Emmy Lou, the white-bibbed tabby feline that consents to live with us, meets me at the inside door to the garage virtually every time I pull the car in. Open the door and she'll be right there, either trying to get out into the garage or just wanting to rub against my legs.
Just as some pets are tuned to the sound of an electric can opener, Emmy will awake from a deathlike sleep at the sound of the electric garage-door opener beginning to operate.
That cat is constantly underfoot.
When someone is walking through what she regards as her house, she will be right there trying to weave between their legs as they take each step. It's easy to get tripped up by this cat.
Then when you reach down, either to pet her or scratch behind her ears, she'll give you a look and walk away bored and uninterested.
If you walk into the kitchen, she is sure of two things: you are there either to feed her or to steal what food she already has left in her bowl, so she'd better finish it off right now. As I finish walking across the kitchen, she'll look up from her empty bowl with an expression that says, "See, my bowl's empty - fill it again so I'll have something to eat."
Sorry, Emmy, there are no fatcats living in this house.
We watch, with some amusement, when Emmy starts to play with her multitude of cat toys. It seems like, on almost every trip that we make to the warehouse pet-supply store, whether it be for more cat food or more kitty litter, somehow the purchase will include some more cat toys. She probably has $40 worth of bought cat toys in a wicker hamper.
So what are Emmy's favorite toys?
Carry in the groceries and give her one of the empty paper grocery bags, and she's always busy for about five minutes. She'll walk up to it and cautiously peer around its side to see if anything is hiding behind it. Lay the bag on its side and she'll crawl in and look out at the passing world from within her paper cave.
Emmy treats an empty box the same way. After a careful inspection for who-knows-what, she'll climb into it and decide that this is her new resting place - especially if the box is small enough so that she just barely fits inside.
She'll chase and bat about simple Ping-Pong balls until they are all lost under the couch or some other furniture. She also has a collection of stuffed mice that she is equally adept at losing under the furniture.
When all of her toys have disap-peared, my partner will go to the closet, pull out the wooden yardstick and, using it, sweep under all the places Emmy could knock things. She'll usually recover at least five items.
The cat will then promptly lose them under the furniture again.
We had an old friend, Peter, living with us for a few months. One day, after Emmy had thoroughly explored his room in the basement, she came up the stairs carrying a pair of his black dress socks and deposited them in the living room for us.
Emmy then began to carry this pair of Peter's socks all around the house. We even gave them the name of "Sock Baby" because she was so closely imitating the way a mother cat carries her kittens when moving them. We also made sure that Peter knew that when he left, his socks were going to be staying here with Emmy.
Since them, Emmy has adopted about four other pairs of bundled socks, so that at any time there may be folded pairs of socks lying about on the floor.
I'll be sitting in a chair in the living room, and I'll hear Emmy start meowing in another part of the house. Sure enough, in just a few minutes, she'll come walking into where I am, carrying one of the sock babies.
In the middle of the night, Emmy will bring a pair of socks into the bedroom for us.
Emmy could probably benefit from an extended session with Dr. Phil.
Our cat knows, though, that she has two "cute" poses that will melt our hearts. She'll be sitting in front of us on her haunches, with her front legs straight out and her front paws centered, and she'll tilt her head and look up at us with a wide-eyed expression that says, "I'm sooo innocent, anything that's broken was done by somebody else."
She also lies down, but is still upright with her front paws folded under her, and she assumes an air of supreme royalty.
We try hard not to bore Her Majesty. We must not be very successful, though, because Emmy sleeps about 19 hours every day.
Ah, a cat's life.
Freelancer Gary McDaniel resides in Magnolia. His column appears in the News every other week. He can be reached at qanews@nwlink.com
