Abbie's new old ritual

Abbie is about 8 years old now. That’s not very old for a cat, really. She’s still full of vinegar and, most nights, sounds like a herd of elephants charging up and down the stairs. This is what I call her nightly heebie-jeebies. She has to blow off the remaining energy she has before she can settle in for the night. It’s too bad that she does this after I’ve settled in for the night. It’s usually just 30 seconds after I’ve drifted into the fugue state that she leaps on the bed and wakes me right up for her ten minute ritual of snuggling and chin butts before she can sleep.

Since Ian left, Abbie has grown needier and, in fact, seems to have decided that she needs her one remaining human more than ever. She and her boy had a good relationship and he often carried her draped around his neck. That was her place. She and her boy watched many hours of X-Files together that way. When it comes to me, she prefers draping herself over my shoulder. She wouldn’t think of trying to wrap herself around the back of my neck. So she misses that small comfort. In the last week she has been sorting it all in her head.

Now I find that she follows me around the house like a puppy. She looks at me with her quizzical stare as if asking, “Now what are we gonna do, Mom?” If I go upstairs, she scampers up ahead of me. When I go downstairs, she does her utmost to trip me on the way down. If I sit, she’s in my lap. When I stand, she give me her hurt feelings look. When I’m at my desk, she sits on the corner and...just waits...for the next thing.

This morning she re-instituted a ritual—one that we used to practice, but I had forgotten. Before Abbie can eat, she has decided that she must have her flanks patted. Not a gentle tap exactly, but I grab hold of her and give her backside a good love pat. This is sort of like Abbie’s grace before meals. She has decided that she can’t eat until it’s been done.

I didn’t know what had gotten into her this morning. After I filled her bowl I wandered off to do something else. She followed me and looked up at me with great concern. When I sat down at my desk, she stood on her hind legs and patted my leg with a front paw. When I looked down at her, she raced off up the stairs. And then came back to repeat the same pat-pat-pat on my leg. It finally dawned on me.

We trotted up the stairs together, then she ran ahead to her bowl and waited for me. I reached down and gave her backside a good love pat and that was all she needed. She dove into her eats and I came back downstairs. Without cat.

I know that scientists and animal behaviorists insist that domestic pets can’t think. But there was some thought process involved in Abbie reaching back into her memory to drag out an old ritual that she now feels that she needs again.