Mistake Tiny for a cat. Lose a hand.

My buddy Tiny* is awesome. You could call her my roommate’s cat, but you would be wrong. You would be right in that my roommate does all the work of keeping her alive, which is the work of keeping a cat alive. And you would be right in that Tiny takes the shape of a cat. But she is not in fact a cat. Do not try to introduce Tiny to your cat. She will not fuck with your cat. She may in fact fuck your cat up, which will be entirely on you, because I clearly warned you just a second ago that she is not a cat.

Tiny came to live in our apartment after our roommate (her owner) found her in the alley behind her regular tattoo shop. She trotted out from behind a dumpster and calmly stated that she was our newest and smallest living companion. My roommate complied. Tiny has very powerful opinions.

An example: I am allergic to cats. On my allergy test the “cat” bump was the largest and nastiest bump, twice as large as any other bump. I hate cats. I have hated cats my whole life. I grew up next to a house with an incredibly fat and disgusting and mean orange cat, who shall remain nameless, but who is responsible for some scars that I probably still have and could probably show you. I really hate cats. But Tiny shows up and two days later she’s riding on my shoulders in the kitchen while I’m making an omlette. It was crazy adorable.

This adorableness proves two things: 1) the power of Tiny is mighty and 2) she’s not a cat.

My roommate recently mentioned that she thinks Tiny picked up a lot from rats while living in the alley. This brought to mind a Jungle Book montage set to a “Bare Necessities of Life: The Gritty City Remix” in which Tiny rides down a sewer on the belly of a fat rat named Balloo while he drops some wisdom on her in the voice and lyrical quality of Ja Rule. I’d buy it — by which I mean both purchase and believe. Did I tell you that once my roommate brought her to a “cat party” and none of her supposedly fellow cats would come out of hiding until she left? She was clearly too much for them. Knowledge terrifies.

It’s true that she has much more in common with rats — scavenging, scrappy little things with a strong sense of tribe and intimate knowledge of misunderstanding. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like rats. I like that Tiny comes in fuzzy, adorable, self cleaning packaging, with this particular sense of self. This is what I like best about her. This is what I relate to most — that we are not the points that have been made out of us.

Now you’re probably thinking I have a lot more to say because that last sentence was semi-dramatic and seemed like a solid transition. I don’t. That’s all I have to say. Tiny is often mistaken for cuddlier than she is — taking on the stories of all the cuddliness that has come before her. She does not identify with this cuddliness. Probably a good thing to be aware of is all (if you like your hands). I relate to that a little is all.

That’s all.

*My roommate named her Sange, but I call her Tiny because that is what she is. I was going to call her Cat, but that seemed cliche and she just really wasn’t having it.