“Seriously—what the hell?” I said to Jorge one day, as we watched Scarlett unceremoniously exit a room we’d just entered and I fought the sudden impulse to sniff under my arms for offensive body odor.
Her kitten fluff, which refused to lie flat no matter how strenuously she tried to lick it into place, was a sore temptation for my fingers. How I longed to feel the warmth and softness of her fuzzy little body! Scarlett didn’t shrink from my touch, exactly, when I tried to pet her, nor did she violently lash out. Rather, she took no visible notice of my caresses one way or the other. She’d just kind of slide out from under my hand, like someone absentmindedly brushing lint from their shoulder, and trot off to do something else.
That she took no interest in the treasure trove of toys I’d bought her probably goes without saying. I’d dangle a little felt mouse enticingly by its tail over her head, and she wouldn’t even muster a half-hearted swipe at it. I’d bend the vertical spring attached to the sisal-rope base until its feathered-and-belled crest touched the floor, then let it spring back to make the feathers flutter and the bell tinkle merrily. “Look, Scarlett!” I’d say in my best talking-to-a-kitten voice. (It was very similar to my sing-songy talking-to-a-dog voice.) Widening my eyes to feign great astonishment, I’d say, “What’s this, Scarlett? What’s this?”
That voice had never failed to rouse even the sleepiest dog to near frenzies of tail-wagging, hand-licking, and playful crouching. Even Pandy always responded to it with louder purrs and spirited Siamese mews of acknowledgment.
Scarlett, however, would merely level a bored gaze in my direction. It’s a bunch of feathers, stupid. And that was all the response I’d get.
“At least somebody’s playing with them,” Jorge observed, coming home one day to find me flat on my belly in front of Scarlett, a cat toy in each hand, absorbed in yet another fruitless attempt to engage her attentions.
“Don’t you dare say I told you so,” I warned him.
Naturally Scarlett liked to play—she was a kitten, after all. When she wasn’t sleeping or eating, playing was all she did. She chased her tiny tail in dizzying circles until she appeared little more than a gray-and-white blur. She would frequently do that sideways flip and crab-walk that I’d come to call “Ninja kitty.” She found bits of dust or tufts of her own shed fur and chased them furiously from one end of the apartment to the other, or sat up on her hind legs like a prairie dog and tried to catch the dust motes that appeared like flecks of gold in the sunbeams that fell through the windows.
Scarlett’s favorite game of all was to chase a crumpled-up ball of paper around the room, batting it furiously between her front paws and then knocking it just far enough out of reach that she’d have to run after it. It was her favorite game, that is, if she happened to find the wadded paper ball on her own. If, however, I obligingly crumpled up a new piece and tossed it over to her, she’d watch the paper ball as it rolled to a stop at her feet and then stare at me, as if wondering why an apparently sane person would throw garbage around her own home.
Scarlett had, at a minimum, caught on to the fact that it was I, and not Jorge, who was her primary caregiver. As the weeks passed and her kittenish cheeps matured into more adult-sounding tones, she developed what Jorge and I called “Scarlett’s mother-in-law voice,” a harsh, guttural, and distinctly unloving meow that sounded like MRAAAAAAA and was deployed only when Scarlett felt she had something to complain about. And I was the only one she ever complained to.
When her food bowl was empty, for example, or her litter box was dirty—even as a kitten, Scarlett had exacting standards when it came to litter box maintenance—I was the one who heard about it. “MRAAAAAAA,” Scarlett would say, sitting on her haunches on the floor directly in front of me if I was on the couch watching TV. If I didn’t jump up immediately to attend to her, she’d advance to the coffee table, making sure to position herself directly between me and my view of the TV screen. “MRAAAAAAA,” she’d repeat. “MRAAAAAAA!” If I was reading a book with my legs stretched out, she’d sit on my knees until the pressure of her weight made the joints ache and demand, “MRAAAAAAA.” And if I didn’t look up from my book quickly enough, she would put one paw directly onto the page I was reading, insisting at the top of her voice, “MRAAAAAAA!!!”
“All right!” I’d finally say, getting up and scurrying off to attend to whatever it was that was bothering her. “You know,” I suggested once, looking back at her over my shoulder, “it wouldn’t kill you to say something nice every once in a while.”
To Jorge, Scarlett paid literally no attention at all—and he, after a few attempts at petting her or tossing her paper balls, was content to let her go her own way without any further interference. “Some cats just don’t like people,” he said.
He was right, of course. There were cats who flat-out didn’t like humans. Nevertheless, it struck me as a premature judgment in Scarlett’s case. She was still so little! She’d been only four weeks old when we’d gotten her—and she was barely twelve weeks old now. Surely, a kitten rescued at such a young age, and adopted immediately into a loving home, should be capable of forming an emotional bond with someone.
I felt vindicated a few days later when, sitting on the couch, I felt a tickling at the back of my head. Twisting my neck just a fraction so I could see her from the corner of my eye, I observed Scarlett sitting behind me on the futon’s arm, her face buried deep in my hair as she nuzzled gently and insistently. I remembered my mother telling stories like this about Tippi, a little beagle/terrier mix she and my father had adopted before I was born. Tippi had been so attached to my mother as a puppy that she’d insisted on sleeping each night on my mother’s pillow, nestled in her hair.
Awwww, I thought, and my heart began to puddle—what could this new behavior of Scarlett’s be if not, at long last, an affectionate gesture? I knew I was right! I thought, and decided not to say anything to Jorge—not right away, at least. I’d let him discover the two of us like this on his own one day. I tried reaching my hand slowly back and around to stroke Scarlett’s fur as she pressed her nose and whiskers all the way into my scalp. But she wriggled out impatiently from under my touch, and—not wanting to push her too far, too quickly—I left her to it, murmuring, Good Scarlett . . . sweet kitty . . .
This went on for some days, and I began to cast a complacent eye over Scarlett as she tore around the apartment, absorbed in her play. I still longed to rub beneath her little white chin and hear her purr of contentment, to watch her stir and sigh as she fell asleep in my lap or curled up next to my leg. She wasn’t yet what anyone might call demonstrative, aside from those moments she spent buried in my hair. But a good time was coming—I could feel it. We were finally starting to bond, my kitten and I, and the rest would happen in its own time.
All that newfound complacency was shattered a couple of weeks later, however, when I happened to catch a glimpse of Scarlett in my peripheral vision, sitting behind me with a thick lock of my hair—which she’d gnawed off my head—hanging from her jaws.