Stinky bit me in the nose last night.
Stinky -- Stinkerbelle in full -- earned her name as a kitten by crawling up my chest and sweetly punching me in the eye. Adopted as a feral kitten out from under a friend's porch, she hasn't mellowed in her fourteen years on earth.
Stinky has not come a long way since we adopted her. She chooses to stay upstairs, mingling only with our other five cats when wet food is served. She hogs the food and now rather resembles a soccer ball -- black and white and round. She hisses at the other cats, at us, at inanimate objects. She likes to have her back scritched -- until, suddenly, she doesn't, hence the bitten nose. All in all a disagreeable cat.
But Stinky will sit on the bed sometimes, close to my head, purring just out of the happiness of being near me. She will rub up against my hand ecstatically when I pet her and eventually bliss out into a cross-eyed state. She doesn't hate -- she just doesn't know what to do with herself.
So we love Stinky in the way one loves their problem children. Awkward, unbeautiful, cranky, at times lashing out. She reminds me of me as a child -- roly poly and uncoordinated, unaware of how my intelligence put off people. I did not believe myself lovable, and told the school psychologist only the monsters were my friends.
I study Stinky and find my inner child, runny-nosed and crying, yet still worthy of love.
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