A Tail Of Two Cats

The title to this blog entry might seem facetious to you, or you might think it a rather bad pun, but it does make a point about our two cats.

People who have not had pets do not understand or do not believe that animals have personalities just as different and distinct as humans do.

Take our cats, please. (No, that's an old Henny Youngman joke: "Take my wife, please.") But, I digress.

Our two cats, or maybe I should say our cat and the other one that comes to eat and sleep here during the day, are as different in behavior and habits as any two humans can be.

Lea,  the cat on the right of this photo,

has the personality, habits, and finicky character of an old spinster (she is old BTW; we guess she is 12 years old which would make her a 70 year old person). If you are a film buff like I am, I would describe her like Millicent Wetherby, the spinsterish woman played by Joan Crawford in the movie Autumn Leaves. Or perhaps an older Jane Hudson as played by Katherine Hepburn in Summertime, the movie about a spinster who goes to Venice and falls in love with Rossano Brazzi. 

Well, Prince, the cat on the left of the picture would make a convincing Renato de Rossi, the character played by Brazzi in the same movie. He is dashing, handsome, amorous, and quite the man (uh, cat) about town.

In this photo,

 you can see that he is not one of perfunctory sleeping habits, much to the dismay of Lea. Yet, much like in the movie Summertime (and if you are too young to remember it or have seen it, here is a link to a clip in Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67MxIl795w) Lea is just as reluctant to give in to Prince's shenanigans as was Miss Hepburn when Rossano Brazzi tried to charm her out of her wits and to stay in Venice. In the movie, Jane's common sense and old maid morality prevails and she leaves Venice. In our house, Lea's spinsterish spirit prevails and she has no truck with Prince.

Joan Crawford's behavior toward Cliff Robertson in "The Autumn Leaves" it is not too far fetched to describe what happens to Lea when Prince comes around after being out all night doing who knows what all over the neighborhood. (See the 1956 trailer for the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiDz3vcEBnQ).

When he comes in, like the rake that he is, he goes up to Lea and kisses her (actually rubs noses). She accepts his gesture but then strikes at him, as if saying, "You smell of another cat, you cad!" Prince nimbly jumps out of harm's way, like the young, street-wise cat that he is, then jauntily goes to have his milk and food, after which he sleeps all morning. Nevertheless, when he leaves to do his rounds, she stares out the window, longingly.

But, back to why I named this entry "The Tail Of Two Cats."

There are many things that give insight into an animal's personality and its state of mind. But, in a cat, the most telling (apart from the meowing, purring, and growling) is the way they move or manage their tail.

Lea is constantly at war with her tail. She chases it, bites it, paws at it with her claws to such an extent that we find tufts of her hair on the rug and her tail looks like those Christmas tree branches after they have gone dry and have lost all of their pine needles.

To me this "tail chasing" denotes Lea's character and anxieties. Like all old maids, she is highly strung, mildly psychotic, and always chasing herself instead of chasing a male cat.

While Prince, on the other hand, never chases his tail. He does chase other cats, especially his nemesis the black cat that lives in a street near-by and dares invade Prince's territory.

When he is not fighting, Prince's main occupation is sunning himself in front of the house or on top of our garden table. His tail, a thick, furry thing that serves him well as as rudder when he is jumping from roof to roof, keeps a sort of time when he is at rest. Like a metronome, it flips from side to side, at regular intervals, as if he were humming to himself and thus marking the beats to a song.

When he is about to get into a fight or he is on the alert, his tail stands straight up, like a battle flag.

It reminds me of the Japanese soldiers in movies like Kagemucha.

Lea, in contrast, uses her tail mostly to display anger or displeasure. She shoots it straight back as if streamlining herself for a run.

Prince being an expressive cat, uses his tail in a lot of ways which (being a cat psychiatrist I am in a position to know) I think allows him to be a more settled, well-adjusted feline; while Lea, which is always at odds with her tail (and it seem with Life itself) is so nervous her hair falls out.

Prince seems to have learned his cat ways from Tom, a cat that lives across the road in a neighbor's house and whom we suspect is in fact Prince's father.

That's Tom sitting on a post of our front fence. As one can see, Price looks a lot like Tom. Prince has taken over the street from Tom and occasionally he lets him know who is boss now so Tom is always on the lookout for Prince. He is, in fact, afraid of him -- as one can see from the way he looks when Prince is approaching.

Tom has a funny way of expressing himself with his tail. He never meows or purrs or utters any sound at all. But, he twirls his tail when we feed him. Its his way of saying, "Thanks for the chow."

Strangely enough, there are no female cats in our neighborhood (except Lea and she has been "fixed", as they say). So, I wonder how this cat saga is going to develop when a she-cat appears on the block.

I bet there'll be a lot of tail wagging.