Columnist Susan Snyder: The time is meow for cat news

Friday, Sept. 6, 2002 | 9:09 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Ugly development, air pollution, child safety, pedestrian deaths, bad legislation.

You know what garners the most mail? (Pot initiative and the barrage of out-of-state criticism not withstanding.)

The Cat. People want to read more about The Cat. They send e-mail. They call.

They need to get out more.

I didn't even intend to own The Cat. He slipped into my life in Florida 13 years ago, when I spared him an agonizing kittenhood in the embrace of an incorrigible 5-year-old boy.

He was supposed to be a she. But the day I left "her" at the veterinarian for spaying, was the day I was glad I'd chosen a unisex name.

I returned to the clinic late in the afternoon. The vet said, "We have been trying to reach you all day. I need to tell you something."

I feared the worst. He pulled me aside and said, "We looked, and well, Susan, Neko is a boy."

Thought I'd die laughing. Hey it cost $15 less for the snip, snip -- which is the only time The Cat has let me off on the cheap end of anything.

The lingering aggression, I imagine, is left over from him spending the first six months of our life together in a sissy-pink collar.

OK, so now you know his dirty little secret. (And more of you will read this than anything about drive-by shootings in North Las Vegas or proposed legislation that would make zucchini the Nevada state vegetable.)

It explains why our relationship is what it is. The Cat forgets nothing and forgives nothing. He will lay in wait at the bottom of a laundry basket for an hour, if it means he can ambush me as I step from the shower in the morning.

And now that we have moved into the home of The Other, The Cat is doubly spoiled.

The Other's weekends often involve a trip to Home Depot for a handful of items to assemble the latest in a series of home improvement projects designed to improve the home for The Cat.

There was the wood pole outfitted with a metal bracket on which the bird feeder -- The Cat's DVD player -- was hung. The project involved hand-digging a 12-inch hole in a "yard" made up entirely of red rocks and LGB train tracks, and affixing the wood pole to a steel rod for stability.

This is an ongoing project. The bird feeder needs to be filled every morning because cute, teeny little finches eat like swine. And The Cat will follow me around batting my ankles for an hour howling if it isn't filled.

I am not making this up.

Last weekend, The Other said he was heading to Home Depot, again.

"For what?"

"To get some sand," he said. "I think the rocks out there hurt his little feet."

His "little feet?" Cripes.

He bought sand -- 140 pounds of it. Not your regular, standard household sand. No, he brought home 140 pounds of "play sand."

So, The Cat now has a sandbox in the back yard (never, ever to be confused with the "sand box" in the utility room). You now have The Cat story for which you asked.

And I am convinced that no matter what we accomplish for people, in the end we can just as easily be loathed or admired for the manner in which we treat a cat.