Just a blog about a cat

Sugar's Kitty Period was uneventful at first. Sugar would meow incessantly, but that was pretty much it. At some point during her week of womanliness, she decided that peeing on things would be very entertaining. 

When we first got her, we found out that Sugar had to sleep with me. If she didn't, she'd stand in front of my door and cry until I let her in. I had no choice but to sleep with her (this wasn't too bad though, so I didn't care much). 

On the third day of her period, Sugar decided to wake me up at 4 a.m.. Stretching, I felt something wet. I looked down to the lower half of my sheets and found that sugar had peed on my bed. Frustrated, I got out, threw the sheets in the washing machine, and dropped my comforter in the bathtub to be hand-washed later. 

The next morning, despite the change of sheets and the fact that Sugar's litter-box was in my room, she peed the bed again. This time on my foot. Annoyed (it was 3 a.m. on a Monday), I dragged her out of my room, dropped my comforter, and went to sleep again. 

The same day, my mom told me that Sugar had pooped on the rug in our living room. Frustrated with this stupid cat who just seemed to have forgotten the existence of her very fancy litter-box, I told Previous Cat Owner to take Sugar back. 

Cat Owner didn't say anything. In fact, his reply didn't arrive until a couple of days later. 

That night, Sugar peed on my bed, this time really close to my face. I decided that she had to sleep in the bathroom from now on. Exhausted and not getting enough sleep, I wanted this cat out. I'd learned from the internet that one of the reasons kittens and cats are taken back to shelters or adoption centers is because they like to mark their territory by peeing on things belonging to their new owner. 

Sugar slept in the bathroom for two days. The first night, I was informed by my parents that she cried and scratched at the door for a large portion of the night. The second night she slept peacefully. 

Then came Cat Owner's message. 

Naturally, as Sugar is a purebred, her previous owner did not have her spayed. 

About a month after she got to my house, Sugar got in heat. I'd heard from Cat Neighbor that female cats in heat were terrible. She said that when her cat went into heat, it was like hell had unleashed the worst feline demon ever known to Earth. Apparently, Cat Neighbor's cat thought that estrous meant howling like a wild wolf in the middle of the night. Hearing these stories was not uplifting. 

So I was expecting Sugar to suddenly turn into some kind of three-headed monster whose sole objective in life was to destroy my eardrums. Yet Sugar succeeded only in scaring the crap out of me.

The first day, she puked. 

After the puke incident (which wasn't very nice to clean up), everything seemed more relaxed. The only annoying part of having a cat in heat was that she became a highly egocentric animal. It didn't matter what anybody said, Sugar thought it was about her. And any time she heard someone speak, she meowed. Every single time. 

So, basically, this is pretty much how Sugar's kitty period went:

Person A: "Hi!"

Sugar: *Oh it must be a male cat wanting me." "Meow."

*People talking*

Sugar: *nonstop meowing*

It seems that Sugar also confused humans for male cats, as she desperately tried to convince my dad that mating with her was a foolproof decision. 

Anyway, Kitty Period wasn't as scary as heavily-experienced Cat Neighbor made it out to be. We all expected shrill cries throughout the night as Sugar wailed for her prince. 

On Friday, May 23, my friends and I went out for dinner to celebrate our friend's birthday (she shall be called... Friend). Anyway, Friend was turning 17, and invited us to celebrate the wonderful experience that is known in our world as getting one year older. 

Now, at this time, we'd only had Sugar for about two weeks. She'd gone through her 'house-breaking' phase (in which she stayed in one room for a week, alone, with her food, water and litter box). She was eating, drinking, running around, and whatever. In short, she was being a cat. 

Knowing Sugar was safe at home, and trusting her not to employ her Super Kitty Senses to do something stupid (like get stuck in a hole under the heating radiators, which she did the day after she got to my house), I left to meet up with my friends.

Dinner went by smoothly. After, our friend suggested we go back to her house and watch a movie. She lives in my compound, in the building in front of mine, so it wasn't a big deal if I stayed there for a while longer. 

The movie makes time pass quickly, but not quickly enough. So we watched another movie. 

At 2:30 am, I return home, exhausted. After changing into my PJ's, I dramatically throw myself on my bed. I sniff the bed..

It smells weird.

I get up. I feel my shirt. It's wet.

I breathe in.. my room smells weird. I look down on my bed, wondering what Sugar did. 

I pat the bed and smell the wetness. It's cat pee. No doubt about it.

I look at Sugar, and she eyes me innocently. Although her face looks all sweet and unknowing, I'm pretty sure her mind is thinking something along the lines of "*insert evil cat laugh* I bet that human thinks I didn't do it! That's what she gets for coming home so late!" But, since no one in my family is a cat (that I know of, at least) I know it was Sugar that wet the bed. 

Sugar was terrified on her first day. Big eyed and trembling, with a shaky tail she set out to explore her new house. She was utterly scared of everything: my family, the house, the noises, and even the furniture. As we didn’t know what to do with a cat, we left her alone to get used to the surroundings. We didn’t expect her to run away and hide underneath the sofa.

However, we understood that this was her first time ever moving to a new place, and that she needed to be left alone for a few hours. I left my house to go to dance class, leaving Sugar (who was hidden underneath the couch) with my mom and boyfriend.

Upon my return, we looked under the sofa. We wanted to feed Sugar, since she hadn’t eaten at all. We were also really worried since we’d read on the internet (and from a heavily cat-experienced neighbor) that when cats move to a new house, they hide under places they consider safe, refusing food and water to the point of death. 

Panicking, since we’d lost this cat we were supposed to look after for four months on the first day, we set out to look under every nook and cranny in my house. Searching for an hour proved fruitless: Sugar was nowhere to be found. 

My boyfriend, on the edge of going into full panic mode (the cat was, after all, his uncle’s), contacted the heavily-experienced Cat Neighbor. Cat Neighbor helped us search for another half hour in our house. Nothing. Not even Catnip Squirrel could draw Sugar from her hiding spot.

We began contemplating the idea that Sugar had used her Super Kitty Senses to sneak out of my house, run down all the stairs, sneak past the security guards, and run out into the free world. Naturally, considering her super senses were at play, we broke up into three parties: the Boyfriend Party would climb the building from floors 5-19 in search of Sugar. I would search floors 4-Basement 4 (B4), the courtyard, and the playground; I was also to interview the guards. Cat Neighbor would inspect the house, searching for holes were Sugar could be hidden.

Three hours had gone by the time we’d searched the building three times, juiced all information from the guards, asked bystanders if they’d seen a fleeing cat, and Cat Neighbor had fully inspected the apartment.

Cat Neighbor had left. We’d given up. We thought of Sugar as long-gone, probably enjoying her walk around the city. 

Almost four hours after the cat was misplaced, my mom pipes up. “What if Sugar was behind the couch this whole time?” Out of ideas, we decide to give it a try. We move the couch, half-expecting Sugar to be there, half-expecting an empty couch.

Sugar is there. Terrified. She’d been there through the whole ordeal, as we took our house apart brick by brick, as we frantically waved a toy Squirrel filled with Catnip around.

We called Cat Neighbor, and she advised up to do something we should’ve done from the moment Sugar walked into our home: put her in an isolated bathroom for a few hours with her food, water and litterbox. 

In May 2014, Sugar arrived at our house. A small cat almost the age of two, she was a skinny, shy cat that ran away and hid as soon as her previous owner left. Hidden behind our sofa, Sugar sought refuge from her temporary family. 

This was the first time we'd ever looked after a cat. My family was a dog family. My sister and brother have 4 dogs in common. Before these, my family had 3 more dogs. We'd never had a cat before. We didn't know Sugar at all. We didn't know how cats acted, what they like, what they ate, their feeding routines, nothing. We were used to tame dogs that listened to their name and didn't mind foreign places. Sugar was the complete opposite. She didn't know her name, didn't understand the change, and feared the new house.

This blog is dedicated to Sugar. Originally, she was supposed to stay with us for four months. Yet she slowly became part of us. She fell in love with our family just as we fell in love with her.