Username: tawnypelt3
Shugorei Name: Khyzhak, the Romanized translation for "predator" in Ukrainian.
How you and he met: Please excuse this story if you find it is written poorly, but I wanted to go for a different angle than I usually do. It's written like a memory that I am telling to someone else, so it's in my own words, thus I am the narrator and it's not supposed to be formal and neat. I am informal and enjoy slang on occasion. c:
My best friend and I love going on walks together. There's a small state park just a few minutes away from my house, and a bike path just behind my house, so we always use one of those. My best friend is a seriously smart kid. She's one of those types who will become a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist; she's currently attending Yale to become either a biomedical engineer or a biomedical something-something-or-other, something to do with practicing medicine. It's hard to keep up with her big medical lingo. ^^; So, as you can imagine, I don't get to see her very often; she's hard at work in New England and I'm stuck in nowheresville, Midwest USA.
But when she does come home for holidays like Christmas and spring break, we hang out as much as possible. Today, with one of her rare visits home, we decided to take a hike with my dog in the state park. It's quite the wilderness, especially this time of year, when half the foliage is just turning red and orange and brown and the other half is still wild and bushy and green. I know the land very well, and I always try to take us on a path that goes far into the heart of the park, where few people have ever gone. The path I chose today is just tamped dirt, with weeds growing through and tall grass hanging over the edges. It winds through ravines and meadows, and cuts between huge stands of dark, crumbling rock.
The dog is out front, as usual, and we're meandering along behind him, trying desperately to catch up on everything that's happened since she last came home. It always starts out kind of awkward, "Hey, what have you been up to?" that sort of thing, but after a while we really get into a good discussion. We tend to sort of space out at this time. Bad idea.
The dog disappears around the corner of a black rock, the cord of his leash scraping its jagged edge. It stops, so I think he must be sniffing something or peeing on a bush, you know, generic dog stuff. But he gives a yelp, and that snaps us out of our discussion right quick. I'm sort of protective of my dog since he contracted Lime disease, so we quicken our step a bit. We round the rock, and there's my stupid dog. My stupid, stupid dog.
He's got something trapped in a crevice of rock, at about waist height. I call but he won't turn around, in that typical I-am-focused-on-my-prey fashion, so I go to grab his collar. And then I worry. Sigh. My poor, stupid dog. He messed with a critter and got scratched up for his trouble. Well, it must not hurt too bad, as he's still sniffin' at the little hole in the rock. Now, I'm not the type to put myself in an iffy situation, but my friend is completely clueless about anything involving the natural world, so I stick my face right down by the hole and have a look. Luckily for me, it didn't decide to make another swipe at its captors, just a wild, rich snarl.
Summary of the situation so far: my injured dog's whining, either because of his kitten scratch or because I won't let him bother the thing anymore, my best friend's holding him back and has no idea what to do, and I'm being stared down by this weird cat thing that I've got stuck in a hole in the middle of nowhere. Sense says we move on and let the cat deal with itself. My friend wants a look at it before we go, so I grab the leash and we swap places. Don't get too close, I warn, and she says yeah, not gonna get scratched. She sticks her head down like I'd done before, and the flippin' cat just swarms out and grabs her by the head! She completely freaks out, and I would go to help her but I got the dog; if I let go of him, he'll go right for the cat, and that'll just make things worse.
So I try to talk her down, stop, don't flail like that, I said
stop. Just calm down and it'll let go. Now sittin' in the dirt, my friend finally cools off and let's go of the cat, which she'd been trying to violently pull away from her skull. With her limp, the cat loses its energy as well, and it primly releases its claws from her hair. It falls down to her lap, and she spits out puffs of fur. Gettin' a look at the cat up close, it obviously isn't your average house cat. It's one of those rare, fancy "spirit cat" things we see every once in a while, with its ornate collar and staff. My dog makes a move for it, whoa now Rocky, hold on, you can't eat it. The cat immediately flares up, but my friend's recovered and she grabs at it in case it wants to hug her face again. My friend's not had many pets in her life, just a few birds and fish and her grandma's cat, but with her hand stroking it's back, the cat slows the angry thumping of its long tail against the dirt and stops hissing at the dog.
That cat's crazy, I say, but she replies no, it's just scared. It makes no move to get off her lap, and even with her prodding it refuses to leave. He doesn't seem feral, I say. My dog jerks insistently at his leash, and we don't even see the cat move. One moment it's there, and the next it's balanced carefully around her neck. I say, in the dumbest tone of voice possible, I think it likes you. As I said, she doesn't really know anything about pets, but it's obvious enough that it's got a thing for her. Um, she says, what do I do? Nothin' really you can do, I'm afraid. Can you get it off? She stuffs her hands under its belly and tugs, bit it's stubborn. Nope, sorry girl, you're kind of stuck with it. She splutters and waves her hands at me, but I'm not going to worry further about a situation I can't change. I'm taking my dog home to fix up his scratches. She should be able to figure out what she wants to do.
My friend follows along, cat still perched on her shoulders. I would facepalm, but that might hurt her delicate sensibilities. It got name, I ask. "Khyzhsak," she says. She lived in Ukraine for most of her childhood, and came to the States in time for 5th grade, so she's always saying things in Ukrainian; I've learned some things from her, so I know she means "predator." I can see why she'd call the cat a predator; cat's are lean, mean killing machines, and this thing was huge and feisty. It would not have backed down from my Rottweiler had we taken any less time in getting to him. Rocky may even have lost, given the serious claws the cat possessed. Wooh, kinda scares me a little. That cat means business. But just looking at it makes me want to laugh a little; a killer like that, all curled up and gettin' close to my friend? Pffffff. Stifle the urge, Tawny, stifle it quick.
We hadn't gone very far into the woods when we found the cat, but it feels like forever before I can see my car again. I give the dog water and load him up, my friend makes a half-hearted attempt to remove the cat while I studiously pretend to tie my shoe, and we leave without a word. We get back home and I let the dog lose, still ignoring my friend's predicament. She's at a loss, but she's gonna have to figure out what she wants to do. You gotta leave soon, I ask. Few hours, she says, and we watch TV. I know she's thinking desperately about the damn cat; they're big, and fancy, and extremely smart. You can't really keep 'em as pets, more like "they choose you." It seems to me it had, indeed, chosen her. But I can't keep it, she said, frustrated. Don't you have an apartment this semester, I ask. Nope, dorm room this year. I'd always thought she needed a pet to keep her company, even when she still lived in the Midwest. She needs a companion, both to love and to learn from, 'cause she really is in the dark about how to make friends and how the outside world works, and it's sad. I want her to have something that will love her unconditionally. So I do something stupid.
I'll keep him, I say. You can visit him whenever you want, and I'll take pictures of him and make videos and care for him for as long as you need me to.
My friend is always going on about how she doesn't want to burden me with anything. She thinks I shouldn't give her rides and occasionally pay for lunch and do things for her. She needs to understand,
that's what friends do. I have the space, I have the time, and Rocky won't go near the cat when I'm done with him, I say. So be quiet.
And that's why I'm taking care of a cat I couldn't really call mine. We get along well enough, I truly am a cat person, and so long as he has high places to rest on away from the dog, he seems to be happy. He really belongs to my friend, though. She's coming back for Christmas soon, and I'm sure that he already knows it.
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Just to be sure, I don't actually mean I plan on giving my friend this cat if I win him. That's just the backstory I dreamt up for him.
My friend is indeed coming home for Christmas, and I'm super excited!
