It was all started with a trip to the Pet Store. While in the cat section, my girlfriend came across the sweetest cat of all time. It was friendly, snuggly, and even fell asleep on the lap of her friend. It was love at first sight. Of course, she couldn’t resist the sweet cat, so she purchased him and named him “Stout.” When Stout was brought home and released into his new environment, he was still quite mellow. This would soon change. Once Stout got acquainted with his environment, his personality changed. The inner hunter inside decided to come on out. Things would never be the same.
As night fell, the small panther darted from one corner of the house to the other. He would then disappear, to be found under the couch, behind plants, or above you on the mantle or bookshelf. Whenever you noticed where Stout was, it was often too late. He was already attacking your ankles or something close to you. If you are lucky, he may just sprint past you. But chances of that are unlikely. You see, Stout likes attention. A lot of attention. In order to mellow him back to normal, you have to spend some time with him and his favorite toys.
At one point, I believed that I had gained the trust of the feline. He loved it whenever I would pet him. However, if you weren’t petting him like how he wanted, out came the claws and the teeth. He was playing around, of course, but whenever you are petting a sweet cat, you are not expecting to be treated like his favorite catnip toy. I quickly found out the proper way of petting stout and for how long. I liked playing around and keeping his hunting skills up to par, but not on a constant basis.
Then came the meows. Once Stout got comfortable with us, he would meow orders at us. Meow. He wants food. Meow. He wants to be picked up and held like a baby. Meow. He wants to play. We have learned how to differentiate his many meows through trial and error. Stout helped us out with his purrs whenever we were doing something right. If we did something wrong, however, out came the claws. Every now and then, we meow back, but he glares at us whenever we do so.
The worst thing to do with Stout is to close the door with him on the other side. Whenever he faces a closed door, the meows start up at a continuous rate. While he meows, he starts to paw continuously at the door. We figured the best thing to do would be to ignore him. No. After a minute or two with a closed door, Stout becomes frustrated and then he head butts the door. I open the door and see the cat recovering. He looks up and sees that the head butt was super effective.
Everyone says that cats are easy to raise because they are very independent. We definitely thought that was the case with Stout when we first met him. But how wrong we were. How wrong we were.
