Bingley.

Just look at that smug son of a bitch. Full of self-entitlement and Kirkland brand cat food. He's 10lbs now. I found that out after spending about $120 on him at the vet after he decided to get into a tussle with something obviously much, much larger than he, all because he is a jerk who caterwauls in the middle of the night until you let him out. Regardless of the dangers lurking in a midnight desert neighborhood. So they weighed him at the vet, and he's 10lbs. I don't know why this pisses me off, unless it's just further proof that all I do is feed this fucker despite the way he treats the family (Patton excluded).

Anyways, despite that warm and fuzzy intro paragraph, I've actually grown fond of him. I'll never love him the way I loved Kittums because Kittums was like my familiar, and would sleep belly to belly with me. If I ever did that with Bingley I'd wake up with no face. But I have affectionate feelings for him now. It only took a year!

He's definitely mellowed out now, though and that has a major impact on our day to day interactions. Thank God we chopped his balls off, is all I have to say. Now he lets me pet him which is just such a bizarre thing. I almost forgot that the purpose of even owning a cat is to share a little love instead of possible inter-species tranmissible diseases through blood contact.

And I have to say that perhaps my re-thinking how I behave during our interactions has had a positive effect. See, about six or seven months ago if I tried to pet him he'd immediately sink his claws and teeth into me. He wouldn't let go so I'd have to pry him off and throw him to the ground, trying desperately not to cry like a baby. We tried spraying him with water, everything. Eventually we just made up a rhyme to remind Alex that he sucks ("orange and white, loves to bite") and then stopped touching him altogether.

Hey, maybe THAT is the reason he purrs now when we scratch his ears and massage the back of his neck (any other area appears to be strictly off limits), and lets us pick him up. Maybe a few months of laissez faire made him realize that a little human love isn't such a bad thing. There's been times that I have walked into a room and he will lift his head and look at me with kindness. He will actually semi seek out some loves from me. And then I'm turned into a teenage girl whose crush glanced at her in the hallway so I run off to tell Todd that the cat let me pet him and didn't try to bite me. Yes. It's that rare.

He's still a pain in the ass. Do you know, if one of us sleeps in, the fucking cat will actually come into the BEDROOM to caterwaul that he wants back out after his breakfast. He will walk past Todd or me, awake and sipping a caffinated beverage, to go into the BEDROOM TO WAIL. I mean, if that is not the very definition of sadistic shit, I do not know what is.

And he still bites. I seem to have tamed the beast a little more than Todd. Instead of dropping him to the floor after getting bitten, I lightly blow a little air in his face, which is just such an affront to his sensibilities he stops immediately to stare at me as if I just served him cold french fried or paired steak with warm white wine. Then I set him down on the sofa or something. But yeah, he still bites. He bites Todd when he picks him up. He bites Alex on the forehead when she tries to hug him (me: Alex, remember about Bingley? Alex, forlornly: "orange an' white, love a bite"). The only one who receives his unadulterated and unconditional love is Patton. Which really, why?

In conclusion, he's a bastard, but he's our bastard. And I think I've literally written that sentence in another Bingley post. He's funny, he's weird, he's a jerk, but I just described everyone on the internet ever, so I guess he's normal. Plus, I know he'll stick around longer than any other cat we've ever owned, any other cat on the goddamn planet, so I might as well just resolve myself to loving him. He just may end up choosing my nursing home.