Yes, Jane, I’m talking about Tootsie.
Everybody knows bad-tempered cats, cats who have their little ways. C. Douglas Ramey, long-time director of Louisville’s Shakespeare in Central Park, had a cat who liked to hide under chairs and leap out and bite your ankle as you passed.
Tootsie took it to a whole ‘nother level.
Tootsie was Jane’s cat, the only one of Jane’s cats I didn’t like. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t that I didn’t like Tootsie. I would have loved to love her–I mean, she was a cat. She was, as I recall, petite and pretty. But Tootsie wanted the whole wide world to consist entirely and exclusively of herself and Jane. She hated everyone and everything that distracted from that.
I won’t even get into the reports of what Tootsie did to men foolish enough to come visit Jane. I believe they’ve banded together to form a choir. Of sopranos.
Let’s just talk about Tootsie’s attitude toward me. Hatred may be too mild a word. Psychotic hatred may come closer to it. She hid out under furniture and darted out and wrapped her talons around my ankle and bit plugs out of me. It was a relief to hear her blood-curdling growls, because then I knew where she was.
One time, I came visiting bringing with me a brand-new stylish blue plastic purse. I put it next to me on the couch. The next thing I knew, Tootsie had curled up on the other side of it, being very quiet and relaxed.
“Well!” Jane and I agreed that she must be resigned to my visits, and we were very pleased.
Then I got up to go, and my purse declined to accompany me. Tootsie had lain there and methodically and deliberately chewed through the strap. If it were leather, I would have thought it was just that it tasted kind of like food, but it was plastic, and the destruction was nothing but sheer, calculated malice.
I believe Jane finally decided she had to choose between Tootsie and the entire rest of the world and took Tootsie to a relative’s home in the country, where she (Tootsie, not Jane) lived out her days terrorizing the countryside.
A cat that shall live in infamy.
A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A friend’s animal hates your character.
MA
Jane
August 26, 2012 at 2:03amAh! The memories…..
Sadly, you have portrayed Tootsie in the best possible light. I’ve always said she thought we were two single girls sharing an apartment.
I came into the living room one day, after hearing some suspicious noises, to discover Tootsie entangled in the curtains, holding on with her front paws and pushing off the window with her back feet. She’d swing out from the window and then swing back, only to push off once again. WHEEE!! (She didn’t actually say, Whee. I’m just adding a little dialogue here.) She looked around suddenly , recognized she’d been caught, and darted off. I examined the curtains and discovered this had not been her first rodeo, as they say. Held up the light, the curtains revealed numerous little claw-pricks up and down their length.
By the way, I’m still sorry about the purse. I’ll have to tell you sometime what Tootsie did when I had Mom and Vickie over for the night. (Why, yes. It DOES involve peeing.)
Marian Allen
August 26, 2012 at 8:22amSwingin’ onna curtain! BWA-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa! That’s a classic! 😀
Maryann Miller
August 27, 2012 at 10:48amI sense there could be a whole book to Tootsie stories. I’d buy it. LOL
Marian Allen
August 27, 2012 at 11:16amOh, I’m telling you, if Jane ever wrote Tootsie and Gus, about the cat and the terrier her family had, it would be a sensation. lol
Dani G.
August 27, 2012 at 11:47amToo-too-tootsie, good-bye… It was all fated with a name like that.
Marian Allen
August 27, 2012 at 12:00pmHeh! You may have something there, Dani. 😉