Women’s Secrets: 2

My wife's female cat Pronia undoubtedly has the impression that it is human. I tend to believe her, because she actually speaks in a fashion, she has probably read the Bill of Rights and she certainly behaves just like a woman.

Her speaking takes the form of regulating the tone of her meowing to convey different meanings and she is so successful at this that we all understand what she says without the slightest difficulty.

Take this morning for example. It is cold and it is raining and my wife and I snuggled in bed for a while longer than usual, enjoying the sound of the rain pelting our window. When we finally came out of our bedroom, Pronia was waiting outside the door and she straight away goes and rubs herself against my wife's legs.

“You slept late again my sweet baaaaaaad girl…..” she smiles, purring at my wife.

She looks at me with a hostility that could hardly be called veiled.

“Good morning to you too, you Lazy Slop. What time is this to get up? Have you no concern for others? Don't you know that I want my breakfast on time? Why are you keeping my Angel Girl in bed, you lecherous animal?”

Though my wife loves her cat, I find it to be a singularly disagreeable one. I think it is the cat's eye, the way she looks at me at times that creates the dislike in me. Rarely have I encountered a cat with a more speaking eye.

My wife gives her breakfast and tells me not to let Pronia out into the rain. But while my wife does the things women do at their dressing table, Pronia comes over to me.

“Come on, Big Boy, open up. I want to go out.”

I ignore her and go to my computer to see if I have any messages. No, there is no chance of peace.

“Listen Slop, how many times do I have to tell you, I want to go out. So come on! Get off your fat ass and open the goddamn door!”

I am only a weak simple man and can only take so much abuse, so I go to open the door and she follows.

“About time, you Moron, how many times do I have to tell you before you move?”

I open the door and she rashes out, yelps in surprise and horror and then turns around and rushes right back in again.

“Brrrrrrr…… It's pouring freezing rain out there! Holly Mother, were you born without any brains You Imbecile? Can't you see that it’s raining and that it’s freezing outside? Why did you let me go out in that mess? Jeeeeesus, I shall never know what my Angel Girl ever saw in you.”

For the sake of Angel Girl I try to keep a brave face before the world, but inwardly I burn with shame at being bullied by a cat and with agony at the injustice of it all. I try to go back to my computer.

“Where are you going, Stupid? I still want to go outside. You were too dense to stop me from going out into the freezing cold and the rain from the front door, but the kitchen door is always nice. Come and open that one for me.”

I refuse to badge.

“"I know what's the matter with you," she said. "My Angel Girl’s been feeding you meat again and you have become ornery. Open the f***ng door!"

She looks at me with that face which by all laws of nature should be shuffled and dealt again, and she never blinks. Until I met Pronia I always believed that there is good in all of us, but having experienced her female feline venom, I am beginning to have second thoughts.

And I cannot help myself, as the generous blood of the De Greeks boils over. I go to the kitchen and she follows, rubbing herself impatiently against my leg as I walk towards the back door. I open the door and as she rushes out in her usual impatient fashion, I “accidentally” step on tail. She lets out a scream and catapults herself out into the freezing rain, only she ignores it this time and simply goes round and round chasing her tail. I smile and shut the door on her, slowly walking back to the computer.

A few minutes later she is sitting outside the window sill getting drenched, gazing at me with a hurt expression. She looks at me with her head to one side, like a Cardinal might look at a favorite Bishop who has suddenly decided to begin practicing Voodoo. Caesar being stabbed by Brutus, could scarcely have looked more shocked than Pronia.

“Come on, Big Boy, can’t you take a joke? Let bygones be bygones. Let Time the Great Healer heal the wounds and we shall start all over again. Purrrrrleeeeease open the window and let me in. I promise I’ll be good.

But I know her only too well by now. Time might soften the memory of what I have done to her, might lessen the sharp agony of it; but nothing could remove it altogether and I know the time shall come when she shall have her revenge.

I have seen her in action, prowling about the neighborhood like a tigress seeking her first lunch in a week, terrorizing all and sundry and putting harmless dogs in fear of their lives and then blaming them for attacking her.

I know her ways by now. Whenever a vase is broken I know that she did it by the way she meets my accusing eye. She appears to be whistling indifferently and assumes that particularly innocent posture that comes only from a thoroughly guilty conscience. Whenever she is caught at something criminal and is rebuked, she casts a glance at me in which reproof and pain are equally mingled expressions and then she takes on the appearance of a martyr at the stake. But not just any martyr at the stake. A martyr who is cooperating fully with her persecutor and who would not think for a moment of spoiling the proceedings by appearing to object to them in any way.

Eventually I take pity on her and let her in out of the rain, but it would be optimism run mad to expect Pronia to abstain from speech

“Wait till I tell the RSPCA on you, you Abuser” she says.

Dimitris Mita

De Greek