Monday, February 21, 2011

Outside Cat by Aralis Bloise

Outside Cat
by Aralis Bloise

As a single woman living by yourself, one of the best things you can have is an outside cat. I know you might be tempted to keep your cat inside the house, and you can still get one for that. But trust me; you still need one patrolling the perimeter of your home.

I know there is a stigma attached to a single woman relying on feline help. We all know the stereotype; Sad, lonely spinster dressing up her cats and having tea parties with them. I’m not talking about that. I have friends; I have dates, thank you very much. But no matter how popular you are, sometimes you end up alone at night…and that’s when the strange noises come out.

For some reason, the noises never happen when you have witnesses. Or during the day. It’s always when you are alone and prone to exaggeration. Try this experiment: invite at least 7-8 people to your place one night. Around midnight, turn off any music, TV, etc and tell everyone to be quiet.

Wait.
Wait some more.

You can wait till morning, you won’t hear a thing. Now tell everybody to go home, watch The Omen and then try to go to sleep. It’s an orchestra of inexplicable noises. Inexplicable that is, if you don’t have an outside cat to blame them on.

Some people might argue that cats make some scary noises themselves. After all, a cat in heat sounds like someone is murdering a baby, but I think that just adds to your sense of security. Once you have been able to explain away that unearthly screeching, everything else is simple.

Serial killer in the bushes outside my window?
No, it’s just the cat.

Peeping Tom in the bathroom window?
No, it’s just the cat.

Monster on the roof?
No it’s just the cat.

Let me tell you, my cat Ling outside makes me feel a lot safer than all the locks on my door. And she likes being outside. She gets to run around and explore. She gets to climb trees and chase birds. She actually likes it better than being indoors. She really hated those tea parties.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like indoor cats for the same reason but I don't think I've ever seen it so well articulated. If there were no cats, I would have to supervise my boiler all night long, interrogate the fridge each time it burped, and issue the bath spiders with woolly slippers. Now we know the answer to the question, 'what are cats for?'!

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

Yes! I agree with this totally-- the great thing about having cats is, whenever there's a strange noise in the house, and Mary asks "what was that!" I can always look at her and say "oh, it's the cats."

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