#dixie doodle

I kind of forgot that Dixie was a bit of a terror when I first got her. She was a year old, and the craziest cat I had ever seen. When I first brought her home, I didn't know how you were supposed to introduce cats to each other, and I literally only got her to be a companion for Cheyenne, who had become depressed and stopped eating when her sister died. I brought Dixie in, opened the cat carrier, and she immediately attacked Cheyenne. I had to pull her off, and she went crazy trying to rip me to shreds, until I got her back in the cat carrier.

I was so filled with regrets in that moment lmao.

I used to have to lock her in a room when I went to work, because I thought she might kill Cheyenne. I was trying everything to make them get along... what I ended up doing was rubbing cat-safe, strongly scented argon oil all over both of them, to confuse them. They were both very greasy for a few days, but they spent that whole time sniffing each other and looking confused. They stopped fighting after that, and Cheyenne did come out of her depression.

But omg this cat... my friend called her the "crack kitty", because she acted like she was on crack all the time. My brother called her "attack cat"... somehow I forgot about all of this... She used to terrorize my house, knocking everything over, unrolling all the paper towels all the time.

She used to get into the ceiling and run around in there. Every. Single. Day. You couldn't get her out once she got in, because you'd move one ceiling tile, and she'd just run away. She got stuck on a nail once, but I only ever get collars for my cats that will break if you pull hard on them. She was up there, screeching, and my brother heard her, moved the tile, and found her caught. He just pulled her and the collar broke off. He left the collar there as a warning to her to stop acting like an idiot.

She did not.

It took forever to figure out how she was getting in. Once, I saw her in the basement, standing on a half inch ledge on the side of the furnace, like a mountain goat. She was rocking back and forth, so I went to get her, but she just sprung into the air and jumped into a like 8"x8" hole above the furnace, which used to have a pipe or something in it. That's how she was getting in.

I was in disbelief. If she missed that jump, she would have smashed into the wall full force, and then landed on a cement floor. But she did it, every single day. (That was the very last day, because once she got out, I put something in the hole to block it lol).

She's the only cat that ever jumped into my turtle tank... Callie has thought about it, but she's never actually done it. Dixie did though, and I don't know how many times. I just happened to go over to the tank once, and there she was, curled up on the turtle's backing dock, under the UV lights. The poor turtle was freaking out, and Dixie was so mad when I took her out of the tank... I have NO idea how she got in... I thought it was in a cat-proof location, because I couldn't see anything around that they could jump from or climb on. But she pulled it off.

She's the reason the turtles have their own room now lmao.

And it's great because I look back now and remember that these are all funny memories, but at the time it was so frustrating. I remember constantly regretting getting her for the first few years I had her. She wasn't sweet and cuddly back then. She didn't sit on anyone's lap. She prowled the house all day and night like a feral cat.

And now I also remember that that's part of the reason I used to say, "Cheyenne is my cat, and Dixie is Cheyenne's cat", because she didn't feel like my pet back then. She was just a creature that terrorized my house.

And don't get me wrong - I loved this cat, even when she was a terror (though it took a few months to stop regretting getting her). She was still sweet in the moments in between, and it was always so exciting when she did want to come and sit with you and be petted. She just was also very stressful lol

She obviously mellowed out eventually, but it was only the last 6 or so years of her life that she was consistently an affectionate, cuddly cat. But even back in 2017, when Cheyenne died, I was so devastated, and part of the reason was because I'd just lost my sweet, affectionate, loving cat, and Dixie still didn't quite feel like she was my cat yet.

But after Cheyenne died, Dixie's personality changed a bit. She was still demanding as hell, and ripped up the walls in my salon so bad that I had to patch them twice, and then put in special shelves for her to climb (she was so mad when I was installing them, and once she got used to them, she'd screech if I touched them, and if I put anything there, she'd knock it off lol). But that's also the time when she and I started to really vibe, and she started to feel like a cat version of me.

She did become my favourite cat, because I've never felt a connection to an animal like I did with her. And it's so strange now to remember back to when I seriously considered rehoming her because I thought she was a bad fit. Luckily I felt guilty for even considering it, so I never did, but I used to wonder if the people who I got her from were really moving away, like they said, or were just at their wits' end.

(Also, her previous owners had named her Skrink. Also, the house was super hazy with pot smoke when I picked her up, like they'd hotboxed it or something. I had my friend with me when I got her, and for years, I remember her always saying, "I think she spent the first year of her life high, and it broke her brain!" It seemed like a reasonable guess at the time lmao)