August cat: Kika

Our last Cat of the Month was advertised as one of a pair, so I thought I might be good and let you meet the other one sooner rather than later.

Kika. Kika the Sidekick.

Kika was Raquel’s other cat, come to stay with me to wait our her quarantine before moving to Cambridge. A very quiet, reserved cat. A sort of mottled tabby, short hair, short tail.
Kika was another scardy-cat, except when it came to jumping out of windows. Raquel lived on the fourth floor of her building, and Kika’s favorite thing was to hang out on the window-ledge. It would have been nice to have a balcony, or a small terrace, but what can you afford on a grad student salary? Anyway, Kika hung out out there, always looking down, wondering how to get down, putting a paw out and testing whether it was really too far to the next ledge.
One day she just jumped.
It wasn’t a fall. Not an accident. Raquel was quite sure of that.
Kika was pretty much ok, after landing in the bushes in the courtyard. She did tear tendons in both back feet, however, and walked flat-footed forevermore. Very strange-looking, but she wasn’t in pain as far as anyone could tell.

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I lived on the ground floor. No fabulous jumping down from my place, but then I never gave Kika and Fofa the chance. No way was I going to lose her cats!
Being a fraidycat, Kika stayed in the bathroom for weeks. She lost so much weight I had to feed her in there, because she wouldn’t brave the presence of Pandemonium to go eat in the kitchen. She had her own cat tree in there (thank goodness I had a spacious bathroom in those days) to remind her of home. She did have to suffer the comings and goings of the other cats, however. I wasn’t going to get a second litterbox. Pan spent time in there just out of curiosity. Fofa spent time there so she could still be Top Cat versus somebody.

The bathtub had this tile front that made a clean, straight edge with the floor, and spared my cleaning under & behind the tub. Naturally there was an access panel so you could get at any plumbing problems. It must have been during one of their chasing sessions that a solid cat rump slammed into this hatch, popping it open, because from that day on Kika learned that she could pry it open with a paw and hide out under the bathtub all day long. It never did close properly after that.

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