Making Friends: Part I
Now that the weather is a lot more clement (i.e., in the 80s during the day and 70s/60s at night) in Austin, I'm now leaving my windows open to get some fresh air in.
Doing so sometimes leads to some animal interactions (!), since my apartment is on the ground floor, inches away from a sidewalk where people walk their dogs, etc. Sometimes one of my cats sitting in the window leads to a big brouhaha when the dog walking by outside sniffs them, etc. Usually I yell at my cat, and the outside dog-owner yells at their dog, and all is well.
A couple of weeks ago, a strange cat jumped up on the outside window-sill and sat looking at all of us inside my apartment. I thought it was charming; this is, after all, how I was first introduced to my newest cat, Cinqo, back in 2019: A half-grown female kitten alternating between sitting on the front window-sill and then going around to my back sliding-glass door. My four young indoor cats at that time (Mama and 3 kittens) would just stare at her, sans any negative reaction. When I finally let Cinqo into my home (on a cold, rainy December night, when she was huddled underneath a scraggly bush for shelter from the elements), my other cats didn't think anything of it. She was probably too little and pitiful to have any negative reaction to! Cinqo was soon a member of the indoor home. (She got along great with all of the others, and ate and peed with the others, though she did not allow ME to touch her for nearly a year!)
But when this latest strange cat was sitting there on the sill: I personally thought it was "charming." And four of my five cats were, at first, asleep and didn't notice. But my one lady-like cat, Sasha, was awake, and went over to the window to sniff at the stranger. She just sniffed, then backed away, sans any aggression. And the stranger-cat continued to lie there and look at all of us.
But after about 20 minutes, my two original ferals---Mama Hennessy and Cinqo---finally woke up, and noticed the cat on the sill. And both immediately rushed the screen, hissing and attacking the screen and the strange cat behind it. Yikes! (Like I said, Cinqo had originally shown up years ago by sitting on the sill, but no cat inside my home ever reacted to her that way. And I'd never seen the grown-up Cinqo hiss before. But here she was, acting very mad! I guessed that the new cat on the sill was a male. Girls Mama Hennessy and Cinqo, who had grown up outdoors and feral, perceived a threat, but the 3 kittens born to Mama Hennessy---Pete, Mini, and Sasha---had no street-smarts. Sasha just sniffed and looked on, while Pete and Mini immediately ran away and hid from the window fight.)
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Making Friends: Part II
After the loud cat-screen-battle, the neighbor-owner of the window-sill cat came and gently knocked on my door. She apologized for her cat's behavior, but I told her that I had been enjoying seeing her cat lie on the sill; he was just being curious about what was going on inside this apartment that obviously smelled like other cats to him! :) Her cat had been doing nothing wrong; and a couple of my cats were acting like wildebeests. All was good.
So the 60-something neighbor and I chatted at the door for a few minutes. Sharing stories about how we got our cats, and things like that. And then she---a bit too soon, I thought, given that we'd just met---brought up that she was having an operation soon and could I please feed her cats for her. Well, sure. She lives about 20 steps away from me! Of course, I can.
(One thing on my mind during this conversation was that I had recently wanted to take a trip to NYC, but did not, partly because I had no one to take care of my cats if I were gone for more than 2 days. My 80-something mother had volunteered to do so, and there are pet-sitter services online, but... I didn't want my elderly mother driving across town, and I didn't trust the online services. So I felt for this neighbor whom I did not know, but who had a problem that I could easily solve.)
After our brief chat, we said good evening. And it was a couple of weeks before I saw her again. I was in the laundry room on this Friday afternoon, and she was standing outside the laundry door peering in at me: "Stephanie? Stephanie?"
"Hi! Do you need to get in?" [I gave her the combo-code that all residents have.]
She came in, at 3pm, wearing corduroy house-slippers and some heavy-duty layered outfit, then proceeded to strip off her outer sweater. Then started telling me all about the sleeping habits of her two cats: Major and Tinkerbell. ("Major" was the cat who'd been sitting on my window-sill earlier.) I assumed that she was telling me about her cats' sleeping habits because of our previous conversation about my feeding them while she was having her operation in the future.
So I asked her: "When exactly is your operation?"
Her: "What?"
Me: "When is your operation?"
Her: "How do you know about that?"
Me: "Because you told me about it! You asked me to feed your cats while you were in the hospital."
Her: "I don't remember that."
Me: "Then why were you just telling me about your cats?"
Her: [Looking confused.]
She stood there during my laundry transfer from washer to dryer. We made further small-talk.
About an hour later, when laundry was done and I was on my way to the post-office: She came running out of her apartment as I walked by: "Stephanie, Stephanie! Here's my phone number!"
I HAD to get to the post office on time, and it was raining, and I yelled back: "I've got to be somewhere. Can't stop now."
When I got back, there was a business card on my door with her phone number: She cleans aquariums. She's also an interior decorator.
When I was walking out to my car, and she came running out to me, I was reminded, horribly, of a roommate that I'd had when I moved to NYC back in 2007. I could not leave my room to go to the bathroom without this woman calling out: "Are you up? Are you up?"
I want to help out with this woman's cats while she's in the hospital, but I do NOT want to be friends with a nutcase.
