Little Miss Monklet

I promised a few days ago to write more about my Monklet (the best cat EVER), so here I go. We were only together for a year, and shortly after we separated she tragically sacrificed herself to some coyotes, probably because she missed me so much.

(Or because she greatly overestimated her position in the food chain, due to the fact that she was queen of the jungle in our three-bedroom apartment where the cloth mice never fought back.)

In any case, we were the best of friends during my senior year of college. She sipped the milk from my cereal bowl, made her bed amongst the sweaters in my closet and once climbed up my bare leg when I wouldn't pick her up after getting out of the shower (we weren't best friends for awhile after that).

I must admit that Monklet was a little rough around the edges. Her fur didn't quite lie flat; she was a bit unladylike at times; and she liked to "nurse" on your fingers, which grossed out my roommates, but I thought was kind of cute. (I mean, have some pity! The poor darling was abandoned by her mother and found in a heating vent as a kitten!)

One time she fell asleep with her tongue sticking out, and when she woke up she was all groggy and disoriented. I thought for sure she had suffered some kind of brain damage, but after a few minutes she put her tongue back in her mouth and was fine. That was just Monklet.

One of my funniest memories is when she got a plastic bag stuck on her tail and thought she was being hunted. I have never seen an animal run so fast in my life! There was no way to catch her. The bag finally came off when she ran under a dresser in my friend's room to hide. Needless to say, she didn't come out for several hours.

On another occasion, when she was again running through the house at lightning speed, she ran right across a pizza that was sitting on our coffee table. She never even noticed, but you could see her little paw prints in the cheese. Gross, I know.

Monklet was a hit with my family when I took her home for Christmas until she climbed up the drapes in the living room, clawed the back of the dining room chairs and attacked the Christmas tree. Still, my brother enjoyed wrestling her with an oven mitt. That was fun for hours.

In case you're wondering where the name "Monklet" came from, she was named after Sis. When Sis was a toddler, she used to climb all over everything, just like a little monkey. Mom nicknamed her "Baby Monklet." My Monklet had similar tendencies, so the name just fit.

Come to think of it, Sis also had the nickname "Tiny Tyrant." I guess she and Monklet had more in common than I realized.