I have three very affectionate and sweet cats who are attached to me. And then there’s Haedrig, a. k. a. Asshole. Yeah, I just changed his name to Asshole.
I adopted Haedrig at a cat shelter when he was two years old—thanks to a narcissistic sociopath frenemy who picked him. Of course I couldn’t say no to a cat. If I hadn’t been under her influence, Haedrig would still be in that cat shelter, because he has a… difficult … personality. He doesn’t bond with humans. Sure, he can be cuddly, though it took him years to reach a stage of letting me pet him for more than a minute before scratching me or at least lunging at me. Occasionally he still does that.
You might think he simply doesn’t trust humans. True, but guess what: I’m the one who has no reason to trust him, not the other way around. He has repeatedly proved himself untrustworthy.
On the evening of February 24, I opened the sliding door and left it open, as I headed for the laundry room (which is only accessible from the back yard). I have a cat fence in the backyard, and my indoor cat Haedrig is the only one who’s never climbed the tree in the back yard to get out of the overpriced cat fence. (Do I regret not hiring someone to custom build a huge catio instead of getting this cat fence? Absolutely!) Even with the cat fence, I don’t regularly allow Haedrig in the backyard—sometimes he gets out through the kitchen window if I leave it open because another cat is sitting on the windowsill. Until this week, I’ve figured it’s okay if Haedrig is inside the cat fence.
After I left that sliding glass door open and did my laundry chores, I didn’t see Haedrig in the backyard, not for a second. I would’ve expected to at least see him slipping under the low deck, but no. Inside, I closed the door … and forgot the possibility that Haedrig might be outdoors.
The next morning, I woke at 7 am and realized that I hadn’t seen Haedrig all night and didn’t see him now. He always spends the night at the foot of the bed. Alarm bells sounded in my head: I remembered leaving the glass door open for a few minutes. Even one minute is enough for him to sneak out, and he’s quiet and fast. I concluded that he was in the backyard, and I opened the kitchen window. I went outside… and not only didn’t see him but also had a strange sense that he wasn’t in the backyard.
I reported him missing on the HomeAgain website (he’s microchipped) and on the Nextdoor app.
The following day, I spotted Haedrig: on the front porch! Of course, when I opened the front door, he ran away. If I’m standing and holding a door open for him, he runs away, unlike any other cat I’ve ever met, and I’ve lived with cats all my life. I caught another glimpse of him, dashing under my car in the driveway. Uncomfortable with doing this, I propped the screen door open and left the front door open… for twenty minutes. I figured that if I wasn’t close to the door, he’d get indoors. But he didn’t. So I continued leaving the kitchen window open, as long as I was at home and it was daylight.
Yesterday he finally came in through the kitchen window, and I watched as he scurried away through the living room. I figured he was headed upstairs (he was) and I dashed to the kitchen, where I shut the kitchen window. When I reached the top of the stairs—and expected to see him curled on the foot of the bed or slipping under the bed—instead I saw him just past the threshold of the sewing room. We made eye contact, and he turned around and dashed for the sewing room closet… where I’d left the panel to the crawl space open so that Virginia could come in and out of the crawl space without waking me. (She’s very vocal.)
Haedrig entered the crawl space.
I used my phone flashlight to peer into the crawl space and couldn’t see him… and remembered that somehow Virginia can access that crawl space from outdoors. I’ve told myself she has magic powers. But it turns out that the crawl space has an exit to the outdoors somewhere, and cats can use it to get in and out, and Haedrig the cat from hell figured out Virginia’s trick. This utterly infuriated me: he had actually been inside the house… and yet he managed to get back outside! This is when I renamed him Asshole.
Last night, I intended to set up cat traps with canned tuna as bait… but I figured if the kitchen window was open and the other cats got outdoors, I might catch one of them. Plus last time I used a cat trap, I caught a cute baby possum. Besides, Haedrig ate in the kitchen before running up to the crawl space, so he wasn’t as hungry as he could be. I decided to put off the traps for one night: the kitchen window remained closed all night, and I opened it and the gate to the cat fence this morning.
I was upstairs when I heard a meow. I exchanged a startled look with my cat Gabriel, who also heard it. That meow didn’t sound like anyone except… Haedrig. I’d not only closed off the closet panel leading to the crawl space, but I’d also closed the sewing room door. (Normally it’s wide open, but thanks to Haedrig, I’m keeping that door closed until I can find a door for the closet. This house is quirky.)
I pushed aside the panel to the crawl space—and sure enough, I saw Haedrig. I descended the steps and closed the kitchen window and the back gate. Back upstairs, I saw him out of the crawl space, greeting Gabriel… and he saw me and dashed back into the crawl space, further proving that Asshole is the perfect name for him.
My new strategy: keep the kitchen window closed and the crawl space panel open so that he can only enter that way. As soon as I’m between him and the crawl space panel, I put the panel back, put craft supply bins in front of it, and close the sewing room door. Also, if he’s not in the house by sunset, I’m setting those cat traps.
Why has this situation been so infuriating? Well, I’m a cat person—really, I am. As I mentioned, my other three cats are sweet and affectionate. They come back inside happily, purring at me and plopping in my lap. They don’t avoid me.
Not so Haedrig. I’ve taken care of him since 2015, no thanks from him. He’s a bit like that narcissistic sociopath who chose him: an arrogant, self-entitled, and remarkably ungrateful mooch. At least he has the excuse of not being human, but still. If he’s going to eat cat food in this house, he’d better stay in this house and not avoid me, the person who feeds him and takes him to the vet. Respect and acceptance are needs, not luxuries, and this asshole deprives me of both, just like… a narcissist or a narcissistic sociopath. I finally have no toxic people in my life. It’s not the sort of behavior I’ve ever previously experienced with a cat.
After adopting him and discovering that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me, I still felt it was my responsibility to give him a home… and yet sometimes, such as today, I wish I hadn’t adopted him in the first place. If it weren’t for that narcissistic sociopath, I would have allowed a shelter cat to choose me.
Tags: annoying people, bad cat, cats, home, toxic people
S. E. Wigget 