It's getting a bit weird around here.

Chloe is our cat. Chloe is 7 years old, gray, and has somewhat of an attitude problem. It’s not her fault really; she had a bad start in life. She was feral to begin with. At 3 months of age she was adopted from the Denver Dumb Friends League to a family with 3 kids and two large dogs. The husband of this family returned her to the shelter a month later claiming he was allergic. At 5 months, we found her. She was so little and docile. When the shelter put us in the Getting to Know You Room, the first thing she did was curl up in our lap and took a nap. She woke up for a bit to play with the strings on our sweatshirt but then went right back to sleep. We were smitten and we took her home that day. We didn’t know about her social issues then. Honestly, we didn’t find out about her ‘issues’ until two months later when a stranger came into the apartment to look at a piece of furniture we were selling and she just Freaked Out. The stranger was all of three steps into our living room and there was Chloe – having suddenly popped out from behind the sofa all puffy tail, arched back and hisses. We were shocked. This was our docile little kitten. The one that liked to run across the hardware floors, slide for a bit and jump all nails to the back of the sofa. The little kitten that sleep all night on our heads. The one that never bit unless she was playing, never meowed unless her bowl was empty, never once hissed.

Earliest picture I have of "the little shit"

After that first incident, she got progressively worse. Unless it was us, Chloe took the firm stance that no other creature – human or otherwise – had any business being in her house. Most people who come over are always warned not to touch her no matter how friendly she comes across. It’s a trap. A stranger who touches Chloe will get bit, scratched and batted at. As she ages, she’s been getting a bit better, but not by much. Because they stayed at our house for an extended period of time, both my dad and my sister can be in the same room with her without having to fear for their limbs. In fact, Maggie can even touch her without a problem. Most other people, and creatures, forget about it.

"Don't taunt me woman! I will cut off your face!"

Before you think we are housing a monster, she is still a docile little kitten when it’s just us.

Who couldn't love this face?

This is not a post about my cat; really, I just needed you to know a bit about Chloe before I tell you what strangeness went on this weekend. It all started on Saturday night…

Andy tops up Chloe’s food bowl in the morning. She’s the sole cat in the house and because of this, we can leave out a bunch of food without her scoffing the whole thing down in one go. She grazes throughout the day which is preferable since we can leave her alone for a couple days with a heap of food without worrying she’s going to be starving by the time we get back. On Sunday morning, Chloe was being more annoying than usual trying to get us out of bed. She typically does this because she wants to go outside to eat grass and yell at the birds. Once we got up we found that her being annoying was because she was completely out of food. Andy stated, “But I just filled up her bowl yesterday! What a fat cow, eating all her food!” I simply wrote it off as Andy not filling up the bowl all the way. Andy did mention that late on Saturday night when he finally woke up from falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV that the back patio door was open (this is not a big deal as we sometimes leave the back door open to let Chloe outside – Andy simply forgot to close it before he went back to the couch – don’t rob us robbers). He also mentioned that when he went outside to smoke that he saw another cat in the back yard. It was highly possible that this other cat has snuck in while Andy was snoring away and ate all of Chloe’s food. Sneaky other cat!

The rest of our day on Sunday was pretty uneventful. It was a nice day but we spent a good portion of it cleaning the house. I did 6 loads of laundry and spent over an hour organizing the kitchen cupboard. Afterwards we went to get something to eat and then headed to the Harp at 4 PM so Andy could watch the Liverpool game. We stayed longer than we thought we would and ended up at home finally at 8:30 PM. Chloe appeared to be pretty freaked out about her food situation as she had gone through quite a bit of her food while we had been out. I just went ahead and filled it back up again.

This morning the bastard alarm went off at 6 AM. I climb out of bed and with half an eye open, grabbed my clothes and headed to the bathroom to take a shower. Andy shuffled downstairs to make coffee. As I was about to turn on the water for the shower I hear an “AAAAAAAGGGGGH!” from downstairs. My first thought was that Chloe had puked – common cat issue but I yelled down just to be sure.

“Hey, everything OK down there?”

“There’s….There’s ANOTHER CAT in the house!”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I can count up to two cats!”

I run downstairs and I’ll be damned, there is another cat, skinny and black, sitting under our coffee table in the most devil may care way. Because of where we were all day Sunday, we can only assume that this cat snuck in sometime while we were cleaning and hung out in the house ALL DAY without us even noticing. Andy opened the back door and I went over to the cat who sprinted out of our house like its tail was on fire.

And what is Chloe doing during all of this? She’s sitting at her now empty food bowl meowing that she’s hungry. The same cat that will puff out her tail and hiss at the front door if so much as an ant crawls past it on the other side had NO PROBLEMS with this cat being in the house twice and for a WHOLE DAY.

Because it’s us, Andy and I instantly came up with this elaborate double life that Chloe is leading. The house parties she has when we’re gone – the sneaking in of cat boyfriends – the lot. I’ve said for years that she must have a pretty lucrative modeling job going on as I see her photo on lot of cat products. I think she probably has a more exciting life than we do.

Evidence of modeling jobs: