Sandpaper Tongue
When I was kid, I watched an episode of “My Cat From Hell” where the issue some cat owners were looking to solve with their cat was that he/she would not stop licking them. One of them described it as disgusting, and the other said it kept her up, which was a problem since she was training for the Olympics.
“How is that a cat from hell?” I asked. “What’s so bad about a cat licking you?”
“Have you ever felt a cat tongue?” My stepfather asked.
“No, I don’t like cats,” I said like every single cat-loving denier. “I only like dogs.”
“It feels like sandpaper.” He said. “You remember what it’s like to have it drug on your skin, now just imagine that over and over.”
I thought back to building my pinewood derby car, and the number of times my hands and fingers got in the way while sanding. It didn’t hurt, I didn’t bleed, but it was uncomfortable.
“Ouch,” I said, still not fully understanding what the owner’s problem was. My dog, Buddy, when he was alive, would begin licking faces when he got excited. Was it annoying sometimes? Sure. Did I ever want him to stop? Probably. But he was just showing his love and excitement, what part of an animal doing that is an animal from hell?
The scene in the show and the conversation has always stayed with me, like one of those memories you remember so vividly for no good reason. It came to my mind whenever I watched my childhood cats groom each other, but never did I ever sit and think about what a cat’s tongue felt like. I’d never seen a cat lick someone, so why would I?
When I brought in my first cat, Katze (cat-zuh), I thought of the scene of the show for a few days. I wondered if he would be a kisser, if he would be a lap cat, or if he would be like most cats I’d met and just go do his own thing. When I first met him, he was a mean little thing, swatting and hissing until the moment a can of food was brought out, and knowing nothing about cats at the time, I worried he’d be “from hell.”
He wasn’t, not even in the slightest. Rather than being from hell, he was a cat who lived through hell. He and one other kitten were the survivors of an entire litter, or my parents and I think, since they were the only two we found when my parent’s barn cat dropped him and his sister off. We’d seen her with more, but they were nowhere to be found around the hiding spot.
For the first month that I brought him in, all he would do was glare and run from everyone and everything, except food. If it wasn’t running, it was fighting. He was feral, his sister not so much, as she immediately accepted her new living place. Soon enough, I started to wake up in the mornings to find him in the bed. Then he would jump up next to me while I did work and stare, but he was not to be pet. I’d reach, he’d run away. Another month or so passed and he became the one who would reach to be pet, rolling onto his side before turning so his belly was in the air, legs stretched out as far out as he could.
Katze’s frightened by a lot. Loud noises, funny smelling foods, people that aren’t me, you name it and chances are, he’ll run from it. He’s always been carefully curious despite it all, sliding across the floor on his belly to investigate something new and hesitant to play with people, even me, and the sound of a pin dropping or someone looking over at him will cause him to dart. But three seconds later, he would be back to investigate.
He became a very sweet cat and is incredibly affectionate once he knows you. His favorite thing to do is hang out and be looked at, almost always following his rule of “observe, don’t touch.”
When I visited my parents, I’d watch the way he played with his sister (who became my sister’s cat). I watched him desperately try to play with my sister’s other two cats, one who doesn’t play at all and the other who shuts down any instances of fun. Even when hissed and swatted at, he never ran and was never scared. He’d walk away, then sneak back up on the other cats and pounce on them. When I returned home, I noticed he was bored and always looking for another cat. He was never a “play with people” kind of cat, preferring to swat toys around by himself.
So, when I moved out of my tiny trailer and into a house, I went to the shelter and got him a friend, a tabby cat named Athena. She was the only cat of twenty-something that had no records. No name, no age (but guessed to be around six months at the time), no idea where she came from, no idea if she was spayed, nothing. All they had was documentation of vaccines she’d been given when she arrived, which shocked the shelter because none of them had seen her before.
When I walked into the room of cats, she was the first to dance between my legs, meowing in a way that I had never heard a cat meow. It was more of a “Mur-eow-er,” which made me laugh a little.
I picked her up and held her. She purred, meowed, head-butted me, and proceeded to start licking my cheek. Something I had never seen or felt a cat do. The scene from the show played in my mind briefly, and I laughed. I could kind of see where the couple was coming from. But, surely this cat could hold her licker.
“You’re a weird cat,” I told her as she went to town on my cheek. “You’re coming with me.”
Athena is the complete opposite of Katze. Talkative, confident in just about everything she does, loves everyone and everything, always seeking attention, and is the sweetest cat I have ever met. On day one, she and Katze clicked. He hid, observing her from afar, nervous about the new roommate. She did not care and pounced on him. He ran, she chased, he turned and pounced, she ran, he chased, and it’s been like that every day since.
She came home and quickly established that she was in charge, by forcing Katze and me into a daily routine. It starts anywhere between 5 am to 8 am, with her walking up and down my back as I’m asleep. She finds every knot and walks circles on it. It wakes me up initially, but her free massage puts me back to sleep.
Realizing walking on me won’t work, she gets under the covers in the most obnoxious way possible. Instead of just going under as Katze does, Athena does it as loudly, pushy, and with as many steps as possible, forcing her way under the cover from where my hair pokes out from underneath the blanket. Some days, if I’m unlucky, I get claws in my head and forehead as she mistakes my hair for tassels on a toy and tries to play.
If she can’t get under, she starts crying and pawing at the blanket, prompting me to lift it so she can crawl under. That’s when the sandpaper is brought out.
She lays next to me, as close as she can get to my arms and face as she can get. I pet her so she stays laid down, hoping that she’ll let me sleep an hour longer. Athena must know this is my plan because she waits until I’m just starting to fall back asleep.
Then, it’s a small lick on my hand or arm. One, very small lick. I almost don’t feel it. Then another. And another.
“Athena, go bother Katze. I’m trying to sleep,” I tell her as if Katze is not trying to wake me up by walking around the entire bed, occasionally meowing.
Then she hits me with it. I feel the full weight of the sandpaper pressed onto my hand and drug across once. Twice. Three times. Four. I move my hand. She gets closer and keeps licking. I move it further away or under me. She moves to my arm and starts licking. I adjust my arm, she licks my elbow. I lay my arms underneath me, putting them to sleep, but keeping them away from the sliver of sandpaper.
On her stomach and with her claws in the bed, she pulls herself close to my face, her whiskers tickling my chin and cheek. I turn my head away to delay the inevitable. She crawls over my body. I move my head back, she crawls back over me. I look at her, she looks at me.
“Mur,” she says before headbutting me. Without missing a beat, I feel the paper drag across my chin, my cheek, and my forehead. She licks my nose before nibbling the right nostril. She licks my upper lip, and my eyebrow, nibbles my eyebrow, and then goes back to licking whatever she can, even the hair that sits in her way. “Mur-eowr,” she adds.
I sigh. It’s 9:30 am. I should be getting up anyway.
I sit up and she runs to the end of the bed, looking at me with her tail swishing in the air and a face full of excitement.
“Mur.” She says.
“Yes love, I hear you.”
“Mur-eow-er,” she adds.
“Yes, one second, I will feed you,” I tell her, rubbing my eyes and trying to wake up. Anything before noon is too early.
I’m taking too long, and Katze’s long, high-pitched yell of a meow follows the trills and chirps of Athena. He stares at me, eyes telling me to hurry the hell up.
And that’s what I do. I hurry up and feed them before they burn the house down, and since I’m not going back to sleep, just start my day. They finish eating and run to the bed so they can sleep while looking out the window. I know that when I get back home from work, Katze will stand across the room and give me a meow and Athena’s going to dance around my legs, waiting for me to pick her up so she can lick my face and hands. I don’t pull away from her, accepting that she is going to lick me and I just have to take it.
I won’t act like it isn’t uncomfortable. It is. Is it a cat from hell? Not even in the slightest. That’s just who Athena is and what she does. I look forward to that small piece of sandpaper being dragged across my cheek to wake me up and greet me at the door.
