Donna was the very first cat I looked after. It’s been two years now, and we spend a week or long weekend together every now and again.
She’s quite a modest creature. It hardly ever happens that she asks me for something, but if she does it’s barely audible. When I come home from work, she’s often waits for me at the top of the stairs. Usually she’s the first one to greet, although the ever-passing traffic makes it hard to hear. Otherwise, she’ll respond my greeting with a somewhat crackling-sounding “meeeeooowww”! That’s usually all she has to say, because Donna is not the type of cat for a lot of public display of affection.
Initially I thought she didn’t like me very much. Or at best: she didn’t seem to have a lot of interest in me. By now, I’ve had a change of heart. So whenever we meet, I tickle her fluffy neck and she… turns her back on me. Her tail rises and her rear end is trembling lightly. I don’t take offense, I consider it as her shy way of saying: “You’re absolutely my favourite cat sitter in the world, but that’s enough with the fussing”! Later on, I learned that this phenomenon is indeed a display of affection, going by the name of ‘dry spraying’. It happens exactly the way I described.
Every once in a while, her affection goes a bit further than usual. The bedroom door is always left open; her owner does that, and I don’t want her to feel left out. So every now and again she comes and keeps me company at night. I hear her little feet tripping down the hall, sense her jumping on the bed and climbing on top of me. As I’m usually a side sleeper she is than lying on my hip. A point from which she can overlook the whole bedroom.
After that, falling back to sleep is usually impossible for me!
