Evil Twin ~ The 'Fraidy Cat
Word gets around. Name the best watering hole. Choose the best B&B. Look for the best service available.
Without any funds budgeted for advertising or promotion, without IT and cellular phones, without so much as stuffing a mailbox, it became known that for excellent accommodations at a reasonable price, our address was "the place".
Our first visitors stumbled (sometimes literally) onto our property for the great view from the top of the cars. Each morning there would be one or two patrons lying on the roof of the "good car", soaking up the heat reflected from the pearl black brushed finish.
They didn't ask for anything. They came for the respite from their usual routines. They came to rest from a night of hunting. They came to access each other from a permissible distance. They came with heavy-lidded eyes and great stretching yawns. It started with two.
Time passed and they became a part the visual landscape, expected and appreciated. They reclined on top of the cars, and huddled under the cars. They walked the roofs and the gravel drive, stopping every now and then to lie upside down and roll in the gravel. They found homes on the front door stoop and in the shade of the boxwood hedge. Some coveted recognition, others sought out privacy and protection.
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As all providers of hospitality, we had our regulars. The little tiger female would make an appearance daily for several months and then disappear for an equal period of time. When she did present herself, she was followed, at a distance, by a big soft cotton-candy puffy male. He was an explosion of long black hair sparked with bright amber highlights.
She was determined; he was acquiescent. She was small in stature and perfectly graceful; he was big and unkempt and fiddle-fronted. She'd take on all comers and had the scars to prove it. He was easy going and happy to stand on the sidelines when the cats came to argue. He adored her. Animals do adore each other.
It's inevitable that if you leave humans around animals for too long, they have an overwhelming need to name them. It's unfortunate, but it's true. Fight it as we might, we named her "Kitty" (nobody's making any claims for imagination here) and we named him "B.G." for the "Black Ghost". He was black, but he wasn't remotely ghostly.
For some period of time they disappeared. This was expected. Then one morning we spotted her out lying on the car, but she was alone. Assuming B.G. was under the car (one of his favorite places when "over" the car was occupied) we came toward her. When approached she hissed and spat and fled into the surrounding brush, or bushes, or undergrowth, or something green like that. Suffice to say she ran away.
This went on for weeks. We would spot her, but any movement towards her sent her flying into the foliage. B.G. was nowhere to be seen.
People, having been given a big brain and nothing in particular to do with it, tend to speculate about things. What if B.G. and Kitty were abused or attacked or solicited by telephone marketers! We fretted over her behavior, although to her we were nothing. Is she running because she's sick? Did B.G. die of the same horrible disease we've decided now she has? Or did he just fall victim to his own sweet nature, because it's a hard mean world out there.
Three weeks after her return we had adjusted to her odd behavior. She would lie on the car, and we would keep our distance, unless we had to use the car, that was an acceptable exception.
One morning as she was coughing up a good-sized fur ball on the hood B.G. returned. He was standing right beside the rear wheel of the car, just as fat and duck-footed as ever, looking like a huge shedding pompom.
Failing to meet expectations, he did not walk under the carriage and take his usual eighteen-hour nap, but instead continued to walk toward the garage, and toward yet another cat lying at the entrance to the garage. The little cat was playing and rolling on her back and immediately jumped to her feet as he approached. It was Kitty!
If that was Kitty, who had been retreating into the camouflage? It was Kitty's doppelganger, a true feral cat, replete with hisses and bared claws and suspicious squinting yellow eyes. We had never gotten close enough to see his face, and had just assumed with their markings being so alike that it was Kitty. But it wasn't Kitty, and so we came to name him "Evil Twin, the 'fraidy' cat". We now had three itinerant semi-permanent fixtures. Why did Evil Twin fail to run this time? Because his love of Kitty was greater than his fear of people. Oh the drama! Oh the agony of heart! A classic love triangle. (Or so it was speculated, because as I mentioned before people invest too much energy making up reasons for things.)
As time passed we became a Cat SOHO for the day-trippers: well-groomed house pets, de-clawed and neutered, stopping by on their way home to canned Fancy Feast dinners and cat cup beds. They wore colorful collars and vaccination tags. Some wore hearts engraved with their name and their owner's cell phone numbers. They often perched on the stone walls or on the garage roof, distaining the dense cover so coveted by Evil Twin and the Black Ghost. These were people cats. They would sidle along human legs and arms, purring like a TENS machine. Necks were lifted and throats exposed in anticipation of scratching and petting and cuddling. Evil Twin would watch them and draw his head deeper between his hunched shoulders, backing further into the boxwood hedge.
One of the group of slumming felines wore a bright reflective tag proclaiming him to be "Jones". Jones tolerated the presence of no other cats, although he demonstrated an uncommon need to physically attach himself to people. He was, in fact, a cat-hating cat. It wasn't a question of territory as it was with Kitty, or of survival, as it was with Evil Twin. He downright hated cats. He hated B.G. Nobody hated B.G.
Most animals have different levels of fighting, ranging from play to execution. Jones chose the same level each and every time. He went for the kill. Whatever tiny number of neurons he had in his little cat skull were all hooked up to "see live cat, make dead cat". This red-coated feline with the spooky lemonade eyes was your basic four-legged bloodthirsty nut ball.
Unfortunately, one day he spotted Kitty. Unfortunately when he hissed, Kitty didn't scamper. "Scamper" was not in Kitty's vocabulary. Unfortunately also lacking from her lexicon were; "back down", or "recognize he's twice your size", or "huge gaping fatal wound".
If people were to witness more real world cat fights, they wouldn't jump up and down clapping the flats of their palms together with glee shouting, "Cat fight! Cat fight!" upon viewing two woman confronting each other. The speed with which they take place is breathtaking; and the ferocity is nature at its most efficient.
Jones went for her with enormous speed, and she, in turn, waited and jumped over him, racing for the open lawn. He turned and sighted her and caught her faster than a human brain could process the event. There was no time for intervention, only observation. And then Jones was gone and there was Evil Twin, standing over Kitty, hissing. He had been watching from one of his secret places of darkness. The Black Ghost simply looked perplexed. Evil Twin watched over Kitty as she licked her wounds (yes, that's literal) guarding her from the return of the hateful red demented house pet.
The next morning a small deceased mouse had been carefully placed on my doorstep, nicely centered on its back, four little legs all in the air. This was the feline equivalent of a thank-you note. I have always appreciated good manners. It's a sign of good breeding. They were all going to stay for a while, until they left again.
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