It's pouring here. Heavy rain, high winds, temperature slowly dropping. On nights like this, I look at my cat and think about how lucky she is to be warm and safe. All of my pets have been rescued animals. I guess it's instinctive by now to think of the alternative.

I've also been reading Think Like a Cat by one Pam Johnson-Bennett. She is apparently a renowned feline behaviorist. I have to confess that I have a hard time saying "feline behaviorist" with a straight face. But she's very cool. Check out her website.

Cricket and I have been together for nine and a half years. She's the first cat I've ever had, so I've had to sort of wing it with the parenting. She's a little tortoise-shell, black and gold, with a prickly temper and a short fuse. She was offered to me after another girl turned her down, saying they had a personality conflict. When I first met Cricket, she put one paw on each side of my neck and hugged me. I never got along well with the other girl either. I figured Cricket and I were suited for each other.

Yeah, shut up. I heard that.

She had an awful temper as a young cat. I would leave her for a weekend to go to a pool tournament and she would trash the house. I would come home to find plants knocked over and long streamers of toilet paper everywhere. She would sulk when I got home, in case I hadn't gotten the message.

She's mellowed a bit with age and city life. She's wiser and quieter. But her behavior has been strange since I brought her home after New Year's, which I spent in California and she spent in a cat hotel. She's been clingy and distracting, clawing repeatedly at the metal file cabinets and racing ahead of me when I go near the kitchen. She's not pulling this behavior because she likes to piss me off. She's trying to tell me something.

Which is where Ms. Hyphenated Feline Behaviorist comes in. I did some thinking like a cat and realized that Cricket is probably screaming bored and heading for depressed. How did it come to pass that I stopped playing with my cat? And why hasn't she had a psychotic break and attacked me? Man. I'm a lousy mom.

I've started playing with her again (carefully; she's aggressive with the claws). I'll go to Petco and get an interactive toy to keep her from shredding my hands. I'll also get her a cat tree, which may qualify me as a Crazy Cat Lady but beats hell out of Lousy Mom.

I gave her some catnip tonight and she's totally stoned. Heh. My little pocket panther.