times a day) somehow knocked a buried turd out of the deep sand onto my floor. Either that, or a messy fragment of her morning meditation got stuck to her fur and thence tracked everywhere. Thus did a noticeable layer of shit end up coating young Jasper’s pads.
The clever bit
But the fun part is, seeking cleanliness, young Jasper jumped up on my sink counter, which is always slightly wet (because New York apartment plumbing is, well, legendary) and tracked shit prints all over my sink to get the shit off his paws.
The keen-witted kitten had calculated correctly that that a wet stone or formica surface would, if contacted repeatedly, eventually clean all the shit off of him. And it worked. It cleaned his paws, and left me plenty of janitorial tasks to perform.
Thus, before coffee or even a sip of water, my first duty on waking on this American holiday morning was to address a poo-streaked double sink and dreck-dappled tile floor.
Which I didn’t mind, because I enjoy tackling unexpected little handyman jobs, even deeply unglamorous ones, first thing in the morning. Gets the heart going. Keeps me from jumping compulsively into desk work by giving me something slightly more physical to do first.
And of course I was proud of little Jasper’s creativity in figuring out how to wash his hands, as it were. Good boy!
Anyway, I got it all clean this morning and took all the mess down to the recycling room. We don’t pay our porters enough.
The moral to my tale
I hope you enjoyed my story as much as I enjoyed sharing it. And please remember, the animals we’re privileged to live with are far smarter than we give them credit for. And, most mysterious of all, in spite of all that intellect, they love us.
