For several years before and during my junior high school days, I had a long-haired white cat that I had named Ruffles. It may have been because her hair was always so matted that it appeared she had ridges. Every summer we rented a cabin on Torch Lake in Michigan, near the town of the same name. (As an aside, it was also near the town of Norwood. When it came time to name the street my parents live on in Midland, since their house sits on a small hill I came up with the name Knollwood Court.) Ruffles went to the lake with us each year and would even go down to the beach below the cabin with us. She would get thirsty and decide to get a drink of water from the lake. But rather than bend over and drink like a normal cat, she would actually wade out into the lake until it was deep enough to get a drink without bending over.
Years ago, when I was married, my sister came to visit us and ended up buying me a kitten from The Wharf in Ventura. I named him Kearsarge, after a ghost of a town in the Upper Peninsula near Michigan Tech, although I do not recall why I did this. In the morning, Kearsarge would sit on the edge of the bathtub while I showered, playing with the drops of water hitting the shower curtain. Very early one morning I was showering to wake up, and struggling to do so. Half asleep, I dropped the bar of soap. As I bent over to pick it up, my butt brushed against the shower curtain. Kearsarge saw this as a nice big target and swatted me with claws bared. I let out such a blood-curdling scream that my wife actually got out of bed and came down to see if I was OK.
Kearsarge also liked to get up on the counter and drink water from a paper Dixie cup. Well, that isn't completely true. I would set a cup of water in front of him and he would drink for a while. When I turned my back, he would bat the cup towards the edge of the counter. If I looked back at him, he would immediately resume drinking the water. If I turned my back too long, I would hear a splash as the cup hit the floor. Kearsarge would look at me nonchalantly, as if to say, "Gee, what happened?"
One of my two current cats, Squeaky, likes to drink from running water faucets. He understands the word "hot" and actually obeys me when I tell him the water running is hot. He has managed to teach his twin brother, Buckaroo, how to drink water from the faucet, and I am concerned that they may yet figure out how to turn the faucet on one of these days. Squeaky will also sit on the edge of the bathtub between the shower curtain and liner by the faucet for up to half an hour in the morning. He patiently waits for me to finish shaving so I will turn on the hot water faucet for my shower. It's a long way from the water heater in the garage to the bathtub, so he has a lengthy opportunity to drink the water from the faucet, and reduce the waste. (However, I'm not sure the local water company would be interested in him as a spokescat for water conservation.) Fortunately, when the water warms up, he leaves. This is good because I still drop the bar of soap on occasion. And when I do so, I almost subconsciously look for cats behind the shower curtain before I bend over to pick it up.
Originally published in the March 1996 issue of Channel M, newsletter of Channel Islands Mensa, Mark Hutchenreuther, Editor.