Introducing The Pets: Miss T

Miss T is the only one of our pets with her own voice. We can tell you what Pancho or Billy said (they’re boys of few words), but Miss T simply speaks. There is no “Miss T says” to introduce her remarks. She will say something like, “It is simply too cold for a delicate and refined kitteh like myself to go outside. Oh no, dear, absolutely not.” She says this in a gentle, refined voice with a Southern accent, not unlike the voice of the character Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Miss T herself has always depended on “the kindness of strangers.” Her voice is so well known that even Shawn, a former co-worker who has never actually met Miss T, can do an imitation of it.

In fact, when we found Miss T, or Misty as she was then, at the cat rescue site, there was a sign on her cage that said she “talked.” I think they meant the little noises she makes that are definitely not meows—more like “eh eh eh” or “heh heh heh.” I don’t think the rescue people knew about the Blanche voice. If they did, government scientists would be surrounding our house with the intent of taking her for their own nefarious purposes.

I said earlier that Pancho follows Sheila around like an Airstream trailer. Miss T follows me like a four-footed member of the paparazzi. No one else will do. I am to be accompanied while on trips to the bathroom, getting dressed, eating meals, taking out the garbage, sitting at the computer, napping, and by all means going to bed at night. If she were allowed out further than the back yard, she would have her own little kitteh motorcycle, fitted out with flash camera, with which to follow me down the street.

She ignores but is not afraid of Pancho, and to Billy she is as the Peanuts character Lucy to poor Charlie Brown. Billy would love nothing more than friendship and trust. Six years into their relationship, he is still convinced that one of these days….but Miss T will have none of him, and when he looks at her cross-eyed he receives an automatic and almost disinterested paw whap. She will take over a cat bed just because she thinks he might want it. There are two food dishes, but the one Billy is eating from is the one she demands, and she has him cowed. Occasionally he gets mad and chases her into the bedroom, always and forever forgetting that he will jump on top of the bed and she will have skittered safely under it, just like a scene with Charlie Brown believing that this time Lucy will really hold the football while he kicks it.

There is no other way to say it: Miss T is a bitch. I know that, but I am enthralled by four white paws, complete devotion, and the voice of Blanche DuBois.