I am an animal lover in all regards. I give money to several humane organizations. I cry at ASPCA commercials. I can't stand to see stray animals, especially cats, which seem to be more prolific than dogs.
All that being said, starting around December 2007 my mom and I noticed an orange cat meandering around our yard every now and then. He didn't look malnourished or ungroomed so we just assumed he belonged to one of the neighboring families. In the warmer weather when my mom would take our dog for walks she noticed that this cat would hang out in the storm drain at the end of street.
This past August I was running quite a bit, and everytime I would pass the storm drain this cat would be in it. I tried to coax him out a few times, but he always cowered towards the back. Finally, one day I coaxed him out with some food and as I was petting him (sitting on the side of the road), my neighbor across the street stopped and asked me if we had decided to adopt the cat. I informed her that I thought he already belonged to someone and she said that actually, a family in our neighborhood had this cat, but had decided to leave him when they moved to another town. Of course I immediately felt sorry for him and convinced my mom we should feed him regularly since he was basically living in the sewer.
Well, once you start feeding a cat, it's yours. Which is how Marcus became a member of the family. But here's the problem: he's a bad cat. He is insolent, sassy, and has the temper of a typical red head. He's an outside only cat, which means he gets not quite as much one-on-one time as our indoor cat, and I believe he's fully aware of this. In the mornings when I sit on the steps to pet him whenever I get up to leave he grabs at my legs with his paws and usually ends up scratching the shit out of me. If he's not scratching he's biting. The vet suggested that he's still getting over some of his feral tendencies, and when he does this we should spray him with a water bottle to correct the behavior. Theoretically, that sounds like a good plan. In actuality, what happens when you spray him with water is he goes ballistic and comes after you like a spider monkey with razor sharp claws. All fur and fury flying around. However, when he's calm and you're allowing him to be on your lap, he's a perfect angel and quite gentle.
My whole life we've always had a cat or two at my house, and I've loved all of them. Marcus I'm unsure about. Since I was the one who insisted we feed him and save him from the deep recesses of the sewer, technically he's my cat. And while I do enjoy him sometimes, this morning I was ready to put him back down there and say good riddance. I find myself sometimes staring at him hin disdain because he's annoying the shit out of me.
To top it all off, in adopting Marcus we have singlehandedly destroyed my other cat, Bailey's, whole universe. She tends to just sit in a doorway of a room and stare at my mom and me, burning holes of judgment through us. Furthermore, she was overweight to start with, but now she is eating her feelings and is verging on comically obese for a cat.
I do feel somewhat guilty about hating my own "child", so hopefully these issues will resolve themselves in time. Otherwise, I'm going to have a beautiful orange fur coat.
