I've only had one cat in my life. I got him the same time I got my dissertation started, and they were both Merlin.
NEVER name a cat Merlin, especially not a Polydactyl. (There's a lot of polys in New England and up in Canada as far as Halifax. Apparently, when the Tories left the 13 states after the war, they took their polydactylous cats with them. They're mutants with a kind of hybrid vigor, large, intelligent, and wicked.)
Merlin was a 17-pounder, perfect tuxedo with a malicious intelligence and 7 toes on each forepaw. I was much alone at the time and spent a lot of it talking with the cat. It showed. He was a one-woman cat, too.
Anyhow, when I was teaching in upstate New York, I was near Cornell, which has a notable agricultural school. Some grad students lived in my apartment complex. They had two cats and a de-scented skunk.
NEVER fool yourself that skunks are de-scented. They still stink, and you have to get a wildlife permit for them, and I don't know why they had a skunk, except they were both applied math types, it was upstate New York, and it was all very weird.
We brought Merlin over for a playdate. At the time, he had started going outside, where he'd met the complex's alpha cat, a ring-tailed red even bigger than he, and assumed executive officer status (he was the brains of the feline unit). He was raised with Siamese, so he rather liked the one Siamese they had. The tortoise shell cat, Holly, ignored him. And then there was the skunk.
The skunk was raised with cats and liked them. The skunk saw a cat that looked remarkably like the skunk, down to butts the size of a VW beetle, with long tails protruding. So the skunk scuttled up to Merlin and touched noses with him.
My fastidious Merlin looked at this creature, SMELLED this creature, backed up indignantly, and whacked him across the nose.
If you've never seen a crestfallen skunk scuttle away...we fell on the floor howling, and then we had a highly irate black-and-white to placate.
no subject
NEVER name a cat Merlin, especially not a Polydactyl. (There's a lot of polys in New England and up in Canada as far as Halifax. Apparently, when the Tories left the 13 states after the war, they took their polydactylous cats with them. They're mutants with a kind of hybrid vigor, large, intelligent, and wicked.)
Merlin was a 17-pounder, perfect tuxedo with a malicious intelligence and 7 toes on each forepaw. I was much alone at the time and spent a lot of it talking with the cat. It showed. He was a one-woman cat, too.
Anyhow, when I was teaching in upstate New York, I was near Cornell, which has a notable agricultural school. Some grad students lived in my apartment complex. They had two cats and a de-scented skunk.
NEVER fool yourself that skunks are de-scented. They still stink, and you have to get a wildlife permit for them, and I don't know why they had a skunk, except they were both applied math types, it was upstate New York, and it was all very weird.
We brought Merlin over for a playdate. At the time, he had started going outside, where he'd met the complex's alpha cat, a ring-tailed red even bigger than he, and assumed executive officer status (he was the brains of the feline unit). He was raised with Siamese, so he rather liked the one Siamese they had. The tortoise shell cat, Holly, ignored him. And then there was the skunk.
The skunk was raised with cats and liked them. The skunk saw a cat that looked remarkably like the skunk, down to butts the size of a VW beetle, with long tails protruding. So the skunk scuttled up to Merlin and touched noses with him.
My fastidious Merlin looked at this creature, SMELLED this creature, backed up indignantly, and whacked him across the nose.
If you've never seen a crestfallen skunk scuttle away...we fell on the floor howling, and then we had a highly irate black-and-white to placate.