Come and Meet BJ

BJ is our eight year old medium hair brown tabby. His fur is fuzzy, wispy and frequently found in DP’s eyes. You can tell it’s his fur because it resembles a strand of gray cotton once it is satisfyingly removed. One of his curious features is the nature of his bent back tail. Instead of straight up vertically when he’s greeting, BJ’s tail bends all the way, touching his back. I have seen this in other cats, and it just doesn’t look right. His eyes are the usual olive green but have flecks of black. His ears are war torn from his days as an indoor/outdoor cat (no longer). He was brought inside permanently last fall and has adjusted pretty well, especially around the middle. At first he did put on some extra weight, but it has leveled off and seems fine now.

When he was a kitten, DP rescued BJ just before he was destined for the animal shelter. She named him Betty Jane, after her grandmother who was always taking in (now known as rescuing) stray cats. It was important for DP to get a girl because resident gray boy, Barnum, did not like other males. It’s one of those stories where, she was told the kitten was a girl until the first vet visit revealed the truth. We suspect his chewed up ears are the result of him having to defend his name to neighborhood bullies.

In our crazy household, our dogs have individual voices we give them when we want to express their behavior. We think we are a laugh riot, talking in voices for our dogs - others may beg to differ. The voice kind of happens organically, just by looking at them. We’ve tried a few voices for the cats, but so far not many have stuck. Only two of our cats have a voice, and a tough, street smart feline like BJ, who’s had to defend his girly name, easily sounds like Marlon Brando in his Mafioso accent. The other cats better not mess with him either, ’cause he’ll bam, bam, bam batter them upside the head with some fancy one, two paw action, especially when he’s getting his evening love session. But all that toughness gets shot to hell if we make any erratic moves around him. He can be in my lap being petted and purring his heart out, but if we laugh at something on TV, he’s apt to scramble off (with claws protruding) and head under the couch. He stops himself a foot or two away, when he realizes we are not going to kill him…then he comes right back up for more love.

He is known as a "bureaucat" - when anyone comes to visit, he is long gone under the bureau at the first dog bark. After I first moved in with DP, I almost gave up trying to get BJ to warm up to me. For three weeks I only saw the fluff of his butt as he bolted for cover when I walked in a room. One morning as DP was heading off for work, I told her I’d lost hope for BJ and I to connect. It was that very afternoon, when I was reading on the couch, that he jumped up on my lap, and gave me that loving look that says, “You're okay. I guess you can be part of the family. Now show me some loving.”

As our official lap cat (whether we want it or not), on the evenings DP and I eat dinner together, BJ waits, sometimes not so patiently, for our forks to be set down on our plates, before he moves in for the pet. As we eat, he’ll lay next to me on the couch, priming his paws and kneading the air with purring, loving looks, “I love ya Mama, Lisa. You know I do.” When he gets his cue, he jumps up and walks along the top of the couch, steps down off my shoulder and onto my chest, where it can become quite precarious should I make the wrong move, and slips onto one of our laps. Sometimes he’ll straddle across both of us for the most effective petting delivery method. Depending upon our mood, he can be charming, or pesky, because he is hard pressed to settle down to be petted, always fidgeting, rolling, getting back up and circling about showing us his butt. When he finally does settle down, he sometimes drools, but he always kneads with full claws, so we try our best to keep them clipped.

BJ has become more engaged with the other cats in the colony now that he’s been converted to indoors only. He has a couple of buddies he plays with regularly and a couple of agitators who tease him regularly. He loves it when we play group games a few times a month and especially loves the laser light. He’s not one to run for it at full throttle like some of the others. He half hides himself under the couch or coffee table, then scoots out when the dot comes near him, tries to get it for a few seconds, then scoots right back in reverse, scuttlefish style, after it goes away. He’s a fanatic about his cat nip, defending his stash should anyone try to interfere with his licking. He has the roughest tongue of the group and unfortunately seems to enjoy licking us when we pet him. He can be a bit bitey and likes extreme petting, where we rub on his face a bit abrasively. His kneading black paws stretch out in front of him, claws a-radiating as he blares out a purr.

The quirkiest thing about BJ is not his fault. He is not our prettiest cat, but he has a great admirer – a stalker really. To his great misfortune, BJ is the object of our German Shepherd’s obsession. The Shepherd, Stanze (Stahn-zee) is her name, herds and follows BJ where ever he goes, whining and worrying the entire way. At least she would if we didn’t have a series of three baby gates dividing up the house. Gates that Stanze is not allowed to go beyond (though she could if she really wanted to), but BJ can jump over or squeeze under. When they do walk together, it just adds to BJ’s Mafioso persona by having a bodyguard at his side, matching him step for step, stop for stop. Sometimes you can find out where BJ is hiding just by locating Stanze’s rear end sticking out from under the bed…moaning with tail wagging after him. Alas, BJ has no interest in Stanze’s attention and when he’s had enough, he’ll give her the old bam, bam, bam action with full claws, right on her snout. You might think he kissed her, the way she wags her tail so hard with joy at that intimate level of contact. She just blinks and blinks, pulling away for barely a second to avoid the worst of it, then plunges right back in for more. She can be relentless if she hasn’t had enough exercise, but karma has come around for Stanze, and I’ll fill you in on that saga in another blog. I hope you enjoyed meeting BJ. –Lisa Co9T