Frida Bat the Slinkster Cat

I would like to give a shout out to Frida Bat the Slinkster Cat, my beautiful cat who might just be the coolest pet in the world.

A brief history, for those of you unfamiliar:
Frida was found as a 3-month-old kitten, stranded in the streets of Allston, Mass, with an injured paw that she couldn't walk on. The founder took her to a shelter in Brighton, where I fell in love at first sight when I saw her as a 5-month-old. When I picked her up off the ground, she curled up immediately into my arms and chest, and purred. We were a pair.

I brought her to my house in Cambridge, where I debated at length about her name while watching her bat around my bobby pins, shred my shoelaces, and aggressively shove her head into my hand for some lovin'. The name I settled on comes from Frida Kahlo, Weetzie Bat (the main character in one of my favorite books), and Weetzie's dog, Slinkster Dog. It fit her well, and we quickly fell in absolute love.

However, as I got busier and was around less, Frida got a little bit snottier. Whenever I would come home after a weekend away, she would run when I tried to pick her up, but then stop further away from me and look back like she wanted me to come pet her. But then when I would advance toward her, she would run away and do the same thing again, making me chase her all around the house. Finally, she would jump onto my bed after the chase, squint her eyes and purr, purr, purr when I started to pet her.

She's a very strange kitty; she has tons of little quirks. She's scared of unfamiliar people, but totally bold and bossy with unfamiliar cats. Once she has decided to let a new person in, for a while they can't be seen together in front of me. I.e., my roommate is one of Frida's "let in" but for the first month of this letting in, whenever I walked into a room where Liz and Frida were cuddling, the cat would run away and start doing something else as if she had been doing that other thing all along. It's kind of hilarious, but I wonder what she's thinking.

Frida also has an incredibly long, loud and detailed process of covering up her pee and poop and then cleaning her paws in the litter box. It's so long and loud that it wakes me up at night and I sometimes have to throw something at the box to scare her out of it, or else she'd go on for 10 minutes. And she's wildly curious. As she's getting older (but still young...only 1 1/2 years as of October!), her curiosity is overpowering her fear of people as she's checking out everything. And you can tell by her face that there's a ton going on inside that almost-human head of hers; she is quite expressive.

Frida also is an athlete. She's an enormous cat with a huge frame, long legs and big paws. She can jump from the floor to the top of a 7-drawer-dresser, run speedily over and under whatever obstacles, and twist around to chase things. However, this past week she went above and beyond any expectations one could have of a cat.

In my room, I recently installed an Ikea, steel-framed loft bed. I was concerned that she wouldn't know how to get up it, so I put a shelf by my dresser and the dresser by the bed, like stairs for her. Then I carried her up the ladder with me and cuddled a bit, and she loved it! It's like our little clubhouse. Later, she figured out how to jump to the dresser and then down (completely ignoring the shelf), and how to reverse it to get back up. But the second night, I heard the creaking of the bed and then a thud. I looked down and Frida was sitting by the ladder with her little ears perked up. I laid back in bed but then felt it shake and heard it creak again, so I sat up, and saw my cat's paws and head pop up over the side of the bed. She had climbed up the ladder.

This ladder has six, steel rungs leading up to the rickety bed that's over 5 1/2' tall, and shakes whenever it's being climbed. But Frida has perfected it; now, this is her preferred method for getting up to bed. I've watched her from the bed and from the floor, and it's pretty incredible. She puts her front paws around a rung above her, then pushes with her hind legs so that she jumps and catches herself a bit higher. After a week of practice, she's so fast that she just scrambles right up. It's pretty great - my cat freakin' climbs the ladder to our loft bed!

So, I fear I've already established myself as a weirdo cat lady, but will retain some kind of dignity and stop rambling about her now.

Meow!