Whitey is really the "Lennie Small" of my two cats. Big and dumb and somewhat shy when strangers come to the home. (His brother, Blackie, on the other hand is sometimes a bit too hospitable.He just can't understand the fact that some people simply do not like cats. It probably would never occur to him.)
When they were young, I fed them pureed chicken livers pretty regularly. I figure this is the reason they are both huge. Not just fat- they are that- but just plain large. A normal street cat looks like some kind of miniature sub-species of my cats.
Guests to my home tend to recoil slightly when the pair of them come to greet them, perhaps that thinking the travelling circus has lost two of its tigers
People who don't have cats tend to think cats don't have distinct personality. They need to come over to my home. Of course, these cats are not particular feline either.
Whitey loves to sit on the balcony and sing to himself. When I dart in to see what on earth the matter is, he looks up at me, slightly embarrassed. He has a look as if he is trying to say, "What WAS that noise?"
Like people, cats have their moods and their internal struggles. For example the other day, I went out for awhile, running errands, and I came back and noticed "something" was up. There was some tufts of hair in the hall (NOT the usual fur balls) so I suspect they must have had a knock-down, drag out fight. Sure enough, later that evening, their dispute blew up again and there was a rare show of hissing and spitting. Like children, I had to separate them and assign them different cool-down areas. Within an hour, they had settled their differences and gone back to being brothers.
One time when I lived on the ground floor of my apartment building, I would open my window and let them sit in the morning on the window ledge. There was a metal grill covering the window with just enough space for them to lounge. There was no possibility for them to escape in the wild because, lord knows, they could never had passed through the narrow openings. However, one morning I looked out and saw my cats hobnobbing with some of the local cats. Being much thinner, it was no problem for the street cat to pass through the openings.
It was surely a strange encounter. I was afraid they would get into some kind of territorial disagreement. But I think the street cats were too impressed by the size of my cats. And it was quite obvious that my cats didn't know what to make of these creatures. (In the end, it was a major mistake because by the end of the summer, my cats were infested with fleas, the eradication of which nearly killed them. Note: Beware of flea and tick medicines!).
Because of the heat, I've lately decided to expose my cats to the joys of bathing. Some cats like water more than others. There's a breed of cat in Turkey that not only tolerates water but loves it. With Blackie, he seems unsure exactly how he feels on the matter. He likes the relief a sponge bath gives but he is disturbed by the sensation of water trickling down his back. Whitey, on the other hand, loved the experience so much that now he wakes me up in the morning to have his bath.
Obviously an error in judgment on my part.
