In October of 2018 I brought a six week old male Siamese kitten home from the job site where I was working.  I didn’t want a cat, and no pets are allowed in the building where I live, but I couldn’t leave this kitten at the job site after he wound up there by riding in a truck engine, because he was too small to survive.  An owl or a pack of coyotes would have eaten him on the first night there.

Because this kitten didn’t try to scratch or bite me when I took him out of the truck engine, put him in my vehicle, and drove home with him, I thought that he was going to be well behaved.  When I saw that he always used the cat litter box to poop and urinate, I thought that he was going to be a good cat.

He was a nice looking cat, but he was small.  When I went to the Woofta pet store and the Pet Palace pet store in Dickinson to buy him some cat toys, I asked the store personnel if they placed cats for adoption, because I didn’t know if I could keep this cat, I am not supposed to have any pets in my apartment.

At first, I was looking forward to getting home from work to see my kitten, but pretty soon I wasn’t any longer.  I have to leave for work at about 4 a.m., and I don’t get home until about 7 p.m., that is fifteen hours that I am gone.  One of the first things that I would do each morning was make sure that the cat had a full bowl of food and water, and one of the first things that I would do when I got home at night was make sure that the cat had a full bowl of food and water.

I would leave each of my bedroom and bathroom doors open while I was gone so that the cat could run around the entire apartment, play with his toys, and look out the windows.  During the day while I was gone, he would knock items off my chest of drawers, bathroom shelves, and claw up paper towel and toilet paper rolls.

When I get home at night, I only have a little over an hour to fix something to eat, go through bills, and check my e-mail if I am going to get even seven hours of sleep at night.  While I would try to eat, the cat would try to take my napkin, knock over my drink, take my food, and knock over my plate.  I would push the cat away and tell him “no”, but he would come right back.

When I would try to pay bills, the cat would try to take my pen, take my envelope, take my stamps, and knock everything off the table.  He would kick my pile of bills that I had organized, all over the floor.  He would try to jump in my lap, climb on top of me, and bite me.

Sometimes, after a very long and tiring day, after interfering with me eating dinner, interfering with me paying bills, and jumping on me when I was trying to use the computer, the cat climbing up my back sticking his claws in me would be enough for me to be about ready to kill the cat.  I don’t mean this figuratively, in a moment like that, I was ready to kill this cat.

If I would have been living in a house, with a yard, I would have put this cat outside after he ate his dinner, so that I could be left alone, and he could go outside and play.  But because of the apartment building that I live in, it would not be easy to put this cat outside, nor would it be safe for him, partly because of the risk of getting hit by a car, but also because now it is below 0 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

The cat was an even bigger problem when I tried to go to sleep at night.  I would take the cat with me to bed, or I would leave the bedroom door open.  As soon as I was falling asleep, the cat would begin stalking me and making attacks.  He would run and leap on the bed, usually running up to my face and lightly scratching or biting my face.  Sometimes he would climb up on a chest of drawers and leap on top of me when I was asleep.

I began having to shut the cat out of my bedroom when I tried to sleep, because he kept waking me up with his attacks, and I was also worried that he was going to damage one of my eyes because he kept lightly scratching and biting my face, and a few times not so lightly.  There was a time or two when this cat bit me on my face too hard, and I lost my temper, and I was ready to kill this cat.

Because I was losing my temper so bad with this cat, many times I thought about trying to take him to one of the pet stores in Dickinson to place him for adoption.  I felt bad about this, because they already have a lot of nice cats and kittens that they are holding for adoption, that would make nice pets.  Though this Siamese cat is nice looking, he is not very nice, he has some behavior problems, and he wouldn’t make a very nice pet.

Growing up, my family bought kittens from breeders and adopted stray cats.  Neither the kittens that we bought, the stray kittens that we adopted, or the adult stray cats that we adopted, none of them attacked me or my family members like this Siamese cat.  None of my parents’ friends’ cats or our neighbors’ cats attacked people like this Siamese cat.

As an adult, none of the other stray cats that I have adopted or my room mates’ cats have attacked people like this Siamese cat.  I think that this Siamese cat, and possibly his brothers and sisters, were dropped off somewhere and not placed in homes because of their behavior problems.

This Siamese cat acts somewhat like a raccoon or spider monkey in its habit of trying to move objects around, knock objects over, and get into everything to move things around.  It is funny for a little while, but it becomes tiresome having to pick up after it all the time.

I got very angry with this cat a couple of weeks ago for biting me and running around in my apartment being destructive, so I put it outside the apartment building for the first time, when it was 25 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  I didn’t care if the cat went off and never came back, or if it got run over by a car, it was being a jerk, I was tired of it.

Being outside, the cat panicked immediately.  It began jumping into the glass door trying to get back inside.  It began howling very loudly at other apartment residents’ windows.  I wanted the cat to go away, but it wouldn’t leave.  After about five or ten minutes, I went outside to get the cat because it wasn’t coping with being outside, it was behaving like a wounded animal.  I tried to call it and pick it up, but the cat was acting like it didn’t know me when I picked it up, it was like it was panicked and out of its mind, like a wild, feral cat.

I tried to call the Dickinson animal control department to ask them to come and get this cat.  I explained that I was tired of this cat biting me, that I had put it outside hoping that it would go away, but since it didn’t go away, I went outside to get it, and now it was acting like it didn’t know me, like it was a wild cat.  It was the weekend, and the animal control department didn’t have anyone on duty to come and get this cat.

I put some heavy gloves on, and I went outside and picked up this cat, and I took it back inside, though I didn’t want it.  I wished that it would have gone away to find some place else to live.

I believe that this cat has got something wrong with it.  I thought that this must be like having your own kid or an adopted kid that has got something wrong with it.  You feed it, you house it, you take care of it, but it is ungrateful, destructive, and it attacks you.  You don’t want it, but you are kind of stuck with it.

I may try to place this cat for adoption, but I don’t want to do this because it has behavior problems.  I don’t think that an adoptive family would keep it for very long once it tried to bite or scratch some woman’s or child’s face.  Putting this cat up for adoption, it might soon end up being turned over to animal control to be euthanized, or someone might think that it was funny to take it in order to feed it their python or boa constrictor.