I Think Our Cat is Broken

Post by Lara

27 December 2012

A few weeks ago Eric, a friend of ours, made a 19-mile journey with his own cat’s kitten in tow to bring her to her new home.  We named her Nimbus and welcomed her into the menagerie that is our home (between our half of the house and the neighbors who occupy the other half and share a courtyard with us there are 3 dogs, 1 monkey, about 15 chickens, and now a cat—there used to be 2 other cats but they were “thieved” before we moved in).  The first night Nimbus spent in our house we knew something was up. 

The cat was generally afraid of us and unfriendly for the first day, which is to be expected. We offered her some yummy food and gave her some space so as not to scare her off immediately.  Because she’s still a kitten and according to Eric can wreak some serious havoc when there are breakable things about, we decided it was for the best to keep her out of our bedroom at night, so we closed the bedroom door, tucked in our mosquito net, and sat reading for an hour or so before we went to sleep.  Soon after we got in bed I heard a high-pitched whine that seemed to be coming from the open window behind us.  It didn’t sound like any of the 3 dogs, all of whom we can distinguish by their individual barks, whines, and howls by now.  “What is that sound?” I asked Kevin.  “Sounds like a kid pretending to cry like one of the dogs” he replied. We went on with that assumption for a while.  The whining continued, and still sounded a lot like a small child pretending to call like an animal several yards outside of our bedroom window.  This kept up to the point that I began to grow angry at the child making the noises—it was well after 10 pm by this point—and was just about to get up and go outside to take care of it when I sat straight up and realized that a) the noise was in fact coming from our bedroom door and b) if there were a child making noises outside of our house at night, the dogs would go crazy. I hadn’t heard a thing from them for a while.  Next, we heard the sound of claws digging into the outside of the bedroom door, at least halfway up the door.  That sound paired with the eerily human-like whining we heard finally registered—that’s our new kitten, feeling lonely and wanting to come inside.  “That does not sound like a cat.” Kevin stated. So now we were aware that our cat meows like a child meowing like a cat. Interesting.

The following morning Nimbus ventured outside and came face-to-face with the other animals of the house. Feeling instantly threatened, she began to puff her fur up and…emit yet another strange noise. This time we knew it was the cat, but it took a while to find something to compare the noise to. We finally settled on the idea that when she’s puffing up and giving off her “get away from me” warning, she sounds like an old door creaking open.  Champion, the youngest and most foolhardy of the dogs, decided that the cat-that-sounds-like-a-creaky-door was something new to play with, and when he tried to get near Nimbus surprised us yet again, letting out a hiss that sounds almost exactly like a water cannon at an amusement park [by the way, water cannons at amusement parks sound so nice right now, considering that it’s regularly over 90 degrees during the day].  Nimbus gave one more water cannon hiss and disappeared inside for an hour. 

In conclusion, what we thought was a kitten coming to us turned out to be some sort of small child in cat’s clothing that can creak like an old door hinge and poof like a water jet when provoked.  We hope she still kills rats.