Weaner

We adopted Weaner when she was thirteen years old. Weaner is a truly pathetic creature, but she is one of my all-time favorite pets. Weaner is frighteningly skinny. She weighs all of 4 1/2 pounds. She has no claws, and most of her teeth are just little nubs. When she opens her mouth, it is truly repulsive. She has a calico coat, and lips that are mostly black. I say mostly because in one corner of her mouth her lips aren't black, they're very light pink. This creates the optical illusion that her mouth is crooked. Despite her unappealing physical appearance, she is the most affectionate animal I've ever known.

So here's her story:

One night while my girlfriend and I were having dinner in the dining room, we heard long trilling cat cries coming from the bedroom. At first they were quite faint, and I wasn't sure what I had heard. The cries became louder and more insistent. When I realized it was a cat sound, coming from my bedroom, I was flushed with worry. It sounded like she was caught in a leg trap or something! We raced to the bedroom and flipped on the light to find Weaner sitting in the middle of the room. She just looked at us, blinking because of the light. Nothing. Not a thing was wrong. The look on her face was one of mild curiosity. "What do you want?" she was seeming to say.

My girlfriend and I looked around the room to see if we could figure out what the commotion was about. Nothing. We asked Weaner what she was doing, but she just looked at us like we were crazy.

The next evening, at the same hour, the same thing happened. Again we heard her crying longer and louder with a strange trill in her voice. Again we rushed in and turned on the light. Same reaction from the cat... "What's your problem?" she seemed to be asking. This time she was in one corner of the room. Next to her on the floor was a single athletic sock. It caught my eye, not because its uncommon for a sock to be on the floor (for all you female readers, it was my girlfriend's sock, not mine) but because it was the wrong corner of the room for a sock to be. When I thought about it, I realized that the night before there had been one single sock on the floor next to her too. I pointed this correlation out to my girlfriend and received a by now all-too-common "You're crazy" look.

Night three: No dinner interruption, but shortly after lights-out, Weaner puts on an encore performance. This time we were in bed in the same room. The crying started out very faint and then rose in pitch and volume. Weaner had such a strange trill in her voice, it sounded other-worldly, not like a cat at all. It was almost lyrical. Sort of a cross between purring and singing. Consumed with curiosity, I jumped out of bed and flipped on the light. There she was, in the middle of the floor, with an athletic sock on the floor next to her. She just looked at me and blinked. This was driving me crazy! What on earth was she doing? Was she mothering these socks or romancing them?

This went on for seven months. That is to say that she carried on like this for seven months. I gave up trying to figure out what she was doing. after the first week or so.

Then one evening, my girlfriend and I were watching TV in the living room with the lights out. That's when we heard the sound... and it was getting closer. We both sat very still, not wanting to disturb Weaner from her... whatever. As we watched, she came down the hall towards the living room with a single athletic sock clenched between her little black lips. She had it by the toe, and the long tube sock dragged underneath her, causing her to walk bow-legged, tripping and staggering. All the while, she trilled louder and louder. When she made it to the carpet, she dropped the sock and rolled on it, still trilling louder and louder. We sat agog in the blue light of the television, watching a ritual never before seen by human eyes. It was like an episode of National Geographic. And then BAM! a noise from the TV startled Weaner from her ceremony. She instantly became aware of her audience and in the blink of an eye she was sitting up, next to the sock, looking at us like "What do you want?"

Since that one episode, we have never seen her perform the sock ritual again. We still hear her, and we often find individual socks in strange places like the middle of the kitchen floor.

At first, all I wanted to know was what she was doing with the sock. Now that I know, I have just one question: Why???

Copyright © Bill Jones
July 29, 1998