Patsy is the most lovable cat on the planet. I mean, who would know better than me, right? She loves to cuddle in my lap, rub against my legs, purr loudly and have her belly rubbed–bellums is the term. Patsy has the routine down pat on how to get bellums. At 5 o’clock, almost on the dot every day, her dawdy comes home for work. She runs from the back of the house, where she has been most of the day, and jumps up on the counter to head bump dawdy. No sooner than this lovable moment has ended, she jumps down and saunters into the living room turning two or three times along the way to ensure dawdy is following her. “Does Patsy want bellums,” dawdy asks. And the little princess begins to circle around on the throw rug before she finally plops down on her side and turns over to allow him to rub her tummy. On a day when she really wants some attention she will stretch her front paws over her head and arch her back so she can get some really good rubs. As soon as bellums begins it seems like it’s over. Patsy will let you know when she’s had enough too. Dawdy has the scratch marks on his hands to prove it.

She spends the next 10 or 15 minutes waiting at the door that leads to the screen porch. She is anxiously awaiting Dawdy to let her “outside” so she can dream of chasing squirms (that’s squirrels in cat language) and chipmumps. She loves sitting on the screen porch each afternoon and spending time with her dawdy. It’s sometimes difficult to get her to come back inside in the evening as she will run under the table or loveseat. But we have a secret weapon. All we have to do is hit the garage door opener and when she hears it raising she bolts for the door and runs to seek shelter under a bed.

The sailboat room is her favorite. We haven’t quite figured out why she likes this room so much, but it’s where you’ll find her most times if you are looking for her for some reason. You’ll find her occasionally under the bed in the beautiful room and that’s where we look next if she isn’t in the sailboat room. The third of our extra bedrooms is the piano room. It’s called that because there is a keyboard in that room. We made it a practice to keep the door to this room closed so she wouldn’t climb on the keyboard and scratch the keys. And unintentionally, because we kept the door closed to the piano room, Patsy could not mark her territory in this room.

About a year ago our son moved back home temporarily to try and get his finances in order. He took over the piano room and slowly but surely Patsy began to feel threatened by his presence. At first it was just the minor hissing as he would walk by her, which was a practice of hers with any of our children and grandchildren. Annoying, yes, but what are you gonna do? Then she began to get brave and she would run over to him, running over his bare feet, and scratching them in the process. This progressed into biting his ankles, then to lurking outside his bedroom every night waiting to pounce on him when he opened his door.

One evening while we were watching TV I heard a strange raspy low pitched noise coming from the foyer. I got up to see Patsy sitting squashskilly on the foyer floor. Her eyes were fixed on Ric who was sitting on the loveseat minding his own business. The black pupil overtook the blueness of her eyes and she appeared to be growling. This could not be a good thing. This was the night dawdy got scratched pretty bad from carrying her back to our bedroom to have some separation between Patsy and her intruder. If you’ve never seen or heard a growling cat, just pull up YouTube. Let me know if it scares you.

When Patsy was a kitten, my sister-in-law had named her the “demon cat” when she saw her glowing eyes under the bed. Cat lesson #1: their eyes glow in the dark when you shine a light in their face. That nickname did not stick, but it did get filed away for the Patsy series.

All good things must come to an end and after about 2 months Ric was gone. I mean, it was him or Pasty and since she was part owner of the domicile the natural choice was him. It only took a few days for Patsy to return to her lovable self and all is good now, but she’s hiding for the moment.

Wait . . .

There she was!