The Most Unlikely Farm Kitty

Perhaps 3rd in a series of introductions to our many and diverse beings, meet Karona. Arch nemesis of our chief Mouser, Buster, Karona was adopted from the Tacoma Human Society on the same day, but that is where the cats' similarities part company.

Karona is pure in her hatred of Buster. And Jessie. She doesn't much care for the chickens, either, and has very little time for the sheep. Could care less about Mark and probably doesn't even realize my mother exists. Dramas over ways to avoid others erupt each day.

However, she adores Dylan, as much as she can, and has developed a very specific relationship with me. She loves me...in the bathroom. In the bathroom, the upstairs bathroom specifically, she is, well, my slave. She is putty. She is a purr machine. She lolls on my feet, she purrs up a variety of interesting guttural sounds. She flogs, squirms, wriggles, meows... generally loses her mind. Part of this can be attributed to her desire for me to turn the tap on - she will only drink water from this, particular, running tap - but even when such formalities are done away with...still the geographically-specific love affair persists. It doesn't matter what time of day or night I enter the bathroom or how long I'm in there, she's in.

I finish up my business, be it shower, constitutional, or simple dental hygiene, open up the door, tripping over her supine body as I attempt to exit, and the tryst is over. She is aloof and annoyed once more. She enters the hall with a flip of her tail and a squinty-eyed backward glance at me that makes it clear her affections have been left upon the vanity shelf.

She makes a big show of scratching the hallway rug with front claws her last owners callously removed, flips her tail in my general direction, and moves on to hide in waiting for the next errant string, or foot, or, goodness help them, household pet to cross her path.

As always, I am left to wonder at the bizarre and unknown lives our animals have known before they landed here.