My name is MaChatte and I live with a person.  I know she’s a person but she tries to act like a cat, cos she watched a tv show about bonding with your cat, and it said you should play like a cat.  So I just call her mom. I was in a cage and she came to that place and took me to where she lives, and she’s really nice and makes me happy.  I like to live with her.  I live one moment at a time, but she seems to think of things I don’t.  That’s ok tho, cos I’m a happy cat. I get to have a lot of fun and I like to have fun.  I get to lay around and sleep a lot too, and I like that.

She stays home sometimes but lots of times she goes away.  She says something about needing to earn the money for cat food.  I don’t know what that means, but she does bring home food for me.  There is a cabinet in one room where my food is.  I can’t count or read, but I know that’s my food in that place.  I like it when there’s a lot of it in there.  When she brings food home, I like to sit there and watch her putting it into the cabinet.  She eats her own food but I don’t like it much; I like my food, except sometimes when she has fish.  She says something about security; like it’s knowing there’s a lot of  food in the cabinet.  I don’t think about that much, but mom does.

We play, with strings and balls and some other things.  She says something about exercise and stimulation and calls it play, but I just need to practice being a carnivore, so I like it.  I don’t need to catch my food, but I have to remember how to be quick if the opportunity ever comes up.  My food doesn’t have mice or birds in it, but if I could catch one of them, I might eat it.  I almost had a mouse and a chipmunk outside one day, but mom said I couldn’t have them.  She said something about diseases.

I don’t understand most of what she says, but I know that the way she talks means nice things to me.  And I understand lots of things she does while she says things.  When she opens my cabinet she says something about breakfast or supper, then she gives me my food.  If I’m upstairs or somewhere else, I hear those words and know my food is there. If I’m there, I like to watch her put the food in my dish.

One thing she says I really understand.  She says “Do You Want to Go Out”?  That’s a magic word, out, cos it means I can go exploring in the yard.  I lived with her for a while before she started letting me go out.  I tried to tell her I really wanted to go!  I got up in the windows and ran from window to window watching animals outside. I mewed at the door thru the screen when the door was open.

Finally she got the message!  She got some thing she puts around me, and I don’t like it much, but she said it’s about safety, and after it’s on, we go out. I can get a long ways away from her with the cord that attaches us, but if I get scared I can run back to mom really quick.  Sometimes I get so scared I run for the door and want to go back in.  That doesn’t happen too often, cos I’m pretty brave.

I like to eat grass out there but mom won’t let me.  She says it has something to do with vomiting 5 minutes after I go in.  I just like to eat the grass.  I like to catch crickets in the end of the summer, and try for white butterflies all summer long.  Once last year we went out when there was snow, and I got scared right away and asked to go back in.

I went 6′ up a tree once and that was fun, but mom made me stop and get down.  Something about safety again and firemen, that they wouldn’t come.  I didn’t think I needed firemen, I just wanted to climb the tree. It’s a big tree, and I’d climb up as high as I could. It would be neat up there….I wonder if I could get back down……..

I get mad at mom sometimes.  She says I need stuff put on my back cos I go outside. Something about bugs getting on me and making me sick.  I don’t like it and it feels  funny and smells funny too, and I run away from her after she does it.    Then I stay away for a while in case she has more of it.  Once I know she doesn’t, I’m all done being mad.  I don’t stay mad very long.

I’m not always brave inside the house.  Mom has a big loud machine in a room and she gets it out and it seems to get a hold of her and takes her all around the house.  I’m not sticking around to help her, tho, she’s on her own with that big machine.  I’m smart too.  I know she always picks up my toys before the machine comes out.  So when she picks up my toys, I run upstairs to hide.  When she and the machine come upstairs, I have to go downstairs to hide.  She gets that machine out a lot and it always scares me.

I like to sit on her when she sits on the couch.  She scratches my ears and strokes my fur and tells me I’m a wonderful  cat, and beautiful too.  I just know that is nice and means love.

I see cats outside sometimes but I never see their mom with them.  I wonder who gives them food, and if they have a cabinet with food somewhere, and whether anybody makes sure they have fun and keep warm.  I hope so, cos this stuff mom talks about doesn’t  mean much to me, but it all helps to make me  a happy cat.  Even tho some stuff scares me,  my carefree life is pretty good for me with mom, cos she takes care of me.

NOTE FROM MOM:  Please spay and neuter your cats, and give them lots of love, and they will return it all to you.  There are many feral cats out there wandering around right now: in the cold, sick,  and with no good food source, and no future.   Maybe no one can save them, but we can prevent that life from happening to more innocent animals.  Thanks for reading MaChatte’s blog!