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The adventures of a wild, well-loved housecat

My mother, however, didn't like animals very much and was against the idea. (Since she grew up on a farm, I never understood this. My uncles still tell the story of her stint feeding the outdoor cats in the barn in the farm -- she'd open the door, throw the food in, and run away as quickly as possible.)

So I had to wait for a cat until I got to graduate school and had my own apartment. I'd thought about getting a kitten at an animal shelter, but a friend's next door neighbor in Iowa had the perfect candidate: a mother cat who produced numerous progeny every summer. I picked out one of the newest litter and took my chances -- as my friend's mother described my new kitten's parentage, "His mother's the town whore and God knows who his father is."

I had one very confused cat the first night inside. Basically, it went something like this: I'd fall asleep. I would wake up to find a kitten crawling on my face. I would toss the kitten off the bed. I'd fall asleep. I'd wake up and find a kitten on my face ... etc., etc.

I didn't have a real litter box right away, so that was a problem too.

(Fortunately this part did not involve my face.) It got so bad that one of my friends threatened to name him "Poop."

Not wanting to doom my cat to being called Poop all of his life, I thought I'd better think of another name, fast. My favorite book (read: obsession) at the time was "Wuthering Heights," so I thought about naming him Heathcliff -- except then everyone would think I had read too much of the comic pages. Besides, it didn't fit him -- this was an inbred, silly, wide-eyed kitten from Iowa we were talking about here, not a blustery romantic hero.

The next week or so confirmed this impression. I was putting together various furniture for the new apartment, opening lots of boxes, stacking things all over the place, and it was inevitable -- wherever the next nail or screw needed to go, there was the kitten. Open a new box, and he'd hop in. Stack some books, and he'd jump over them.

It was like having a mischievous child trying to "help" you unpack -- a child who had no sense of reality. And there I got his name: Calvin. It turned out I "had" read too much of the comic pages. (People often ask me why I named my cat Calvin when the feline in the strip is called Hobbes. I have a concise, if somewhat cat-insulting answer: "Because Hobbes is smart.")

As the next few months proved, Calvin was indeed not the Einstein of the cat world. He entertained my roommate and me one afternoon by running full-tilt for the chair by the window sill, jumping off the chair ... and smacking straight into the wall. (That's the beauty of a cat -- not only wasn't he hurt, but he walked out from behind the chair strutting as if to say, "I meant to do that.")

In December, he discovered fire in the form of my roommate's Hanukkah menorah candles and managed to singe half of his top whiskers. He'd stick his nose close, pull back as if to say, "Oooh, that's hot," and stick his nose back in ("Oooh, it's still hot.") Lately he's taken to staring into my full-length mirror; occasionally he'll startle and then try to look behind the mirror to find out where the other cat went.

Like a lot of cats, Calvin has two moods: wacko-hyper and asleep. I call the hyper one "Freak Boy" -- as Henry Beard says in "French for Cats," he runs from room to room for no apparent reason. Or he'll paw at the floor as if he thinks he's going to get somewhere; I call this one "Digging to China."

If you really want to have fun with a cat, the best things are a laser pointer and a vacuum cleaner. Cats don't get the idea that they can't catch light, so they'll chase the beam of a laser pointer or any other reflected light around the room as if it's the biggest, fattest bug they've ever seen. A vacuum cleaner, on the other hand, is a housecat's only natural enemy. My vacuum is the only thing Calvin hisses at.

As for my mom, she likes it that I have a cat. She doesn't have to take care of it, and when obnoxious people ask her if she has any grandchildren, she says, "No, but I have a grandcat."

-- Jean Twenge can be reached over e-mail at jeant@umich.edu.