It’s 6:23 a.m. on a Sunday in March, and I’ve been up all night working, the usual writer’s life stuff. I wrote a long post about my celebration last night in a Queens bar for the publication of my first two ebooks, which are about life with my wonderful but shy cat Copper. I’m really hopeful that these books will take off, but either way, it just feels cool to have a couple of published books out there. My family was really psyched, and my friends were happy for me too, so it was a great situation.
I wrote this long blog post about my night at a local pub in Astoria, and how I talked to two women from Europe. They had both been in the States a long time. One was Romanian, and the other Polish. They were both pretty cute, and I sort of tried to kick it to them. But in the end I let them go without getting their numbers, which was a big mistake. I did give them both my business cards, but you can’t put the pressure or the responsibility on the woman to contact you. You got to get them digits, son, and get them early if you can.
So I finished the post about 5 a.m., and I’ve been trying to chill and relax since then. But I’m having a tough time unwinding, I just don’t know why. I finally pour myself a tall glass of diet Snapple Lemonade and Iced Tea Mix, and I sip it slowly in the living room while listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd on the Google Home.
I’m still kind of stressing though, so I go into the bedroom to check out what Copper is up to. She’s sleeping in the cat bed, looking as cute as a button, she’s just such a gorgeous cat. I walk over to her and start petting her while she’s in the cat bed, and her eyes are kind of heavy-lidded like she’s been sleeping. But she gets out of the cat bed and lets me pet her, and I pet her and pet her for a minute or two. Then I invite her into the living room. She follows me into the living room, and I sit on the loveseat, and I start petting her more and more.
It’s weird, even after five months of living together, she’s still so shy and hesitant that she won’t come into the living room to hang out with me unless I personally invite her. It’s crazy. It’s like she’s a human being with human insecurities or something like that. It’s just so, I don’t know, human, is what it is. I mean she’s a cat, but she’s the most human animal I’ve ever known.
So I’m petting her as she stands by the love seat, and I’m lying on the loveseat sipping the Snapple. She looks up at the love seat from the floor, and I can tell she wants to jump up and hang out with me on it.
She puts her paws on the top of the cushions, and she eyes the top of the love seat, longingly, but there’s still reservation in her. I say Copper, come up here, Copper, come up here, yes Copper, yes Copper, yes Copper, come up here Copper, yes I love you Copper.
She considers and considers and considers, and two times she puts her paws up on the top of the cushions, and she looks like she’s ready to spring up, but both times she eventually brings them back down, and then she walks away.
It’s like she knew she wanted to join me on the love seat, to be on the same level, and to chill out together on this early morning Sunday morning. But she just couldn’t let herself go. She was still afraid to take the risk. Maybe she thought she didn’t deserve to be on the same level as me. Who knows? It’s a recurring theme that I’ve had with this beautiful, wonderful, yet still shy cat.
She’s so crazy, and so kooky, and so reserved, and yet at the same time, so full of life, and energy, and love, that’s it’s just an incredible mix. I love her so much.
The thing is, she cracks me up, she really does. Because she’s so loving, and so cute, and so warm some of the time. But then she’s so hesitant about some things, it’s like she’s having a perpetual internal conflict with herself.
I just want to tell her Copper let it rip, you’re the lady Copper, you’re the Queen Copper, you run this house Copper, do what you want, you’re the Queen Bee, Copper, you’re Beyonce Copper, just let it rip. It’s so funny to think about your cat having such a multifaceted personality, but she really does.
Just in the five months since I adopted her, I’ve learned so much about pets and animals and cats, and it’s just incredible. We’ll see what happens next.
It’s 12:45 a.m. on a Monday night in March, and I feel like I finally reunited with Copper. I know it sounds weird, but for the last week or so I’ve been working so intensely on promoting my Copper ebooks on Amazon Kindle. The first is called “The Copper Courtship: A Cat and Human Love Story,” and the second is called “Copper’s Corner: A Cat’s Life.” They tell the story of our unfolding life together, and how we warmed up to each other and made my apartment our home together.
But one consequence of working so hard is that I’ve barely had any time to pet Copper, or to hang out with her at all. So tonight just after midnight, I’m hanging out in the living room, listening to hip-hop on the Google Home, and Copper walks in. Out of nowhere, she just walks in.
I look at her she looks at me, and then boom! She jackrabbits up to the third level of the cat tree. She’s incredibly at doing that. Like I wrote before, it would be the equivalent of me jumping up to a platform 30 feet above my height. I’m sitting on the love seat, so I’m only about a foot away from her on the cat tree. I make a move to pet her, but then just as quickly she jumps back down from the tree.
So that was pretty dope, even though she wasn’t up there long.. She hovers in the entryway to the living room, and I say hey Copper, come here Copper, I love you Copper, yes Copper, come here Copper, you know you want to be pet Copper.
Eventually she makes it way over to me, and I start petting her on the top of her forehead between her ears. Then I stroke her back. I pet her and pet her and pet her. It’s a wonderful union, because we really haven’t spent much time together in about a week. I’ve really missed her, and I think she’s missed me too. So we just have a mutual petting session for about three to four minutes.
Then I decide to feed her a few treats that I keep in the living room in case she comes in here. She stays in the bedroom a lot, and doesn’t come into the living room so much. She’s getting better at coming out, but it’s still a work in progress.
So I give her a Greenie, which is a dental treat, in Chicken flavor, as well as a piece of Dried Chicken Treat, which she loves. I place them on the ground about six inches in front of her, and I say go for it Copper, here you go, eat Copper.
She looks up at me with wide eyes, then looks down at the food longingly, pauses, and looks back up at me again with innocent and concerned eyes. Then she looks back down at the food again, and she slowly advances towards it.
Finally, finally, she bends her head and neck down and eats the Greenie. Slowly though, very slowly. Then she grabs the Dried Chicken Treat, which absolutely turn her into a wild animal, and she prances around a few times with the chicken in her paws.
I think she just had to get that in, the prancing, because the next thing she does is pop the chicken right in her mouth and chew and swallow it down. Boom! She hesitated, yes, she hesitated, but finally she just went for it and ate the gosh darn food. Good for you Copper, keep doing what you want to do, keep taking risks.
I put down two more treats, another Chicken Greenie and another Dried Chicken Treat, and she does the same thing. She advances hesitantly, but finally bends down and swoops them up and eats both, one after the other. I’m really happy to see this, because I think it means she’s getting more and more confident.
Then all of a sudden, bang! She jumps up to the third level of the cat tree again. And I’m like whoa, Copper, you’re incredible, you’re like a circus tonight girl. So she looks at me from the third level of the cat tree, and I return her gaze.
But then I look away, because it’s like she’s looking at me for approval. I want her to just do whatever she wants to do up there, and I want her to go to the fourth level, which I’ve only seen her do one time so far. So she hangs out on the third level for a while, and then she jumps down again. Soon she makes her way out of the living room, and back into the bedroom.
I figure I’ll check her out in the bedroom in a few minutes, or a little while, and try and draw her back into the living room. But however you slice it, this was a cool night. Copper and I reunited after almost a week apart, we petted each other, we loved each other, and she took some risks and jumped up to the cat tree. She also advanced slowly but then ate the treats that she really really wanted to eat. So she’s doing what she wants to do, more and more every day. It’s beautiful to see, it really is inspiring. We’ll see what happens next.
