Could I have come up with a ruder title?
(Probably not... I'm not really that creative a writer.)
100 times out of 100, I would classify myself as a dog person, but as I told my best friend years ago, "I would settle for an outgoing cat." And, in Pescia, I finally met one. And then I saw cats everywhere.
This is Schatz, and he was my little buddy for a week. Social, ever so fluffy, but still all cat. We would sit on the patio in the sun; I sipped wine while he had his head scratched. He wrinkled his nose at me when my hands reeked of aromatics from cooking (more on that later) and played aloof and disinterested the evenings after days away. "I'm just standing right next to you pointedly ignoring you. Because I don't care." That little stinker had my heart.
I convinced myself I was a secret cat whisperer. Schatz would come as if I'd conjured him, follow me around the property, roll over to have me scratch his belly while his whole body hummed in contentment.
Other cats I encountered seemed not to have yet received the memo of my skillset. And it seems I am not actually a cat lady so much as a one cat lady. Mein Schatzi.
