Scaredy-Cat

Our youngest pet, Fred, is a most satisfactory cat. She’s got spunk. She has a wicked sense of humor—or at least she does things that make me laugh, like settling next to one of the other cats while they’re napping, waiting until they’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, and then hauling off and clocking them. She’s sweet and purry at night, and a lap cat during the winter. She’s a chatterbox who’ll carry on entire conversations at the drop of the hat. She’s photogenic. She is a top-notch squirrel monitor at the back windows. And best of all, she always seems grateful to be living here.

As I said, most satisfactory.

However, she’s the archetypal scaredy-cat. The slightest disturbance and she’s off like a shot to hide somewhere. If she can’t hide beneath the den sofa, she’ll cower beneath the bed upstairs, or huddle beneath the staircase in the basement, shivering, until I go down there to find her. I’ll point a flashlight in her direction and see two tiny, frightened headlights for eyes shining back at me.

Fred is frightened of the following:

- Thunderstorms. The slightest bass roll in the distance will have her scurrying for the safety of a dark enclosure, from which she won’t emerge until two or three hours after the storm has passed.

- Rain. Because it accompanies thunderstorms, I imagine.

- Trucks. Because they sound like thunder.

- Construction. When our neighbor had a new driveway poured, poor Fred spent the entire day in the basement.

- The vacuum.

- The sound of the door opening to the closet where we store the vacuum.

- The doorbell. I don’t really know what the doorbell has ever done to her, but apparently they have a dicey relationship.

- People who enter the house after they ring the doorbell. If we have a party, Fred will stay upstairs all evening with big, alarmed eyes. Then halfway through the party she’ll decide to venture down, see what’s happening, and will discover that everyone pays her so much attention that she sticks around and looks adorable so people will fawn over her. Then we have to repeat the entire process for the next party.

- Branches falling from the trees.

- Raccoons.

- The sound of the smoke detector going off.

- When I turn on the vent fan over the stove. Because usually it’s a hasty precursor to the smoke detector going off.

- The sound of people crunching through leaves on the deck.

In some ways, Fred’s little phobia make it easier to deal with her. She’s the only cat I will take outdoors, accompanied, because I know that if she gets out of hand, all I have to do is stomp on the deck a few times or brandish a broom and there she is, scurrying back to the back door and cowering to be let in. In others, it’s a little bothersome. Finding her after a scare can be a pain, since she has a tendency to find the most out-of-the-way places in the house. We’ve taken to trying to anticipate the frightening moments and to put her beneath the blankets on our bed, where she feels safe, stays warm, and where we can find her easily.

I keep hoping she’ll outgrow some of her fears. So far, though, we’ve just become accustomed to the sight of a brown and black fuzzy streak zooming by.