Long before Olive came along, two cats joined our family. The first was Arwen, a Russian blue that Ethan picked out. She was soon followed by CiCi, a white and gray scamp with an astonishing capacity for dreaming up mischief.
In truth, I never wanted a cat at all, but my two children wore me down with their relentless pleading. We'd all suffered a staggering blow when Bill and I divorced, and I wanted to give them a little joy as we embarked on our new life in a single-parent household. Arwen and CiCi fulfilled every misgiving that had fueled my arguments against owning a cat, and they had additional vices I'd never even imagined. Even so, Arwen quickly stole my heart, but that is another story.
CiCi came to us as a baby whom I could hold in one hand. Although she was impossibly cute, she was all claws and teeth, and much of my affection ebbed away each time she drew blood in the fight to keep stolen food, or used her claws to communicate her desire to be left alone.
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| Baby CiCi and Allyson |
Orphaned as a newborn, CiCi has been a talented scavenger from the start. We soon learned there is virtually nothing she won't eat; for example, she licks out empty cans of tomato paste the moment I set them on the counter. She shares my love of carbohydrates but has an advantage over me in that she can literally sniff out tortillas and loaves of bread within seconds. For that reason, we can never leave grocery bags unguarded, or else we will find holes in the wrapper and hunks of bread missing, or a perfect half moon cut out of a stack of tortillas. But her favorite food is anything she can fish out of the toaster, such as my beloved pancakes.
