The pernickety old woman has many unnatural ideas about me, as I said. They cause a lot of strife and strangering between us, as you might expect.
Strangering is when someone pretends they are a stranger and they stalk away with their tail high and their self-respect intact.
Our first great struggle was about me intending to do my Hand-of-God work in the night. Let me tell you, I have stood hours at the back door, miaowing sternly, or piteously, begging, or forceful. “Open the cage door,” I would cry. “Let me explore the night!”
The first few times she told me about the nocturnal critters native to her backyard. She’d sworn that they’d go unmolested.
“I’m the Hand-of-God. I wanna get to know them,” I cried. She turned her back on me, got on with getting dinner.
The following dozen stand-offs at the backdoor, she told me about the little deaths delivered to her by a neighbouring tom. The morning he brought her a snakelet in three pieces, she decided that none of her pets would ever join in the nightly carnage.
“Pets?” I snarled. I’ll show her who the pet is in this house! I stalked into the bedroom and hid under the bed. Causing, I might add, a lengthy battle at her bedtime, with the easily deflected indoor broom.
“Go! Have the run of the house,” she said.
My last 20 or 30 attempts to gain the night, she served up several more excuses, the weakest one about the busy road out front where two of my predecessors met their demise. “I’m a super cat,” I cried. “The Hand-of-God!”
She apparently thinks she can wean me from my instincts. “If my instincts can be dampened down with enculturation,” she said. “So can yours!”
I showed her my teeth in disgust. Predictably, she laughed. “Like it or lump it,” she said.
Rita de Heer 