But She's So Sweet

This, as many of you know, is Piper. She's one of our two cats. And yesterday she struck fear into the hearts of two grown men.

I came home from class last night to a note on our door from the maintenance guy and two skittish cats. There had been an "emergency" (I think more people than just us didn't have heat in their apartments, but down here at the molten core of the earth we weren't about to make an emergency maintenance call over a 65-degree afternoon.), and the maintenance guy had to bring a plumber into our apartment without informing us in advance. This, incidentally, is something we have told him he should avoid. Because of, you know, the wittle fluffy evil kitty.

Then this afternoon the maintenance guy had to come over again because now that we have heat, we don't have hot water in our apartment, and ice-cold showers? That's an emergency. When I opened the door to let him in, he craned his neck a little and said, "How's the cat?" I answered that she was fine, sleeping on the couch, and I'd grab her in a second. He looked nervous and offered to remain standing in the hall while I put the cat in another room. So I did, and he came in, and took a call on his cell phone about another apartment without hot water, and checked to verify that, indeed, our water is cold. He promised to work on that, then explained that he and the plumber will have to come back either today or tomorrow to replace our thermostat, and "About the cat...."

I told him I can lock her in the bedroom during times when both Eric and I will be gone in the next couple of days, and he looked very relieved indeed and then described yesterday as a horrifying scene in which Piper hissed at them, so he shooed her away with a broom, and then she jumped on top of the computer monitor and hissed at them from there, making him fear that she would jump from the monitor onto his face. According to the story, the plumber said that if she bit him, he was biting her back. I disapprove of this.

Actually, I disapprove of the whole situation. I have explained, and Eric has explained, to the property management company that our cat is not fond of strangers and that we need to be at home when maintenance staff comes into our apartment. But yesterday they came in without our knowledge, and a couple of weeks ago I happened to look upward in the bathroom and notice that the bad spot on our ceiling had been painted over one day, I don't know which, when we weren't here. And the fact is that most men, when confronted with a hissing cat, are not brave enough to do what my 15-year-old sister does, and just step over her. If they keep coming into our apartment unannounced, someone's going to get hurt. And in a fair fight between Piper and a 40-year-old man, that guy had better watch out.