Dead Cat

I don't know how many of you have had to deal with a dead cat before, I know that many members of my family have in the past since cats always seemed to be a part of our childhood. But to describe it for those who may not know, a dead cat is a very unpleasant thing to look upon or to touch. I'm not talking about poor kitties that get run over by cars, I'm talking about the one's that are perhaps stepped upon or die from some other traumatic experience, or maybe they're just old and die. Once it's dead, it doesn't seem like long before the cat loses all heat that it's little body creates and it kind of deflates and no matter the size of the cat it just seems to go flat like an old tire and it's not breathing so it's ribs all poke out and make it look gangly and the whole cat seems to take on an unnatural weight that makes it immoveable and as heavy as lead.

Thus is a dead cat.

Why am I telling this you may ask?

You'll see.

Did one of Liz's cat's die?

NO, one of my cats didn't die. I still have 2 cats. There were 2 cats following me around this morning, and I expect that there will be 2 cats when I get home. Again, I repeat, NO cats have died. None, Zip, Zero Zilch, Nada, Null … no animals were harmed in the typing of this post.

Got it? Okay I'll move on now.

This story is about Noranti, my beautiful black kitten (and I still call her my kitten because she's still only half the size of Mahana.) For some strange reason, for the past few months Noranti has taken to sleeping next to me in bed. She is not usually a snuggly cat, and is more often then not scared of everything and hides from the world, but at bed time, and at nap time she magically appears and either demands to be under the blanket with me, or is at least content lying next to me. She probably just does it because in the winter I keep my heater set at a very chilly 68 degrees because I don't want to pay the heating bills for this non-EnergyStar house and she is probably very cold too… However when she is lying next to me there are specific requirements that must be met:

1) I must be laying on my right side in the spooning position, if I am not on my right side, John must not be in the room. If John is on the bed next to me when I am laying on my left side, she will leave.

2) John cannot be talking. I don't know what it is about her and the sound of John's voice, but if he is talking she gets very annoyed. If John is talking she will leave.

3) If she head butts you then you must pet her, but if she bites you you must stop immediately. If you do not pet her, or if you do not stop petting her when she says so she will leave.

4) If I try to roll over or try to change positions, she will leave.

Keep in mind that this is the cat that WILL NOT be petted in any room of the house that is not the bedroom, and only when she is on the bed. If she is in another room and you try to pet her she darts into the bedroom and up on the bed and THEN waits to be petted. She has also been mistaken for the "ghost cat" I talk about because no one really believes that she exists because very few people other then me and John have actually seen the black kitty.

Again I reiterate, Noranti is not dead.

However, at 1:53 am, I sure thought she was.

I don't really know why I was awake that time o f day, but I was. I had john sleeping to the left of me and Noranti sleeping to the right of me and I was stuck in the middle. Which I can't complain about because at least I was warm, and the cat has not run away even though I am laying on my back.

So where does the dead cat come in? Well Noranti is there sleeping peacefully so I put my hand down on her to pet her and enjoy her company, but to me she felt like a dead cat. She did not move when I touched her and she had that cold, flat, dead cat feel to her and I swear she wasn't breathing. Perhaps I was just halfway dreaming, but I'm pretty sure I was wide awake but this cat was dead.

There was not movement. There was no breathing. She was freezing cold and a heavy as a brick. This of course made me very distraught and I tried moving her but she weighed a ton and she was so cold and still. So I shook her, you know, like when you shake a person to wake them up, again and again trying to get her to move or respond or something and finally she did. She lifted her little head and looked at me like "lady, you're crazy," but she looked at me and that's what matters.

Like I said, I was probably half asleep, but it all seemed very real to me. It was so real that after that point in the night I would wake up every once in a while and shake her awake just to be sure she was still with me. Amazingly enough this did not cause her to run away because when the alarm was going off at 5:24 am she lazily got up and stretched like a well slept kitty.

So the panic was over, but I cannot forget the feel of the dead kitty weight in my hand as I tried to rouse her from her sleep. I was sure she was a goner. Did she freeze to death? Did I roll over on her? Was she sick and I hadn't noticed? So many questions ran through my head in that short period of time and each one made me sad for my poor kitten. It makes me wonder what would happen if one of them really did die? That really is a question that often keeps me up at night.