Socks

This is Socks, aka the Wench. Not merely a wench, mind you; the Wench. Before describing this ill-tempered she-devil, let me speak my piece about cats in general, a sort of racial profiling for felines. Male house cats, as opposed to the semi-feral beasts who distribute garbage up and down your front lawn on trash days (for those foolish enough to leave food trash outside of a container), and who drag small children away in the night, are generally well-behaved. By well-behaved I mean a simpleton who sits in your lap, occasionally eats leftovers off dirty plates, and meows pitifully when wanting to go outside. She cats are different, and give truth to old adage that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

There are two categories of female cats; the wench and the idiotic sweet. The idiotic sweet is usually a petite cat, loves people, is hated by other cats, runs from her own shadow, and divides her time between running another cats or hiding from other cats. They look perpetually guilty, which they are, since they're always breaking things in an attempt to avoid other cats or any noise louder than a pindrop. The wench, on the other hand, doesn't like anyone. She is often a mid-size to large beast, distains larger males, tries to eat kittens, and hisses. Constantly. Sure, she feigns affection for humans, but this is merely a ruse. She acts as though she is the real center of the universe, hates all other cats, is generally hated by all other cats, and acts paradoxically around people. These creatures, as recently described in the movie Constantine, really are halfway in hell and halfway on earth.

Socks has been with us since she was very small and why we decided to keep her is still a mystery of Providence. She is about 5 years old, so she's not old and cantankerous yet, but she despises the younger cats energy, especially at 11:45pm or 4:45am, when suddenly the feline NASCAR season opens. She is famous in our house for being indecisive when going outside. For example, she will sit at the front door and whine to go outside. You let her outside. 1.7 minutes later, she's at the backdoor, scratching the glass to get in. What gives? Or, my personal favorite, she'll paw the back glass door and after being let in, she will promptly sit at the front door until let back outside. Lazy animal won't walk around the house but expects me to be a doorkeeper. Who is more stupid I don’t know. Rainy and cold days are especially humorous and she will go outside and immediately realize what a dumb decision that was. Michelle and the kids will let her back in; I am the mean one and won't. Of course, nice people wouldn't write blogs like this.

Socks is the house huntress; she is the bearer of headless rodents and leaves bird carcasses strewn about the yard. She is really quite skilled and I understand why male lions let the lioness do that job. A male would settle in for the patient wait of their prey and simply fall asleep. Anyway, it was not always such. An incident very early in her career should suffice to explain. She couldn't have more than a year old and ran outside into the front lawn. Now previous to this, for at least 5 minutes, I had been watching an old female cat we had, Bonzee, quietly stalking a squirrel. She patiently and cautiously alternated beween slow forward motion and statuesque stillness, slowly inching toward the unsuspecting rodent. Bonzee was also a good hunter and surely that squirrel would have been meal fit for regurgitation on top of my car (yes, one of our cats unloaded across the entire top of my car after a meal of…of something). But poor Bonzee; no rodent puking that day. Socks took one glance at the squirrel and ran head long towards it like a bull charging a fighter. The squirrel easily avoided her and made fun of the silly cat from the branches of the tree in his chattering fashion. Needless to say Bonzee looked at Socks with a cool disdain, but she has since learned the art of hunting and the giving of dead white elephant gifts.

She is also a cover-hog. Most of our cats have a favorite bed, couch, or location whereby they can get comfortable and leave dander on. Socks is no exception; hers is our bed. She is very possessive as she will hiss and growl at the other cats who like to be under the bed. But the bed in general would not be accurate description. Much more to the point, she likes sleeping in between Michelle and I. This is akin to putting several college-level anatomy books in the middle of your bed, and seeing what happens when you try and turn over. Because the fat lard just sits there, the covers are held in place and ride up the edges, letting in all that cold air underneath, which kind of defeats the purpose of being covered in the first place. When you pull the covers towards the edge of the bed and yourself, it lifts her up a bit, though not much because of her size. And naturally it doesn't last because gravity must be allowed to work. The long-short of it is that every time I want to be comfortable in my own bed, by simply rolling over or covering up, she hisses and growls at me for disturbing her. I'm in the habit of throwing her off the bed, but she just returns and we start the process over again. Sometimes it's not between us, but at my feet and the same thing happens. She hisses and growls at me for moving my feet. How dare I.

Socks is one of the few cats in the house that I truly loathe. She is rotten, selfish, and will probably be annoying until her end. Just like a wart that won't go away and cutting it off will bleed too much. So you deal with it. In the meantime, if anyone needs a good rodent killer who likes to steal covers, let me know. I've got a bargin for you.