Newsflash: Cats Are Weird

This is based on an experience I had while spending a weekend with a friend of mine. My friend, who will remain nameless, took me to visit another friend of hers, who she had promised to help trim the Christmas tree. I wrote about this experience in a letter in 2006 to yet another friend, who got a big kick out of it.

I went over to a friend’s house to help decorate their Christmas tree. It was really a friend of a friend, someone I had never met before. They had an immaculate, spotless, large house, and it was clear that they made a considerable amount of money. It was a little intimidating about how clean their house was – mine is always a mess.

I had a good time, but after a while the Mexican food I had so unwisely eaten for lunch started to disagree with me and I headed for the bathroom. I sat down in the bathroom and looked up and was very startled to see a large cat staring at me 3 inches from my face. It was up on a table that was across from the toilet seat. I didn’t know what to do, I felt kind of weird – I’ve never had an animal observe me in the bathroom, being that all I have at home is a ragged houseplant. I decided just to pretend the cat wasn’t there and use the bathroom, since I really needed to go (and it was this need that had distracted me from seeing the cat in there the first place.) So I’m actually, literally, going to the bathroom, and the cat reaches over and puts its paw my leg. So I think, “this is kind of weird”, but it’s a nice cat. I started petting it and scratching at behind the ears. So it jumped in my lap. I’m sitting there holding this cat on my bare lap, with my pants down, and I couldn't help but think it was a little weird. In fact, quite disconcerting.   It is very uncomfortable to hold a cat when you’re sitting on the John. I wish I had not discovered this. 

Meanwhile the cat is purring and rubbing its face on me and being all affectionate, like I am a long lost friend who just happened to turn up in the john, which is sweet, I mean, I like cats, but not on my lap while I’m going to the bathroom. It was ironic because when I first got there I tried to pet the cat and it ran away; it waited until I was in the bathroom to be friendly. Go figure. So anyway, I kind of gently nudge the cat to get it off my lap. It takes several nudges, but the cat jumps down – it walks over to the bathroom door (which I forgot to close completely) and bats it open. I jump up, holding up my pants with one hand, and slam the door shut, fortunately not hurting that cat in the process. But it starts loudly meowing to get out, prompting me to worry if the family and the guests are wondering what on earth am doing to their poor cat in the bathroom. Something unpleasant, no doubt.

Hurrying, I flush the toilet at finally open the door and the cat runs out of there like a rabbit bolting and I hear the people in living room laughing. Fortunately, when I went out, I realized they were laughing at a joke someone told, and not my ridiculous experience. Thank god it seemed to go unnoticed by my host, because explaining why you were in a bathroom with a cat that tears out of there as if all hell broke loose as soon as you open the door would be quite awkward. Cats are weird. I know that now that I have my own cat. She has fortunately never tried to jump on my lap while I’m going to the bathroom, though she does like to watch, for some odd reason. Cats are just weird.