Sometimes, I am so disgusted by her. She has nasty habits…she buries her poop, rolls around in ecstasy on Nick's pile of sweaty running clothes, and plays with bugs. Why does she have to be such a…a…such an animal!?



It's my fault, really. In my imagination, Sophie is mostly human—I wouldn't have entire one-sided conversations with a cat, after all. She has a handful of ironic expressions that she cycles through depending on her level of disdain for my chatter, a moody glare that erupts when I have the audacity to put something of mine in her way, and a wide-eyed profession of total adoration for all the times in between.

She's two steps away from being my closest confident.

I've just taken the anthropomorphism too far. (I know this surprises you immensely.) As such, I am a little turned off when she starts behaving like a cat. One of our wedding presents was a pretty hanging plant. The day after our party, Nick brought it into the living room while we prepared a place for it. Meanwhile, a stowaway deposited himself on the floor. Sophie got her bully on and started pushing him around—trying for intimidation so that she could overpower him, obviously.

Meanwhile, I could only see the scene from Lion King when Timon picks up a squishy bug and talks about it being cream-filled. I started to gag, squeaking for Nick to get rid of him before Sophie could finish him off! He could tell that it wasn't a time to torment me because I was horrified that she might actually put that nasty thing in her mouth.

To distract Sophie while he took care of business, I topped off the water in her mug and we settled in to gossip about the family who just moved in down the road.

Sophie has this one trait which makes her the most loveable cat in the world: she automatically purrs when we touch her. She is instantly happy at any show of affection.

As an aside, I am amazed that she is the most people-loving cat I have ever known: the animal we rescued was completely feral. Can you even imagine how this situation would be for a human being? It's like being taught all your life that grizzly bears will only hurt you and to stay away from them if you value your life…and then being forced to live in their den.

Anyway, Sophie has been with us for almost all of my surgeries, and she has been my faithful nurse through many recoveries. I always feel better when she snuggles up to me and seems to know exactly what hurts…and how to make me forget pain. I think we've all seen or at least heard of studies that find people live longer when they have a cat. A lot of the theories center around the relaxation that humans experience as the result of their purr—and relaxed humans live much longer than stressed humans.

But the healing qualities of a cat's purr are more than emotional. Cats purr at a frequency that is known to be a catalyst for bone and muscle regeneration. The frequency is also suspected to have anesthetizing qualities. This is part of the reason that cats are fabled to have nine lives: they can heal themselves from serious injury.

At my last post-op from my hysterectomy, a pattern finally occurred to me. All of my surgeons have always commented with a tinge of surprise how well my tissues heal—this has been true for all of my various procedures except for the first two when we were a catless household. (In fact, I healed so poorly from my first surgery that I needed the second for medical intervention.)

I am willing to give Sophie credit for helping me fight these battles at home. Maybe this is her way of saying, "You saved me…now I save you."

Sophie has deep anxiety whenever she has to leave the house. While she's never loved travel, she's always been fairly tolerant…until the last year or so. If I could simply bend to her will (like I do 90% of the time), I would. However, Sophie needs to leave from time to time because the vet doesn't do house calls and we need a professional to keep our longhair cat's backside as adorable as her front side.

When we went to the vet a few months ago, he suggested that her anxiety surrounded the carrier and not travel in general. Ehaaang!—wrong! When we took her to the groomer in May, we got a call shortly after we dropped her off because she was under so much stress that she was combative. We were asked to pick her up immediately.



First, I have to tell you that this created a very funny image for me. I saw her paws wrapped around an Uzi and shooting up the grooming studio, laughing maniacally as she tried to decimate the groomer (who must have found enough cover from rapid fire behind the grooming table to call for backup).

Second, I knew that it was time to resort to some sort of medication to make the whole experience more pleasant for both her and the person attending to her—mainly because bullet-proof vests are not part of the standard uniform at either the vet clinic or the groomer's.

If you've ever had to pill a cat, you know how easily Fluffy can hide a pill in her mouth so she can spit it out as soon as she gets away from you. I have learned my lesson from past attempts, and when I had to give her the medication yesterday I kept her on my lap for about 15 minutes, holding her mouth closed. At about the nine minute mark, I felt her swallow suddenly. Thinking that that was most likely the pill but not wanting to chance it, I gave it six more minutes before I let her be on her merry way.

We dropped her off at the groomer's early that morning. Less than an hour later, I got a call from the frantic groomer that she couldn't get Sophie out of her pet carrier, and could we come and see if that made things easier since she was hissing and growling? Great…my little gangster was getting all nasty with her Tommy gun again.

But we went, of course we went. She may get all fighty with strangers, but it's only because she's scared. I know that. The vets and groomers all know that too. It was obvious that the sedative was in effect…but the groomer told us, "It doesn't really stop them from coming after me; the actions are just slower, so I have more time to get out of the way." With a little work, we got her out of the carrier. We stayed with her, keeping her attention on us and our petting fingers while the groomer did her thing. She was a good girl, and the groomer hinted that this may be how we have to do this from now on.

So much work, this fuzzy gray member of our family. She's lucky she's cute, that's all I have to say.

Does acupuncture work on cats?