Made you look. I admit it. The title is a thirst trap. But here you are. So it worked. That is the effect of social media for you. And let us be honest. You are not here because you thought it necessarily would be a good story. Even though it is. To me at least.
I'll back up.
This is a story about pussies, i.e., Felis catus, not vaginas, although one human vagina has a role. That vagina being that of my former wife, a woman who never liked my cats. And my cats never liked her straight back. And that is why our marriage ended. Indirectly. And ironically.
See, I like cats, but that affection does not blind me to the fact that they each have a brain the size of a walnut and less common sense than teenagers after a couple of beers. I had never wanted a cat in the first place. My family never had pets when I was growing up, and any kinds of pets seemed like a lot of work. But a former girlfriend decided we needed a cat, and I wanted pussy--the other kind--so I agreed. Then we broke up, and she moved somewhere that would not allow pets, and I got stuck with the beast. It was a tabby that trashed everything in my place. As much as I wanted to hate it, when it cuddled up at night and purred, I could not be angry anymore. Manipulative little shit. It eventually got sick, and I had to euthanize it. By then, I realized I liked them, so I got a pair of kittens, a brother and a sister. That was before I got together with my wife.
Both cats were pure black. The female had blue eyes, and the male had green eyes. The male was also bigger but easy-going. His sister was high-energy. Since they were pure black, they needed witchy names, so I chose Hermione and Hagrid. The names fit the personalities. I never considered using Harry. That is a stupid name for a cat. Ditto Ron or Weasley, especially for a cat without any red fur. Of course, their real names were, interchangeably, STOP THAT! and GET DOWN! Not that they ever responded or obeyed.
But like I said, my wife did not like the cats. She pretended to tolerate them while we were dating and engaged but, after we got married, she tried to make me get rid of them. I refused. It was our first big fight. I won, but her spousal passive-aggressive behavior started soon after.
I must own up to the fact that I was probably responsible for that. My wife Randi confessed to me in the middle of the fight that she did not like cats because, when a teenager, she had read a story about some crazy old cat lady who died of a sudden heart attack. The lady was a recluse and, by the time anyone had thought to check on her, her ten cats, driven mad with hunger, had turned to the most obvious meat source around, stripping large sections of her corpse down to the bone, particularly the face, which was not covered by any clothes. They apparently started with the nose. As a result, my wife was afraid that the same thing would happen to her someday when I was out of the house.
That story obviously came from a place of great vulnerability, and her telling me reflected deep trust. My hysterical laughter and editorial comment that her fear was stupid were, in retrospect, unhelpful. Probably not one of my most emotionally supportive moments.
We both apologized. I acknowledged her fear and assured her that I would keep the beasts well fed so there would be no problem. She said she would learn to live with them.
I still thought her fear was silly. And it turned out that Randi was lying. Her favorite thing to do was to leave the door open and pretend that it was accidental, hoping that they would run away and never come back. See, I kept the cats inside because I was convinced that they would get killed or injured outside, given the walnut-sized brains. But Randi proved me wrong. Somehow, the gods or saints looked out for Hagrid and Hermione because they would get bored after an hour of running around the yard, climbing the trees that flanked the house, and would come home to eat and then sleep.
Things changed after I started watching Instagram reels. I saw videos taken from collar-mounted cameras worn by cats. I thought those were funny. I decided to do the same. I usually let the cats out whenever I got back from work, after I put the camera collars on. My beasts liked to climb trees and sit there for a while. Then, they would come down and chase each other around. Both cats grew habituated to the routine and, as a result, never went outside when my wife left the doors open because it was not the time to go out because I was not there, and because they knew that they only were allowed out when they were wearing their cameras. If a step in the process was missing, they would not go. And they only stayed out for about an hour and then promptly came home when I called. I could tell that the failure of her plan to drive them away made my wife crazy, but I pretended not to notice. (See? I can be passive-aggressive, too.)
When the cats got home, I would collect the cameras, which were wireless and connected to my phone, download the videos, pull short reels, and post them to social media. Silly, I know, but I had half a million followers who loved them, and it amused the hell out of me. Something about seeing their paws zipping into and out of the camera shots as they ran, looking at everything from a cat's perspective, framed by their chins and whiskers, and hearing their chirping and trilling and meowing just made me laugh. And my fans, too, if the comments and likes were to be believed. The camera company loved the publicity and upgraded me to better models for free, as long as I plugged them regularly.
The other day, I came home early from work. We were getting snow, and several inches had already fallen. Reports of the expected accumulation were all over the place and, for that reason, I was not worried about the commute because lots of folks had not bothered to go to work at all. What was exciting me was that the cats had never been out in the snow before. The past several winters had been warm. The thought of the kind of video I would get with black cats jumping in the white snow made me giddy with anticipation of what I would be able to post for the Internet to see.
My wife was not home, which was a bit of a surprise because her car was in the garage. I knew that her office had closed because of the weather. She worked for a government agency, and the radio had announced the early closures of most government offices in our area. Hagrid and Hermione did not greet me at the door, which was also unusual. I focused on them before trying to figure out where my wife was.
The reason they did not come to the garage door was because they were staring out the window, transfixed by the falling snowflakes. I gave them their walkies call--one of the few verbal commands to which they responded--and they immediately ran to the door to have the camera collars put on. I opened the door, and Hermione cautiously poked her head out. Hagrid jumped over her because she was too slow and bounded into the all-encompassing white carpet. Hermione did the cat equivalent of saying, "Ah, screw it!" and jumped after him.
They had a full-blown case of the zoomies in the front yard, racing around in circles with crazed eyes, sliding, jumping into snow drifts, realizing that snow was cold and wet, and then promptly forgetting that as they played. I made a cup of coffee and watched them for a bit. It was better than television. After about fifteen minutes, they went up the tree between our house and the neighbor's house. From experience, I knew they would be up there for a while.
I did not like the neighbor. Gus was his name. He was a general contractor who had just remodeled his home. We had been talking to him about doing ours, too. He was fit and muscled and like to flirt with Randi, who would giggle, twirl her hair, push out her chest, and flirt right back. She denied it when I confronted her and said I was insecure. Gus was also a cyclist, the particularly obnoxious type, always talking about his watts, amperage, volts, calories, and his next race. He liked to cycle on a canal towpath not too far from our house, even in the worst weather when it was muddy because, as he said to my wife's giggles, "What's the point of doing something if it doesn't make you dirty?"
Just then, Randi came back.
"Where are the cats?" she asked.
That was strange. She never asked about them. She seemed to be very agitated. As I looked at her, I realized that she was disheveled, like she had dressed quickly. Her hair, usually very well kept, was chaotic, like she had just woken up.
"Outside," I said, watching her.
She was suspiciously shifty. She seemed at a loss for something to say. Catlike, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.
"Why?" I asked.
She looked shocked but checked herself.
"Why what?" she answered, not meeting my eyes.
"Why are you asking about the cats?"
She seemed to relax a bit.
"I was worried about them in this weather."
She looked me in the eyes as she said that but then quickly looked away. Now I knew she was lying. What she would like was for them to freeze to death in this weather.
"Where were you?" I asked.
She looked frightened again. She was obviously trying to figure out what to say. She slumped a bit.
"I went over to Gus's house to discuss the renovations we want."
She looked at me to see how I reacted. I knew there was more to it than that. She looked panicked. Given all the clues that my brain was slowly processing, I could only think of one reason why she would look panicked. And I realized that reason would involve the cats. I had just remembered that, not only did they like going up the tree next to Gus's house, but they also liked jumping from that tree onto his porch roof and walking around. Normally, it was not a big deal because he was not usually home when they went on their outside excursions, but there had been a few times when I had to edit carefully because you could see right into the bedrooms if they walked by on the porch roof.
"Were you upstairs or downstairs at Gus's house?" I asked, looking down into her face.
A moment passed before she answered.
"It's not what you think."
"How do you know what I think?"
She licked her lips, and her eyes shifted all over the place.
"I think I'll get the cats back inside. I'm guessing that they have some really interesting video today."
Randi's eyes got huge, but she did not say anything.
I went on the porch, making sure that I kept my body in the door so I could not be locked out.
"Kitties! Num nums!" I yelled.
When I had started using that command, I would call the words while also loudly shaking a box of dried cat food. They got the message fast and ran back home. Then, when they came in and let me get the cameras off their necks, I would give them each a treat. After that, I would feed them. Over time, I had dropped the stimulus to the call alone but still gave treats and then fed them a short while later. Thus, today, they responded like they always did and came bounding to the door. I made sure to get the cameras off before they came inside so that Randi would not try to grab them. Treats administered, I let the cats inside. They shook off the snow, looked warily at Randi, and then ran further into the house. I closed the door. Randi's eyes were glued to the cat cameras. Finally, her gaze met mine. She looked stricken.
