Living With a Daredevil

In light of all the bad things going on in the world lately, I thought I’d post a light-hearted, crazy story about one of my cats.

Kokopelli Figure 

This is the only way to describe my youngest cat, Kokopelli.  We call her Koki, you can see why.  The reason we gave her this name is that she was born in the desert, so it seemed appropriate.  For those of you who have never heard this word, Kokopelli is from ancient Anasazi Indian mythology and is a prominent figure in Hopi legends.  The images of Kokopelli figures are widespread, usually found as petroglyphs in Indian ruins.  They represent a mischievous trickster, or minstrel, a magical flute player.  I guess we named this little girl right.

Koki - the Daredevil

First, a little background – we found this little creature under my car early one morning when going out to get the newspaper. She had been hit by a car and this little fur ball was a mess with blood all over her face, and so small she could fit in the palm of my hand.

We brought her in; I gently cleaned her up over the kitchen sink.  Upon examination, I discovered that her chin had separated from her teeth.  I felt awful and couldn’t understand how she could stand the pain, but she made no noise of discomfort at all.  I’m always amazed that cats can go through so much pain, if they were humans they’d be screaming.  We are such wimps.

Of course, we took her to the vet as soon as they opened.  Now I must tell you that we already had five cats, so my husband wanted to take her to the local shelter.  I would not hear of it, so thankfully, at that hour, we found a closed sign on the door.

Off to the vet we went who returned the diagnosis of a broken jaw, saying she was about six weeks old.  After sewing her up and wiring her mouth shut, we brought her home and she became the sixth member of our cat family.

That was seven years ago.  Where has the time gone?

Now this little cat never did grow to normal size.  She is still about half the size of the rest of the group, but she is not afraid of anything and astonishes me at her antics.

As you can imagine, it was about impossible to keep her out of the dry cat food, vet’s orders.  This worked for a while, but only until she learned to jump onto things.  Her mouth was open just a crack, I was told to feed her eggs, cheese, canned cat food and other soft things, but no dry food for two months.  This didn’t make her happy.

The vet looked stunned when I asked for this button after he took the wires out of her mouth.  After some protest, he went and fished it out of the trash for me.

Her daredevil nature emerged early on.  She loves to walk on the railing upstairs, hanging over the rail to play with her own tail.  I think she enjoys scaring me to death.  She also does this with the shower stall and will climb to the top of a ladder and roll around on that platform to say, “look at me, I’m so cute.”

Not long after she got the wires out of her mouth, she jumped from the railing and landed on her face, on the tile floor, two stories below.  The results - another trip to the vet to have two teeth pulled.  She broke them off in that escapade.  Thankfully, she got smarter after that and lands on her feet.

Of course, the vet knew what was coming, so he saved the teeth for me.

This cat is always hanging off this and that, but so far no more mishaps, at least not the expensive medical kind.  She is stealthy now as she ventures to places she shouldn’t go.

However, she is always looking for something to get into. 

Lately, she began getting the strainer out of the kitchen sink and bringing it to the bedroom during the night.  I wish I could catch her with a camera, but of course, I’m always sleeping.  I know she must work at it for sometime, but she is tenacious and once a thought enters her head she will not rest until she accomplishes her task.  A few days ago, I woke up with the strainer in bed with me.

What she will do next is anyone’s guess.  She hurls herself over the TV when she gets one of her crazy streaks, so we’ve started closing that cabinet at night.  I caught her in her flying act and the TV was shaking, so I had visions of it crash-landing on the floor.

Perhaps that is why I had a crazy dream about her a few months later.  She put on a walking harness and spread her front arms that turned into wings, enabling her to fly.  She took off flying around, just out of my reach, as she laughed with joy.  She loves me to chase her.

She is just such a dear one and I love her immensely.  I’ll always be grateful she found my house that day she was hurt years ago.  I just have to be ready for anything because she keeps me on my toes.