Let Me Whisper I Love You

We have a new family member! Her name is Lulu and the lady at the shelter said she is a 1 year old Pastel Tortie. I have no idea if that’s true of not. I know absolutely nothing about cat colors or markings. (Perhaps one of you cat fanciers out there would know!!) All I do know is that she is wonderful and I’m head over heels in love with her.

Even though I call myself JessiCat, I’ve never considered myself much of a cat person until I met my cat, Jovi, in a pet store one day. Jovi has pretty much bonded like super glue with me. He’s friendly and he will play and occasionally even cuddle with the kids if I’m right there. If I move, Jovi goes where I go. Middle Daughter suffers from a lot of depression issues and just loves cuddling and nurturing animals. Jovi won’t quite let her do this as often as she'd like, so I thought hmmmmmm.....pets are very therapeutic and perhaps a cat that super glues itself to her might be a good idea!

Our first stop was a shelter very close to my house. The second we walked into the cat room, a beautiful cat named Natalia found my daughter. Middle Daughter sat on the floor and played with her and within minutes Natalia The Cat had climbed into her lap and fallen asleep. So cute!!! A few other cats walked up to her, but they didn’t connect like Middle and Natalia did. Natalia had been an owner surrender and had been there well over a year. I couldn’t believe it. She was a playful, loving and beautiful cat! Why hadn't anybody taken her home? It seemed, well....odd, considering this cat's personality.

I filled out the adoption papers and was told that there was nobody there who could approve adoptions. What? It is a weekend! They said we would be told by Tuesday or Wednesday if we could take Natalia home. OK, whatever. We decided to wait and before we left, checked out the other cat room where a different volunteer was working.

He wanted us to check out a certain cat and Middle Daughter told him we already applied for adoption for Natalia. He slipped me a secret that the director is very fond of Natalia and probably wants to keep her around, because nobody that’s ever applied for Natalia actually gets to take her home, so we should check out this other cat.

WHAT? I didn’t like what I was hearing. If she likes the cat that much, then the Director should take her home and give her a home. If she can’t for some reason, then she should want a family that loves her to give her a home. She shouldn’t want to keep her in a shelter! Pffffffffffft.

I didn’t want Middle Daughter to be waiting for a cat I was pretty sure we wouldn’t get, so we checked out another shelter called Orphans of The Storm. We had adopted my beloved doggie, BAILey, from there many years ago. This place was much larger than the first shelter, too.

I was astonished at the number of cats that needed homes. There were hundreds, I swear. Enormous rooms just filled with cats. Middle Daughter looked a little overwhelmed and I told her to just sit on the floor and first, see who comes to her and then see how the connection feels.

The volunteer working in that cat room said to me “Oh, you’re a cat whisperer!”

I am? I didn’t know that. Probably because I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but hey, it sounds cool, so maybe I am!

She explained that cat whisperers are people who innately understand the behaviors and nature of cats without any sort of training. It’s just natural to them. That’s me! JessiCat, the cat whisperer!

What does one do with cat whispering skills? I looked through Hotjobs and it’s definitely not a marketable skill in the lucrative, "great! I'm going to hire you" sense. I see books written by fellow cat whisperers divulging secrets of how to talk to your cat, but I don’t know if I have anything to offer here, either. I just talk to the cat. I don’t whisper to it.

Some of these “cat whisperers” are also cat therapists. Cat therapists? My innate, catlike instincts tell me that if cats could speak, “take me to therapy” would not be something they would be likely to say. Cat therapy has to be a human idea developed by cat whisperers trying to make a living using this whispering skill.

Perhaps my cat skills are derived from the years I have spent studying human behavior. Just a guess, but I’ll let you know what I’ve decided to do with my newfound talent. In the meantime, shhhhhhhh, I’m busy whispering to Lulu ;)