Never Judge a Cat by Its Cover

My friend, Dawn, has a beautiful full-blooded Ragdoll cat, Thumper. The cat is a giant. He must weigh thirty pounds which draws attention to the cat. This cat is not a ball of fat; instead, he is a lean cat machine. All muscle. He has large shimmery blue eyes. Because the cat is a Ragdoll, he has a dark face mask with dark boots on all four feet. One-fourth of his tail is also dark. He looks like a big, beautiful, cuddly ball of black and white love. Thumper is not.

Dawn and I are neighbors. When her sister, Patricia, came to visit Dawn, we all sat outside on Dawn’s porch to talk. The cat sat outside with us. I like cats having two of my own. The cat strolls between her home and my home, collecting treats. He did not like Pat hissing each time she moved from her seat.

That night, about 3 a.m., the cat leaped into the bed with Pat and her spouse. He landed on her breasts, then bounced onto her husband’s chest and leaped onto the floor. She opened the door to the room, and the cat ran out. Pat smelled something and looked around. That damn cat pissed in her suitcase then hid until all was quiet before leaping out to scare the hell out of them. Dawn ran to see what the commotion was about. Her guests were standing in the living room with her cat. Thumper innocently licked his paw, looking like a cuddly toy.

A few weeks later, the cat vanished. Dawn was heartbroken. She took all the usual routes: calling the pet shelters, putting up posters, and driving around town every evening looking for and calling the Thumper. Dawn posted a $3,000 reward for her cat.

It was a week after the cat vanished when I received an unexpected fancy-dancy custom courier delivery. The delivery man handed me a brown paper-wrapped package. The package did not have my name on it, just my address. There was no return address on the neatly wrapped package. There were small holes on one side of the box. It was heavy.

I took the package into the kitchen, cut the packaging, and unwrapped it immediately. In the bottom of the box was a sleeping cat, I suspect a drugged cat. Thumper looked good. He was wearing a beautiful red collar which he did not have when he disappeared. Whoever took the cat must have gotten him during one of his treat treks to my home. There was a note.

“This cat is a demon. In seven days, he clawed every piece of furniture in the house; he pissed in my wife’s underwear drawer (twice), flushed the toilet hundreds of times, unrolled the toilet paper, shit on the bath rug numerous times, and meowed continually each night from midnight to 8 a.m. He hopped on the bed and stared at my wife with such intensity that she left the room. She wouldn’t stay overnight with me in the master bedroom. When I locked this cat in the bathroom, he learned to open the door, got out, then jumped on the kitchen counter knocking everything to the floor to express his displeasure at being locked up. All of this was done without a single bite or scratch to me or my wife. I give up. Owning this cat is its own punishment. He is your cat.”

“Nope, not my cat,” I thought as I picked up the phone to call Sarah. “Thank God. Sarah, please come over here right now get your cat before he wakes up. “