Face of My Couch

When I was growing up I had friends who had cats and they seemed to think that it made them inherently more intelligent than lowly dog owners.

They would tell me things like:
"A dog will love anyone unconditionally. You have to earn a cat's love".
Or
"Your dog is an idiot. My cat is wise, like Buddah".

First of all, I'd like to point out that these are PETS we're talking about, so purchasing an animal that will definitely love you as opposed to purchasing an animal that might love you seems like an easy choice. I'm surrounded by jerks all day. Why would I willingly come home to another one? No brainer, folks.

Second of all, my dog might not be a rocket scientist, but my roommate's cat is no Einstein either. Case and point: she got stuck in a couch the other day. And I'm not talking about in the couch cushions, I'm talking about the interior of the couch.



So I'm sitting at home one night. Both of my roommates are gone and I'm catching up on Modern Family. Suddenly, I realize, it's very quiet in the house. Face is usually a pretty social animal. If you're home, she puts in an appearance, checks you for interesting smells and then moves on. I hadn't seen her once since I'd gotten home from work. I become suspicious. First course of action: check the closets. Face has been shut in closets not once, not twice, but thrice (once for an entire weekend!) in the past, so its the obvious place to start. The closets are clean so I go back to my show.

Then I hear the phantom meowing.
I mute the TV and listen again.

Nothing.

I turn the TV back on and the meowing starts again. Now I'm really starting to get freaked. If something bad has happened to this dumb cat on my watch, I'm as good as dead.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I get out the Kitty Kaviar. Kitty Kaviar, for the unfamiliar, is some kind of dehydrated fish flakes that are bright orange and smell like ass. The cats go bonkers for that stuff so if you just rattle the can around, they come a runnin'. The kaviar yields no results.

Now I'm freaked. And I'm hearing the phantom meowing more frequently. Finally, I start checking under furniture. Beds, chairs, dressers...nothing.

We have a den in the back of our house where we stash my crappy Craigslist couch. I take off one of the cushions and notice a strange lump under it.

I poke it a few times.
It meows.

Since I'm home alone (and not necessarily 100% sober), getting that damn cat out of the damn couch is no easy task. There is a slit in the cheap fabric that covers the back of the couch and she has wormed her way in there and gotten caught in the springs. I try tipping the couch on its side, but that just slides her further in. Eventually I balance the thing on my thigh and hold it steady with one hand, while I reach in and grab Face by the tail and pull her out.

Once she is free, her first move is to try to get back into the couch. WTF?

I am certainly glad Face came out unharmed. I wish I could say the same about myself. I have a giant bruise from balancing a couch on my leg.

Stupid Face.
Good thing she's cute.

A New Face

A while back, I was living in a 2 bedroom apartment. It was a nice enough place for the price, and had plenty of room for two people. My Roommate, however, decided it had plenty of room for two people and a cat.

I don't really have a great personal history with cats. There was a night in college where a friend and I were eating away our future hangovers at Steak & Shake at approximately 3:00 am on a Tuesday and we bought a kitten from our waitress. She gave us her apartment keys and directions to her place and we drove over, got the kitten and took it home with us.
It. Was. A. Disaster.
The poor thing (that we never even bothered naming) was shipped off to a friend's farm (really!) within a month. I'm not even sure I should be allowed to be in the same domicile as a cat because of it.

Despite my reservations, Roommate was determined to buy a cat. We talked about names. Since she was planning to get a male, we tossed around the name of every Jane Austen leading man, a few past monarchs and other smart-and-clever titles before settling on "C. K. Dexter Haven", after Carey Grant's character from Philadelphia Story.

Long story short, don't spend a lot of time planning the name of a cat you don't even want because Roommate will come home with a female cat, name it Stoli (after the vodka) and it will have been a huge waste of time. Especially since we started calling her "Face" after about a week of cohabitation and that's the name that actually stuck.

This is Face and this will be her story.