Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Me, Myself and Crisco

So.

I arrived on Saturday in Bratislava, only to be whisked away once again by my waiting fiancée to her rented apartment in Nitra. There, Christina dropped me off and said ‘Bye!’ before driving to her friend’s house, where she’s staying until the wedding. This meant leaving me alone with her cat, Krisco.

Very affectionate moggy, is Crisco. After about ten minutes I was covered with so much moulted cat hair that I felt like I was wearing a quilt. Lying in bed at 1am, all I can hear is this ‘thrrp, thrrp’ noise as he’s grooming himself. And at 5am he head-butts me in order to get me out of bed and feed him. He doesn’t ‘miaow’, but the noise he makes sounds as if he’s asking one of these questions:

  • Food?
  • Love?
  • Both?

He also likes to play. This usually means scratching you in some sort of way. On one visit to Nitra, he got me all the way from my elbow to my wrist. No hard feelings, right? He’s fit too, unlike some housecats… graceful, effortless movement will take him from the floor straight into your lap or the nearest pillow that you’ve just cleaned.

But the upside is the purring. It’s like the world’s purest contentment put into one furry bucket of spit and hair. It makes you feel good and all the differences that you had ten minutes ago – get off my pillow, get off my clothes, get off my lap, get off the floor looking like a draught excluder – kind of vanish.

I can get used to him. Mostly because the life I'm going to lead later on will have far greater challenges than Crisco. And I can't help but have the nagging feeling that I'd miss him if he went...

JC (under CC's computer name!)