BIG CAT, Little Cat

Several years ago I purchased “little cat”. I had just sold my house and moved to an apartment and was looking for a pet for Dear Son. Since Dear Son is in a wheelchair, I knew that getting a dog was not an option since I would not be able to leave Dear Son unattended while taking the dog for a walk. I tried fish but Dear Son had zero interest. Someone at work suggested a cat for Dear Son however I quickly nixed the idea because I never really cared for cats. Upon further discussions, I decided to entertain the idea of getting a cat.

I purchased an ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Complete Book of Cats at Sam’s Club with all the cat breeds and began my search. If I were to be totally honest, I didn’t find any of them attractive. One of them caught my attention and that was the Munchkin. The Munchkin is basically a cat that has the dwarfism gene hence the extremely short legs. Munchkins are also much smaller than regular cats and typically weigh less than ten pounds.

I began to look in earnest for a “Munchkin”. Munchkin cats were supposed to be good with children, lap cats, very intelligent and vocal. They sounded purrfect for us! I searched all over the web for a breeder and finally found “our” cat. He was a beautiful black and white Munchkin with extremely short legs. I named him Wiggles. For the most part, I call him Wiggles but I’ll sometimes refer to him as “Little Cat” and on a few occasions as "Nasty Cat".

Little Cat is a very fun and loving cat. He takes particular delight in scaring away the ducks and birdies that come up to our bird feeder that sits on our patio. Specifically, he waits until they are all eating and then he takes a running leap and jumps up on the window, scaring the ducks and causing them to fly away. This for him, is fun. I typically reprimand him for this while Dear Son is delighted that Wiggs got “in trouble”. This behavior also warrants the “squirt” bottle which Little Cat really hates.

So today, Little Cat met his match. Outside the bedroom window was “Big Cat”. Big Cat looked to be a beautiful grey long haired cat with gold eyes; not as big as the 33 pound cat pictured above, but you get the idea. Kind of a tabby look about him really, but totally beautiful. Little Cat, upon seeing Big Cat wagged his tail and looked lovingly at his company. Big Cat however was not so sure. Fifteen minutes later though, Big Cat came around and decided he wanted to get to know Little Cat better. That’s when the trouble began.

At less than eight pounds, Little Cat is much smaller than Big Cat and appeared to be suffering from Short Man’s Syndrome today. Big Cat would peer in at Little Cat and Little Cat didn’t like being smaller than Big Cat so he jumped high up on the window sill to look out. Outside, the brick ledge was much narrower but that was not going to deter Big Cat. Big Cat soon began jumping up and crashing into the window to try to get closer to Little Cat. I thought the window was going to break. But Big Cat wouldn’t stop. He kept jumping up and lunging into the window to try to get to Little Cat. I was beginning to get a little worried. To stop this madness, I scooped Little Cat from the window and put him on the carpet over by the patio door. Big Cat soon began scratching the window and trying to get in. Not only did he scratch repeatedly at the window but he began to jump up against the window, scaring Little Cat. Little Cat screamed out, showed his big teeth and began hissing. I had never witnessed Little Cat being so traumatized so this was really something to watch. His black hair began to stand straight out on edge making Little Cat look like a full ten pound cat! This however, did nothing to deter Big Cat. Big Cat began bullying Little Cat some more taking his big long claws and scratching the patio door. The game went on for a while until I picked Little Cat up; he was shaking and his paws were ice cold. Finally, I decided to put Little Cat into the bathroom and closed the door until he went away. Finally, Big Cat left and life was back to normal.