We Had a Breakthrough with the Neighborhood Cat

There’s a cat in our neighborhood. Shaggy little fella. Or gal. Not sure what this cat is. Long, black fur though. Often with a couple burrs in it.

We first met the cat on a walk during the wedding rescheduling. It was around the peak of the stress, and that particular night, I was the one feeling it. There are a lot of outdoor cats we see on these walks—especially in the summer—and my now-wife was mad because I kept stopping and giving them scritches while she was trying to talk to me. Which was fair. I, then, was mad at her, because I’m capable of giving a cat scritches while still talking to her, and because I love cats and would have had two for the last four years (which I would have named Doc and Whiskers) if she weren’t allergic. This was equal parts fair and unfair.

Giving a cat scritches is one of my favorite things in the world. Dogs are great. They exist to be petted. But cats are great too. Because they don’t exist to be petted. When they do let you pet them, in addition to the lowered blood pressure and the dopamine/serotonin boost, you feel chosen by the cat. Allowed into the cat’s life. This is often seemingly without rhyme or reason, which somehow makes it all the more special.

So you can imagine my excitement that summer night when, feeling mad and stressed and exhausted, this particular cat—the long-haired black one—came charging towards us across its lawn, not galloping, but hurrying, its short little legs (this is not a tall, graceful cat) tap-tap-tapping across the grass, then the curb, then a few feet of asphalt, all while the thing howled a repetitive, purry meow (which is the technical term for when cats are both purring and meowing at the same time).

We stopped to pet the cat.

We had never met this cat before. Some of the others were becoming familiar, but this one was new to us. It had come from the stoop of a house only a block and a half away from our duplex, though, and after this first hilarious, delightful, comforting night, we began to see it often. It would come running at us. We would stop and pet it. We’d sit on the sidewalk with it, right at the corner, and it would rub our legs and twist its head to get its ears scratched, and it’d nip at us for unclear reasons and then sprawl for more love, and we would both feel a lot better than we did moments before (I hope the cat felt better too). Eventually, the two of us would need to head home—the cat never tired—and we’d walk off, often seeing a bigger, more skittish, but pretty, gray-and-white shorthair a few houses further down.

I’d see the cat during the day sometimes, too, were I out for a walk during the day. It wouldn’t say hi—too busy basking in the sun on the driveway or curled up on the stoop. But I’d see it, and it’d make me smile.

One night, we noticed that the cat had a wound on the back of its neck. It was hard to tell whether this was a sore, or an injury, or some byproduct of a medical procedure. It was dark, and the cat is black, and the cat is often moving when we see it. But it didn’t look good, and we tried not to touch it.

Shortly thereafter, the cat’s visits to us became less frequent. From the tags on its collar, we know it’s something like ten or twelve years old (and has its rabies shots, which is why it has the tags in the first place), and that, combined with the wound, created some concern that the cat might not be doing too well, being middle-aged and seemingly an outdoor kitty. But every few weeks, out of the blue, there again would come the cat, charging at us across its lawn, howling meows while purring unceasingly.

When we went for our walk Wednesday night, it had been a few weeks since we’d seen the cat, and we were overjoyed when it made an appearance as we approached home. Better yet, the wound was smaller, and the hairless area around it—which had always comforted me, since it seemed like it may have been shaved, implying some treatment was happening—was smaller, with the wound either smaller itself or perhaps morphing into a scar. It was a great night. We all—my wife, myself, and the cat—had a nice time.

Thursday was even better.

It’s been a while since we’ve gotten back-to-back nights with the cat, but there, 24 hours after our last visit, came the little bugger, short legs churning as it came around from the backyard to see us (it must hear us talking or something—I wonder what other neighborhood friends it has). As usual, it met us on the street, and as usual, we walked to the sidewalk, and as usual, it rubbed against our legs until we sat down.

But then the unusual things started to happen. The cat started putting its front feet up on our laps.

This, if you don’t know cats, is a big step. It’s one thing for a cat to allow pets. It’s another for a cat to seek your lap. And if being permitted to pet a cat makes one feel chosen and special and beloved, having one’s lap chosen by a cat is like receiving a Fort Knox worth of emotional gold. Even just having the cat consider, for moments, climbing into one of our laps was thrilling.

But the cat didn’t climb up into one of our laps.

Not at first.

First, it walked over to this gutter across the intersection, which is filled right now with leaves.

We’ve seen the cat walk over to this gutter before. It’s been confusing, and it often makes me nervous, because sometimes cars zip on through, but the cat does it and then returns, and it knows the neighborhood better than I do, so I should probably trust it to handle itself.

This time, we realized what it was doing over there.

Because for the first time, we saw it do it.

The gutter is the cat’s outdoor litterbox.

I won’t go into the details, so as not to embarrass the cat, but evidently that was what the cat needed to do to get comfortable, because immediately upon returning, up into my lap it climbed.

Ecstasy. A cat in my lap. Hunkered down, still and happy, slightly curling its paws in a hint of a knead. We laughed. We told it what a good cat it is. We lightly cuddled it. And then we noticed it looking out at…the shorthaired neighbor cat, which was standing in the middle of the street.

I don’t know whether our friend the cat was looking for protection from me, or if this was just coincidence. Our friend, after all, had put its front feet up on our laps even before the bathroom trip, and it had its back to the direction of the other cat’s house while it was over there, making me think the other cat wasn’t out yet (that or our friend’s the alpha in the neighborhood, and if it is, I’m proud of it). But whatever the motivation, the cat was in my lap, and it was still purring, even as the three of us commenced a staredown with the shorthaired guy down the block.

Our friend was unintimidated.

Eventually, a couple came through on a walk of their own, and the shorthaired cat bolted, and a few minutes later, our cat got up from my lap and resumed pacing around in circles on the sidewalk asking for scritches, which we happily supplied.

But then.

Then, the cat climbed into my wife’s lap.

As you may guess, from my wife being allergic to cats, my wife has never had a cat before, and because cats are finnicky and she doesn’t have the experience of having spent the first eighteen years of her life living around them, trying to make them like her (which was the experience of the first eighteen years of my life, and became a successful endeavor), she has a harder time getting cats to warm up to her than I do. It’s a comfort thing. She’s not used to their nips, and so doesn’t know how to avoid them. She’s not used to the weird little scritches cats like, or finding out which ones they prefer. When we see a cat in the neighborhood, it often spends more time around me. I just get the cat more.

So for her to be chosen…this was transforming. Never before, I don’t believe, had she held a cat in her lap.

After a while, we figured we should stop sitting on our neighbor’s sidewalk (we’ve never met the neighbor, and are unsure if she knows of our friendship or any other neighbors’ friendships with her cat), and so I got up first, and I patted the sidewalk to tell the cat I’d give it more scritches there, and it climbed off my wife’s lap, and she stood and we petted it for another minute or so before walking home, with it following us for a few feet, as it always does, before turning left and walking back towards its stoop.

But all the way home, we were floating—my wife even more so than me. Because for the first time, her lap had been chosen by a cat.