This Caturday, Meet Neko!

Neko is a melanistic tabby, which is a fancy -- and shorter -- way to say she has almost all black fur with stripes that are visible in the right light. I sometimes think of her as my little black panther, partly because of the markings, and partly because she sometimes walks just like one of the Pantherine* cat species.

Neko tends to rotate through certain favorite things (places to sleep, toys), but there are some things she always loves. Like food. She's almost as accurate as a clock when it comes to meal time.

She loves to roast in the summer heat in the (screened-in) carport, where she also loves watching -- and when possible, chasing -- the wildlife.

She also loves to run. When she was little she would run more often, but even now she'll tear through the house every couple of days, back and forth and into different rooms.

Neko hates baths, but unfortunately she needs them. Every week I tell her I wouldn't bathe her if it didn't help anything, but, despite her hair regrowing, the itching stopping, and the scabs going away (flea allergy), she doesn't believe me.  The things that make bathtime easier for both of us are the built in dish soap, which Neko hangs onto, and the shower hose I can attach to the sink faucet.

I love having smart cats, and Neko is one of the smartest I've known. She has an excellent memory; she knows when she goes back into a room if something has moved.

She's also constantly testing to see what she can get away with. For her third birthday she got a large scratching post, because the rug she was scratching had to be thrown out, and she started turning to inappropriate places, like the side of the couch, to scratch. It took her about a week to fully move to scratching the post, and just now, about two months later, she'll let me watch her scratch. Every few days she'll go to scratch on the couch still, and she stops (and often moves to the post at that point) if I start to get up to stop her.

So that's a little about Neko.  Have you known any special cats?

*Having spent much time researching the cat family I don't tend to think of them this way, but the Pantherines include what people usually call the big cats: jaguars, leopards, lions, tigers.