Like a tiger ready to lunge, she’s crouched down on the edge of the sofa, her enormous owl-like eyes fixed on the feather at the end of the toy I’m dangling in front of her. I swing the feather in a full circle once, twice. On the third swing, she does it—a full somersault in the air—landing triumphantly with the feather in her mouth. We cheer.
Dani mastered that trick when she was just six weeks old. As a kitten, she was a daredevil, more athletic than any cat we’d ever seen. She ran across curtain rods, jumping from window to window. She hunted us, hiding behind furniture and launching herself in the air, wrapping her tiny paws around an arm or a leg.
Dani when I first brought her home
Dani came into the world with the odds stacked against her. She was only four weeks old when her mother was struck and killed by a car. A cat-rescuer friend discovered her and her brother not far from their mother’s body. At the time, he had more orphaned kittens than he could handle, so he asked me to take Dani and her brother. They were feral but within the kitten socialization window, which meant they should’ve been easy to tame. I agreed to take them, but Dani’s brother had already passed away when I arrived to pick them up. He had an upper respiratory infection, but, fortunately, Dani didn’t get it.
Young kittens die if they become too cold. I put Dani in a bathroom next to our furnace because it was warmer than the rest of the house. I covered the floor with thick blankets and put a heating pad in a corner. I kept still and talked to her sweetly, which seemed to calm her, but she’d hiss and growl if I reached out to touch her or brought her gruel, which is kitten formula mixed with wet food. I won her over—sort of—by playing with her. Eventually, she let me touch her without making me bleed but made it clear that she didn’t enjoy it.
Dani differed from any other kitten we had ever known. She never purred and rarely meowed. She was a loner and kept her distance from our other cats, watching them curiously as they groomed each other and napped in the warm sunlight streaming in through the windows.
Dani when she was about six months old
Bug,” as I called her, could also be a freaking handful. She hated strangers, which included our grown children. She’d bite and scratch them whenever they visited and tried to pet her. She loved my husband and me but could only tolerate our presence for a short time. When she had enough of us, she’d sink her tiny razor-like teeth into our flesh or slice us with her talons, which she also used to shred the sofa, the drapes, and the casing around the doors and windows.
I soon realized that giving Dani away wasn’t an option. I loved her—and, in her own way, I knew she loved me, too—and I needed to protect her from what might happen if she was adopted. My friend Ellen belongs to a cat-rescue group. When Dani was four months old, Ellen told me about a nice family that wanted to adopt a kitten. “Can they have yours?” she asked.
I laughed. “No. They’ll bring her back after she scratches the shit out of them.” Then I had a terrible thought. What if they didn’t bring her back but gave her away instead? She could eventually wind up at the pound, where she’d definitely be euthanized. To keep that from ever happening, I let her stay with us.
Taking Dani to the vet was, and still is, an exhausting experience. If she spots the cat carrier ahead of time, she’ll hide inside furniture or in a place so high that we need a ladder to reach her. I’ve learned to put her in a small bathroom an hour or so before an appointment. She yowls the whole time she’s in there, but it’s the only way I can get her. When it’s time to leave, I creep into the bathroom and put the carrier on the counter against the wall, so it stays put. Then—while wearing gloves—I quickly pick her up, push her inside, and close it.
Once we get there, she goes all-out feral. She grabs the bars in the front of the carrier and shakes them like a gorilla in a zoo. Growling, she lunges at anyone who approaches the carrier. Because she’s so scary, we don’t have to sit in the waiting room. We are escorted directly to an examination room instead. The staff is afraid of her. I think the vet might be, too.
When I took one of our other cats (also a rescue) to a vet appointment, I reminded the staff that he’s skittish and can be difficult to handle. “At least it’s not Dani,” a vet tech remarked, and we all laughed. My girl is legendary.
As an adult, Dani is large, strong, and wickedly smart. She’s too big and heavy now to somersault or run across curtain rods, but she gets her thrills by running up and down the stairs, taking three or four at a time. We buy her cat toys to keep her occupied, but they don’t last long. We gave one that looked like a cardinal. Within minutes, Dani had ripped off its wings and sliced it open, pulling out its squeaker with her teeth. RIP, little bird.
I had hoped Dani would become more affectionate in time, but this hasn’t happened, although she doesn’t cut us as much as she used to (she whacks us hard with her paw instead). She still hates to be held and will only let us pet her if she’s in a good mood—and, even then, we can only pet her head. If we want to pet her body, we have to do it quickly and flee before she lifts a paw.
We have theories about why Dani’s so wild. She might not be a typical feline. Her mother was a gray tabby, but her father may have been an early-generation Bengal or a Savannah, a mini-leopard that’s larger and stronger than a housecat. Dani has spots on her belly like they do. Dani may have come from a long line of feral cats, which would explain why I wasn’t able to fully tame her. Or maybe Dani, like some people, is simply unaffectionate and easily pissed off.
But it really doesn’t matter why Dani is the way she is. I love her regardless. My girl is fierce, a true survivor. She’s also happy. When she dashes across the top of our sectional sofa, flexing the muscles in her powerful legs (and stopping occasionally to crack the back of our heads), I see the glee in her eyes. And when she presses her warm body against mine in bed at night, I relish her contentedness. Just as she appreciates my acceptance of her wildness, I appreciate her presence in my life. Dani’s happiness is mine, and mine is hers.
My girl today