I’m afraid I’ve raised a couple of divas.
They’re pampered, demanding and mercurial — often charming, sometimes moody.
They love to sleep. They demand the best.
They’re cats.
Scout and Nelle are princesses — especially Nelle, who has a habit of perching prettily on our throw pillows and has a surly side that seems to say, “I am entitled.”
No doubt, the fault lies with their humans. They arrived in our home not long before our nest emptied, when my husband and I needed something to focus our parental attentions on.
We’re like indulgent grandparents. We let the cats get away with all manner of misbehavior and find it all utterly charming. My son swears we take more pictures of the cats than we do of him. He may be right.
They’ve become thoroughly spoiled and, truth be told, pretty useless.
They seem to lack some of the most basic feline instincts. Nelle has no interest in the outdoors, and in fact once spent a couple of hours cowering under our deck after she slipped out a door that had accidentally been left open. Both have a penchant for lolling on their backs without the usual cat fear that some predator will launch a surprise attack or some human will tickle their bellies.
But it was the mouse incident that made me think they’re in danger of having their cat cards revoked.
It happened one evening a couple of weeks ago, when I saw a mouse make a break from beneath my couch and scurry across the room. Either its mouse senses failed to notice Scout and Nelle parked within inches of its destination, or it was one gutsy rodent.
The mouse took a right turn and started racing along the baseboard, headed for cover under the TV stand.
The cats sprang into cat-alert status, bracing to pounce. They’ll get that mouse, I thought.
I was wrong.
Instead, they turned confused circles, as though they just couldn’t figure out where the mouse was headed. A mouse traveling in a straight line, I might add. Their reaction time was so bad that it almost looked like someone had videotaped the scene and played it back at slow speed.
Geez, one of our previous cats caught a mouse when he was 20. That’s, like, 100 in human years. These cats just turned 7.
You’d think they were under the influence of some pretty potent catnip, but unless they have a secret stash someplace, that wasn’t the case.
They just seemed addled, as though some wiring in their peanut-size brains told them they should take action, but they didn’t quite know what.
My husband had to come to the rescue. Clad in work gloves and armed with a broom, he flushed the mouse out from its hiding place and swooped down to catch it.
The cats went back to their lolling, showing no signs of shame.
I guess I should cut them some slack. After all, they’re out of practice. They’re indoor cats, unaccustomed to the demands of stalking birds and ferreting out moles. Thankfully mouse incursions are rare at our house, so their hunting forays are usually limited to their toys, which don’t put up much of a fight.
That’s a good thing, considering Scout routinely brings her prey to drop near me when she wants attention. Better a stuffed mouse than a beheaded one.
And in their defense, I have to say they’re pretty good at some other cat behaviors. They make that funny chirping noise at the hummingbirds that visit the feeder outside our window. (Do they really think they sound like birds?) They have excellent navigational skills when it comes to plopping down on newspapers, precisely targeting the article the attendant human is reading. They follow the cat code that stipulates that when someone opens a door in response to their cries, they will respond with inaction for at least a full minute before proceeding across the threshold and then stopping halfway across.
But leap after a fly or pounce on a spider?
Heavens no. Divas don’t do that.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/mbbreck, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckenridge and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.