ShellyKing.com

My Cat

This is Scout the Wonder Cat. By night, she’s a mild mannered lap cat with kittenish charm and slightly insistent “feed-me-now” meow. By day, when I’m at work, she patrols our apartment in her Wonder Woman(…ur…Cat?) Underoos, keeping our most precious belongings (her bed, her toys, her catnip) safe from any misdirected humans.

Scout is named for the character in To Kill A Mockingbird and, like her namesake, has an aversion to dresses and an intense interest in the neighbors.

All day Scout hangs out on the back of the sofa, watching everyone come and go. My apartment manager, Dave, says she’s like a sundial. You can tell what time of day it is by where Scout is positioned on the back of the sofa. Nothing gets by her. If only she could talk.

Scout is polydactyl, meaning she has a few extra toes. To be precise, she has an extra toe on each paw except for her back left paw. That one has two extra toes. Polydacts are also called Hemingway cats. Ernest Hemingway hosted a multitude of cats at his home in Key West, including a six-toed cat given to him by a ship’s captain. He is said to have coined the phrase “one cat leads to another.” Today, the Hemingway house is home to over sixty cats, many of which are polydacts. Polydacts are also said to be good luck. Scout tells me this is absolutely true.