Trotsky deceived us from the beginning when we picked him up at
the Anti-Cruelty Society. He was both skinny and lovable and we
thought he'd be the perfect companion to our 9 month old kitten at
home. Unfortunately he was anything but. I'll never forget the
look our other cat Faust gave me when we opened the cat carrier
and Trotsky stepped out. Faust sat at the back of the long hallway
and looked directly in my eye as if to say: "How could
you."
Trotsky began his stay with us calmly enough, spending the
first few days in a bathroom cupboard, but after a while he
settled in and took over. We lived on the top floor of a
three-flat in Chicago with my brother and his wife whom Trotsky
developed a special hatred for. He would sit on the second floor
landing and wait for her to come home, refusing to move as she and
her 90 pound Golden Retriever would come up the stairs. Trotsky
would rear up and snort if they tried to get too close, and she
would have to scream for me to get him, which I would do, holding
him gingerly at arm's length while he hissed and flailed away.
When we bought our own house Trotsky would take special glee in
terrorizing neighborhood cats. He would lie on our front porch in
the early evening and just wait. If a cat was foolish enough to
investigate our house, Trotsky would start a low guttural howl to
warn the foolish intruder after it passed some imaginary line in
our yard. If the errant cat continued to approach then Trotsky
would begin to lather himself into psycho mode. If this first-time
visitor (there were no second-time feline guests) continued his
advance, Trotsky would lunge and the two would transform into a
screaming, hissing ball that would roll and bounce across the
front yard. The noise would bring me running with a broom that I
kept near the front door for just such occasions which I would use
to pry the two apart. I'd have to shove Trotsky back to our house
with the broom, for I dared not pick him up. He'd sit in the
living room breathing hard and snorting as he would slowly cool
himself down, our other cats looking on in amazement from the
relative safety of the hallway.
Alas Trotsky is no more, but his ashes sit on our windowsill as
a reminder to our household to not get of line.
