Your Secret Is Safe With Me

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We have this sweetly odd cat named Luna. She and Watson, our other cat, were adopted by our son, Ryan, while he was in college. He was home for one summer (cats came with him) and when he was about to head back for the Fall semester, found out his roommates had rented a place where animals weren’t allowed. We offered to have the cats live with us until he finished school and found a permanent place to live, and of course, now they’re just our cats that Ryan comes over to visit.

Watson is a super mellow love machine. I have never had a cat as affectionate as he is. He puts up with the dogs getting in his face, lets anyone hold him in any position (he used to hate being held on his back but I worked that out of him and now he loves it). Luna, on the other hand, is a strange one. Ryan adopted her from a shelter when she was just 8 weeks old. She was found wandering the streets in Tucson, and has always been a bit “off.” She is affectionate on HER terms.

Since Luna was raised by a boy, she LOVES boys. If they have facial hair, even better. She will jump on the counter and stand her front feet on the chest of anyone visiting our house who has facial hair. She will rub her face on each side of the facial hair owners face, with the hopes of getting back scratches on her torso while she’s outstretched on the chest of the unknown bearded man. If I’m at the counter? She doesn’t give me the time of day. But if other girls are visiting our house, she does this odd display of flipping over and rolling her face into the hand of the female visitor (Luna LOVES Nika Harper and Ashley Clements) for affection, but then acts pissy like she doesn’t want to be touched, so the visitor will stop petting her. But then as soon as they stop, she whines like she doesn’t know why they stopped, and the cycle continues. She’s nuts.

Luna also acts like the dogs are on her last nerve, but I have watched her rub up against them or even dart under their feet in an attempt to get the dogs to play with her. She acts particularly annoyed with Marlowe, who is only 2 years old, who gets super excited at the idea of kitty wanting to play with her. Luna will antagonize Marlowe, and then hop up on a table and bitch at Marlowe to leave her alone, while Marlowe just stands there looking confused.

Over the past few months, Luna has been doing what I like to call “secret affection” with me, where she gets up on my bed in the middle of the night (you know, when no one is looking) and tucks into me as tight as she can under my chin, and then puts her face on my mouth to kiss on her and rub her chin. Of course, I oblige because she’s not always like this, and I generally lose about 2 hours of sleep loving on her, but it’s too cute to ignore. I don’t know if she’s mellowing out in her old age (she’s 8 now) or what, but I love affectionate animals, so I cave to her every time she does this.

But last night something new happened with Luna. I didn’t get a picture because I knew if I moved she would get up, so I’ll just have to describe it. Marlowe likes to sleep tucked into a ball in between my pillow and Wil’s pillow. Seamus sleeps stretched out between our torsos, usually pressed up into me (I hope you’re visualizing the crowd that is my bed every night). Marlowe had shifted so she was a little more stretched out, with her head laying up against Wil’s shoulder, her back toward the foot of the bed. There was maybe 8 inches of space between Marlowe’s back and Seamus’s head and shoulder below. In that space in between, I saw darkness. Not any normal darkness, so I sat up and looked. It was Luna, who had clearly wedged herself in between the dogs, her outstretched body pressed snuggly up against Marlowe’s back, with her tiny paw draped over Marlowe’s neck, and her face tucked into the back of Marlowe’s head.

MY CAT WAS SPOONING MY DOG.

It was the cutest, most unbelievable sight coming from Luna, ever. Sure, I’ve seen Watson tuck into Seamus many times over the years. The two of them have been sleeping buddies since the third day they met, but Luna?! That was too cute and probably something I will never be able to get a picture of. So you’ll just have to take my word for it that the cat who wants everyone to think she’s a super badass is secretly becoming the adorable ball of affection I’d always hoped she’d be. Just don’t tell anyone, or she’ll chomp on your hand before demanding more chin scritches and crunchy cat treats, and then meow at you in disgust before whining at you to come back.

Someday I'll nab a picture of Luna snuggling the dog, but for now, here's a picture of Watson snuggling Seamus less than a week after meeting each other.
Someday I’ll nab a picture of Luna snuggling the dog, but for now, here’s a picture of Watson snuggling Seamus less than a week after meeting each other.

 

15 thoughts on “Your Secret Is Safe With Me”

  1. That is adorable, and I think that cats do tend to mellow as they age. We’ve certainly seen it with ours.

    One thing that I notice looking at Watson and Seamus is that they have a similar color pattern, which might explain why they became cuddle buddies so quickly. It seems to me that actually matters to cats, and they feel much more comfortable with other animals who look like them in some manner. This also extends to inanimate objects. Our black cat, Jinxi, will usually look for the darkest available object to cuddle with, and our tabby likes brown striped cushions above any others. Jinxi once lived in a home with three other cats before coming to live with us and her best friends were the other two black cats while she fought constantly with the black and white cat in the house.

  2. Cats can be amazingly strange in their affections. Growing up, we had two dogs and a cat- well, two cats, but the second one, Mehitabel, was a replacement cat, after the first one (who never really had a name, oddly) died. Mehitabel came to us possibly a little too young, and she bonded with my father immediately- I think it was his goatee. A few years after she came into our lives, I noticed a habit of hers- around 6:00 pm, when y mom and dad were due to get home from work, Mehitabel would go outside and sit on a fencepost in the front yard, which faced the road. We were on the corner, and you had to make a tight, almost hairpin turn from the main road to our street and then into the driveway. As the car started the turn, Mehitabel would stand and rotate her body around, and then sit, now facing away from the street- basically saying “I wasn’t waiting for you- I’m just sitting here.”

    She would also shadow us when we took the dogs out for a walk, staying about 4-5 feet off the road, just a little behind us.

  7. Luna sounds a lot like our Natasha Fatale Kitty. Only gives you affection when she wants it. Too much affection and she’s gone. She likes to headbutt my hand to get me to pet her. She has decided she wants nothing to do with the kiddo (never has), but everyone once in a while if he’s calm (he’s 3.5 so this happens almost never) she will let him pet her. He loves her so much and calls her “Ratasha.”

  8. That is the best story!! Oh the tales I could share of our 3 cats (2 from a rescue shelter and one a semi-rescue who came with the house). Does Luna like goatees, or does she require a full beard upon which to bestow her lovin’? (If she ever goes missing, try shaking a container of t-r-e-a-t-s in front of Wil’s Beard of Beardly Glory–she may have crawled in and gotten lost.)

  11. Like Andrew said, each cat has his/her unique ways to show affection: my kitty doesn’t purr much and is very shy, but she’s also cuddly, loving, she never attacks us and is often kind of a stalker! My boyfriend’s cat, on the other hand, was sometimes “bitchy” and would often attack while you were petting him, but he had the loudest purr I ever heard and exhibited it every time someone he loved entered the room he was in. Luna’s sure looks like an interesting catsonality! 😉
    By the way, I love that two of my favourite people – Ahsley Clements and you – are friends! 😀

  12. So, my American Bulldog and I use to live with a roomate who had 2 cats, and even though they were all older when they meet, it was still fun to watch how they all bonded with each other! However, this story reminds me of one of the cats, Lizzy, a crazy calico… she would come and get her loving on her terms, and then I think it was just too much and she would try to bite your hand. Not usually hard, I called them love nips, but sometimes it was enough to stop petting. She would then get upset you stopped petting!

  13. I had a dog that was a lot like Luna – only affectionate when SHE wanted to be. Weird for a dog. I’d call her and she’d just look at me as if to say “what? You don’t have any food…so, nope.”

  14. Just now reading this post! So glad I missed it because all the cute 🙂 We also have a bitchy cat named Luna (who is actually my sister-in-law’s but lives with us so you know… Ours) anyways, she’s only been affectionate on her terms her whole life, and has also been lovey in a not like her way lately 🙂

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