Cats I continued, Bella

Last but not least, we come to the third cat in the household, Bella.

As I said in an earlier post, Bella is a reformed street cat. She was literally picked up off the street when she was thrown into the path of an oncoming car by the owner/manager/something of a Chinese restaurant in New York City. This person said she was making a pest of herself, trying to get into the basement. After reading the restauranteur the riot act, Bella's rescuer took her to a local vet's office to be checked out and possibly adopted. She was an immediate hit with the staff; one of them, who knew Linus, knew she had recently lost her elderly female Callie and was looking for a companion for Zoe, called her. Bella fell in love with Linus, rubbing, purring and climbing into her shirt for more pets.

When Bella arrived, she weighed less than five pounds and was so tiny even the vet thought she was less than five months old. Further examination--when she was spayed and a rotten canine tooth extracted--proved her to be better than five years old. Since she loved people, knew what a litter box was for and had a horror of climbing up onto the furniture, we knew she had spent some part of her former life with people, but that was all we knew. She also has a strong aversion to other cats, though long association with Zoe has taught her they aren't all the enemies she expects them to be.

Bella is white and gray, the gray having some undertones of orange visible in strong sunlight. Her colors aren't quite symetrical--the grey around her ears looks like she has a side part with peek-a-boo bangs, and the gray splotch on her nose only reaches up to one eye. She has the tiniest feet and the largest ears of any cat we'd ever seen. She has amazing control of those ears: had she been a male, we'd have called her "Yoda." Though she never learned to play the way other cats do--she just sits and stares at toy mice, string, even catnip balls--she has her own version of games. Her favorite is to wait for a human (except Linus, whose balance and coordination is shaky at the best of times) to head for a chair, then leap up onto the seat, "spread" herself so she covers the most area possible, and look up at the human with a smug look that says clearer than words "Neener, neener, neener! I got here fir-rst!"

Tell me cats don't think!