Rusty's Saturday Morning

Rusty is our oldest cat.... approximately 12 years old now...... we found him the year after we moved here, and the vet guessed that he was about a year old when we found him. Or rather, he found us. As my friend Frankie used to say: "Cats always seem to find people who will take them in, not boot them out."

Rusty is the ultimate cat. So "ultimate" that he looks like Morris the cat in those cat food commercials. Unlike finicky Morris, however, Rusty never met a morsel of food that he didn't like. He is overweight, but healthy as a horse, as that old saying goes.

I've tried to keep his little cat-face out of the food bowls of the other cats, but Rusty is smarter than I am. If I turn on the vacuum and don't remember to pick up the cat food bowls, he'll sit there and eat every last bit while I'm running the vacuum cleaner and not paying attention to what's going on in the kitchen. Rusty also knows that if I go out the front door with Gracie on her leash, then he's got some time to see what's left in the other cats' dishes. And if there's nothing left in the cat food dishes, he'll just sit there and eat whatever Gracie has left in her dish.

With this warm weather now, I can keep Rusty out on the deck in the backyard, and he has access to just his own food dish, and I can control his portions. Or so I thought. This morning, as I was eating my own breakfast and watching the birds at the feeders, I saw Rusty race from the sofa on the deck and plow head-first into the flower garden. I can't remember the last time I saw that cat move so fast.

I just sat where I was, eating my oatmeal and watching the birds, and trying to see what Rusty was doing in the flower bed. He was behind the Sago Palm, which is very thick at the bottom, and I could hardly see him at all. A couple of minutes passed, and there came Rusty, walking slowly out between the white begonias. Such a determined step, his eyes looking straight at me through the breakfast room windows. (Those windows go from floor to ceiling so we had a clear view of one another.) He knew I was watching him and he never lost eye contact with me as he walked across the lawn and up onto the deck.

One step up to the deck and he sat there facing the breakfast room windows so I could see him. He had something in his mouth, and I moved closer to the window for a better look. A lizard. A big fat green lizard. Its head and two front legs were hanging out of one side of Rusty's mouth, its tail and two back legs hanging out of the other side. The body of the lizard was clamped between Rusty's jaws.

Wonderful. I had a mouthful of oatmeal as I'm watching all of this. I stopped chewing just as Rusty started to chew his little green snack. All the while, Rusty kept eye contact with me as he munched on the poor little thing. As if to say "Go ahead and cut my calories.... I'll find my own."

I left the breakfast room and went to the far end of the house... to my husband's computer room. He was working at the computer. I sat on the sofa in there with the rest of my oatmeal and told him what his cat was doing. He thought it was funny. He didn't see the grossness of it at all.

Men. They all stick together, no matter the species.