Autistic Cat

Several weeks, I blogged about our cat Francie. To make a long story short, she was found and adopted by DS2, who is now 29. He brought her home when she was a tiny kitten, truly too young to be weaned, when he was about 10 or 11 yrs old. For all the math prodigies out there, that makes Francie about 18 or 19 now.

You can't really tell she's elderly. She has always kept her figure youthful and trim. She has a little graying around her muzzle (do cats have muzzles?) -- but it's not easily noticed as she is a gray cat anyway. She had pneumonia when we got her, but once we nursed her to health, she hasn't been sick a day since.

Francie was never the primus cat in the household until about 8 years ago. When we got her, we already had a larger black cat named Jennifer. Jennifer was not unkind to Francie, but by rights she ate first and got first dibs on anything in the house. Cats seem to work these things out for themselves and the "new kid on the block" knows somehow to defer to the alpha cat.

Jennifer died 2 days after DS2 left for basic training -- 11 years ago. Francie was the sole cat for a month until I married DH, who had a very large and very dominant cat named Molly. Molly had always been an only child, and resented this scrap of a cat entering her kingdom. She growled and hissed and otherwise terrorized Francie. I vividly remember Francie crawling across the room to the food bowls on her belly.

Molly's demise came a few months after we moved into this house and Francie was Sole Cat for about 5 years, until Little One saved her allowance for a cat of her own. Daniel. Daniel is a pretty good sport and would love to be friends with Francie, but she is Elder Emeritus now and has no use for Daniel.

All these years, either due to her blindness, or her rank in the social system, Francie has been reluctant, make that refusing, to mix with the other animals, or anyone other than family. If she's on the bed and Dan hops up, she leaves. If she's on the stairs and Tucker barks, "Hey, let's play!!" she arches her back and hisses.

Friday night, a miracle happened. We don't know why. When it happened, every member of the family froze, at least until I ran for the camera. Words can't explain it -- but it happened. Here it is.