My felonious feline

I guess you could say she was my girlfriend. We were very close friends. We cuddled a lot, and she even slept with me many times. But she had the strangest habit of licking my hair. Yes, Blondie was feline, but she was special. She seemed to think she was more than just a cat. And when I was nine years old I agreed with her opinion. She groomed her kittens by copious licking, and she apparently thought of me as one of her little ones.

My father was a clerk in the Hollywood Post Office (which may be the source of a story or two) and when he came home from work, he enjoyed removing his shoes and stretching on the couch. He was over 6 ft. and the couch was short, so his feet usually rested on the opposite armrest. Well, when Blondie was very young she loved to attack feet, and more than once she provoked a loud beller from dad as she sprang through the air, grabbed his feet with her front paws and began biting with her teeth and kicking with her hind feet. He batted the beast from her death grip, but she seemed to consider the pain well worth the fun of the attack.

When Blondie was old enough to bear kittens, she did exactly that. After giving away two batches of kittens, dad decided to get her "fixed" so she spent the rest of her days grooming me.

Perhaps the strangest trait of Blondie was what we discovered in the kitchen one night just before supper. Mom was fixing salad and accidently dropped a piece of iceburg lettuce on the floor. Before she could bend down and retrieve it, Blondie had found it and was munching voraciously on the leaf. She loved lettuce! From that day on, whenever we were making a salad or using lettuce for a sandwich, we would "treat" Blondie with a piece of the lettuce. I've never known a cat before or since who liked--or would even try--lettuce. That included Blondie's babies. When a cat trains her kittens, she has a special meow (sort of a cross between a purr and a meow) that is intended to assemble the crew for a treat. Well, the first piece of lettuce given her after the kittens were born, was intended to be shared by Blondie. She dragged it to the middle of the kitchen floor. She called with her special "Purrrow" and the feline children came running from all directions. Then she stooped and nibbled a piece of the leaf for them to watch. Then the kittens drew near to this wet leaf, sniffed a little and walked away. She looked at them incredulously. "What's the matter with you! Don't you know a treat when you see one?" her body language seemed to convey.