A man is sitting on a railroad track.
Another man approaches him and says:
“Scooch over! I’ll sit next to you.”
A joke from my childhood*

Over the years, Rusty has learned that my vSO and I have al the things that are better than what he has: pates, meet, cheese, etc. that we eat are almost like Rusty’s wet food but better. The comforter we hide from him in our bedroom is better than the old one (a King size!) that we gave to him. And whatever we use to decorate our living space is a much better toy than anything we bring Rusty from a pet store.

But while he can’t get as much of our food as he’d like to, and our bedroom stays off-limits for him during the work week, there are some other areas of life where Rusty insists on being treated as equal (kind of).

On the sofa where my vSO spends evenings reading, surfing or watching, we have two pillows. During the day Rusty has access to both of them, but usually he prefers other parts of the house. While sitting on the sofa in the evening, my vSO usually uses one pillow to support his back and lays flat the other one for Rusty to sleep there. And every time when Rusty decides to join him on the sofa, he completely ignores the pillow conveniently laying flat, comes to my vSO and starts touching or even clawing the pillow behind his back – until he gives up and relinquishes the pillow. First we thought that Rusty considered one of these two as his and tried to reclaim it. But no: it’s whatever pillow is currently “in use.”

In the home office where we both work, if Rusty decides to join us during the work day, we have multiple places where he might sleep, including a special blanket on the desk to the left from my computer (as shown on the picture to one of the previous episodes of this series – Rusty the Cat: On Comfort Temperatures). I even tolerate for a while if he decides to plop himself down on my lap, even though it’s not particularly convenient if I need to write a document or do something else not related to reading or sitting on a meeting. But as soon as I get up from my chair, Rusty immediately occupies it and falls asleep. Knowing this his habit, I tried not to leave it unattended unless I would go to the kitchen (then Rusty would join me there) or plan to work standing for the next couple of hours. But recently Rusty decided that he shouldn’t be waiting for me to leave of my own accord. Instead, he would get on that blanket I mentioned and try to get between me and the seat back or keep touching my arm prodding me to vacate the chair. A coupe of days ago he did it while my vSO’s chair (which is almost identical to mine but without an additional pillow) was unoccupied and completely accessible! I gave in and worked standing for the next couple of hours (I have a sit/stand desk).

Rusty is so artless and straightforward in his pursuit of comfort, that it’s almost impossible to resist him. So, usually we don’t.

* For those of my readers who speak Russian, the characters in the epigraph joke were Pet’ka and Chapayev

Images: my own

Every household has its own rules for the members, such as “Turn off the lights when leaving the room,” “Do not put an empty milk carton back in the fridge” or “No elbows or all four paws on the table.”

And same as humans find creative ways of “not breaking the rule” (e.g., leaving a tablespoon of milk in the carton or claiming that they left the room just for a second), Rusty invents his own ways to assert his innocence or do what he wants.

Rusty is not allowed on the dining table. He knows that. But from time to time he still jumps on the table and “hides” behind a laptop or even an iPad: “If I don’t see you, you definitely cannot see me, right?” He looks so innocent and cute, that it’s almost impossible to get angry with him. Besides, I use this his desire to claim that table when I try to take pictures of him and perfumes: if I were to put anything new or unusual there, he’d immediately jump on the table to investigate.

Rusty also isn’t allowed on (almost all) kitchen counters. There is a breakfast counter that we do not use. It hosts one of Rusty’s blankets where he sleeps, so this is his territory, and he’s in his right being there.

Also, historically, Rusty is allowed to be on the refrigerator, which stands in the opposite side from the breakfast/blanket area. Formally, the counters between these two areas are “off limits.” But since Rusty cannot jump on the fridge without jumping first on the counter next to it, he is granted right of way and is not reprimanded for jumping there before the next jump on the fridge (look who’s talking about the cat’s logic). Rusty learned this part. So, when he wants to check something out on the forbidden part of the counter, he either jumps on it close to the refrigerator or runs through the whole length from his blanket to the fridge, then… stops and starts looking and sniffing around. If yelled at, he makes a move towards the fridge that says “I’m going, I’m going…” but stays on the counter until one of us makes a move to take him down. And then he retires to the top of the refrigerator.

Several years ago, a friend of mine brought us a present from her trip to Thailand – a woven bowl. I wasn’t sure how to use it, but one day, I don’t even remember why, I put it on the counter – and Rusty declared it to be his territory. While being chased off the countertop, in addition to getting either on the blanket counter or a fridge, Rusty also might jump into that bowl, and as long as all four paws are inside, he knows that “he’s safe.”

Being a cat, Rusty is a hunter. He chases, catches and eats flies, moths and even spiders. First, when he saw a prey somewhere high on the wall or the ceiling, he would keep watching it and jumping trying to catch it. Then we taught him that if he were to attract our attention to it, we would kill it and reward him with a treat. So, he would sit with his head up and meow insistently until one of us comes and acknowledges the find. From time to time, he sees “invisible insects,” as we call it. Then one of us has to raise him up so that he can see that there’s nothing there. Sometimes it takes a couple of times, because in seconds after being put down, he starts doubting: “Are you sure? Maybe something is there?”

And the most recent development of the cat’s logic is that when he sleeps, and my vSO finds and kills a spider, Rusty wakes up and runs towards the kitchen where his treats are stored: clearly, he has built his own cause and effect operation: Has the spider been found and neutralized?  – Treat!

As you can see, Rusty is quite a logical thinker.

Images: New Yorker cartoon (can be bought here); all others – my own.

As someone whose watch lists on different streaming services mostly consist of police procedural shows, I have to concede that this post, being the third after Rusty the Cat: On Food and Treats and Rusty the Cat: On Comfort Temperatures, moved the topic over the threshold when it definitely qualifies as serial… I mean, series.

* * *

Do you know that cats love cardboard boxes?

Even though my grandparents had cats with whom I spent my summer breaks in the same house, and despite of the fact that my vSO and I had a cat once (I told this story many years ago – Orange Cats in My Life – Part I: Found and Lost), somehow I had never been privy to that cats’ trait.

I’m not sure why that was: either those particular cats that I observed were not adventurous; or maybe breeds of cats in my native country had different inclinations; or can it be that back then we didn’t have that many boxes in general, and those that we were rarely getting weren’t left out for pets to play?

Whatever it was, the first time I realized that it was “a thing” with cats was when many years ago a friend told me about the famous Japanese cat Maru and shared a couple of YouTube videos of him packing into different boxes, including the tiniest ones (it was years before he was certified by Guinness World Records as the most viewed single animal on YouTube).

And then we got Rusty, who over the years demonstrated to us how much cats love boxes.

Whenever a new box only gets in our house (which these days happens even more frequent than before), Rusty immediately plops himself on top of them. He notably likes wine boxes – probably because they are very steady and safe to jump on and off.

All other boxes are also fair game, especially once they are emptied. Rusty would pack himself into almost any box – be it large, small, tall or shallow.

Usually he stays in a new box for a while, probably until he impregnates it with his scent. After that he loses interest. But there are two boxes that we keep (replacing them from time to time on the same spot), and he uses them for years: one is a box to where he runs and hides when I yell at him for doing something he isn’t supposed to do (like trying to steal meat from a hot frying pan); and the second one is a “Greeting box,” as we call it: it stands facing an entrance door from the garage, and Rusty sits in it when we’re returning home from somewhere (on a picture below it’s a shallower box to the right from the temporary Rusty’s toy).