Muffin The Ninja Cat

When my kids were small, a friend – and I use that term loosely – gave them a kitten. She was a tiny, grey – striped, tabby that looked more like something her mother hacked up rather than gave birth to.  She weighed no more than a couple of pounds and most of that was hair.  Three year old Roxanne promptly named the little fuzzball Muffin…. and would not be swayed to a different, cooler name.  I mean really, what kinda name for a cat is Muffin?  Cats should have cool, mysterious sounding names like Jezebel, Lucifer or Demonspawn.  But Roxanne had her mind made up, so Muffin it was.

From the beginning Muffin had a love – hate relationship with Roxanne.  She would snuggle beside Roxanne at bedtime, purring contentedly, and then without warning swat her viciously across the face with a dainty, razor sharp, claw.  Perhaps she was offended by the way Roxanne breathed – I don’t know.  Or maybe she sensed that Roxanne was about to make her the world’s biggest two pound scapegoat.

My evilly intelligent little daughter was soon to discover that having a pet had its benefits in the getting out of trouble department. What better way to deflect guilt from an incriminating situation than to blame everything on a mute, defenseless animal?  The cat certainly couldn’t dispute her.  To Roxanne’s brilliant, three year old mind, it was fool-proof. But bless her heart, she neglected to see the one glaring flaw in her otherwise solid plan -  her mother is no fool.

It began with the curtains. I was working in the house one day when I heard a crash in the vicinity of Roxanne’s bedroom followed by a muffled giggle. I rushed to the scene of the crime to find the bedroom curtains and the blinds in a tangled heap on the floor.  Poor little Muffin was sitting amidst the rubble looking dazed and unsure of how she got there.  Roxanne was bent over her bed, convulsed in giggles. The story I got was that Muffin was climbing up the curtains and pulled the whole works down on top of her head. Ok….cats are known for their love of climbing and my skills at hanging drapery are questionable but come on, the kitten weighed two pounds soaking wet! The curtains were plausible but…. the blinds? Let’s just say I had my doubts on the validity of the story, but since it smacked of kitten mischief, I let it slide. 

After that, Muffin became the household wrecking ball.

Who knocked the glass of punch over? – Muffin 

Who smeared glue all over the floor? – Muffin

Who pulled all the leaves off this plant? – Muffin

Who spilled an entire bottle of shampoo in the bathtub? – Muffin

The poor cat got blamed for everything and each time I had to admit her guilt was at least plausible. That is until the infamous corn dog event.

Even now I laugh at the memory.  It wasn’t at all funny then – in fact I was furious – but now it’s become one of the most precious memories I have. Roxanne was well known for her voracious sweet- tooth and it was a constant battle between us to get her to eat healthy food.  From the ages of two to five, the child survived on corn dogs, mac and cheese, and chicken tenders but was surprisingly well under weight for her age and height.  Getting her to eat fruit and vegetables was next to impossible and I’m not ashamed to say I often resorted to that bit of age-old parental wisdom – bribery.

Early on, I made a deal with both my children that if they would at least taste new foods – a taste being at least three good bites – then if they didn’t like it, I wouldn’t make them eat it.  Dalton, who was seemingly a vegetarian sort from birth, was easy.  He loved salads and all sorts of veggies and fruits. Usually, after three bites, he would finish whatever was on his plate.  Hard-headed Roxanne was a different story all-together.  She viewed the three bite rule as a challenge to get out of eating anything that wasn’t on her limited menu. I could give Muffin a pill easier than I could get Roxanne to swallow three bites of anything she deemed “yucky looking”.  And anything green was decidedly yucky looking. So Roxanne and I had a special deal.  If she would eat the three bites, then she got a dessert.  No bites, no dessert. Another classic gambit from the parental play-book.

One evening I made steamed broccoli for dinner - don’t groan, you did it too.  I put three small florets on Roxanne’s plate along with her corn dog and a few fries and sat her down at the table. The battle began. No way was she going to put that broccoli in her mouth. She gobbled down the fries easily and was about a third through her corn dog when I reminded her that she needed to eat the broccoli before she could have her dessert, which that night happened to be her very favorite – vanilla cupcakes. That was my mistake.  She saw the cupcakes and all thoughts of anything else went by the wayside.  Her mission from that moment on was to get to that cupcake. She even refused to finish her corn dog.  Now, she could have taken the easy way, which was also the right way, and forced down the three tiny pieces of broccoli but no – she was far too devious for such simplicity as that.  It’s a shame I didn’t know just how devious my sweet little daughter was at that time. I wouldn’t have trusted her as much as I did.

After arguing for almost an hour and steadfastly refusing to allow Roxanne to leave the table until she’d eaten the broccoli, I was surprised - and quite proud of myself for holding my ground I might add – when Roxanne suddenly announced that she’d cleaned her plate and could she please have her cupcake now.  I turned around from the sink and was amazed to see an almost clean plate.  Nothing remained but a few crumbs and a smear of yellow mustard. 

Now, most intelligent people would have immediately wondered – what happened to the corn dog stick?  I consider myself to be such an intelligent person but I suppose my relief at having won the battle blinded me to that little piece of evidence.  I praised her for being a brave girl and trying something new while I handed her the eagerly desired cupcake. Sucker

Roxanne sat happily enjoying her prize, vanilla frosting smeared across her beaming face, as I went about my household chores.  I turned on the clothes dryer, which I remembered contained my work clothes for the next day, finished cleaning the kitchen and helped Dalton with his homework. 

A while later, I went to get my clothes out of the dryer.  Little Muffin was curled up on top of it, contentedly snoozing, enjoying the toasty warmth the appliance was putting out.  She seemed quite angry at being disturbed from her cozy roost and hissed at me when I shooed her down. I opened the dryer door and to my horror found a mustard-plastered mess. There, perched atop my white linen pants, was the remains of a corn dog, stick and all.  The broccoli had all but disintegrated, leaving sloughs of green stains on every article of clothing in the dryer and sticky smudges of bright yellow mustard were permanently dyed into my best clothes.  I exploded into fury and screamed the first and only name that came to mind – ROXANNE!!!

To her credit, she immediately presented herself, completely unafraid of my wrath. I made a classic parental blunder and asked her how it came about that a corn-dog had found its way into my clothes dryer.  I knew how it got there, I knew exactly who did it.  I suppose I asked because I wanted to give her an opportunity to tell me the truth; make it a teachable moment. But, as my friend Michael once pointed out, why would a child tell you the truth when she knows the end result is going to be punishment? They’re children, not idiots. So, I shouldn’t have been at all surprised when she looked up at me with those big brown innocent eyes and said “Muffin did it”

 I was rather taken aback at her response.  I had expected an “I dunno” or  “not me” or even the classic - I’ve suddenly gone blind – ploy of “what corn dog?” But this sweet child, with complete malice aforethought, blamed the kitten. Being three years old, I’m sure she didn’t see the obvious flaws in her story so I thought I would help her by pointing them out. 

“How did Muffin open the dryer Roxanne?”

 “She was hiding until she saw you open it and then put the corn dog in while you weren’t looking”

“How did Muffin pick up the plate Roxanne?”

 “She didn’t, she stole the corn dog off my plate with her teeths”

“The corn dog is bigger than Muffin Roxanne, how did she carry it all the way to the dryer?”

“She’s stronger than she looks Mommy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Muffin put the corn dog in the dryer?”

 This conversation had passed the border of ridiculousness and taken a sharp turn onto the hiway of absurdity.

“Cause you would spank her and I’d have to eat broccoli instead of cupcake.”

 Well, Kudos for that half-truth I suppose.

Roxanne was convicted on the charges of duplicity, perjury and making her mother feel foolish and was punished accordingly.  She received one of the few spankings she ever got and was sentenced to no dessert for two weeks. That night, after the angry tears – both Roxanne’s and mine - subsided, I peeked into her room to find her fast asleep.  Muffin was stretched out on the pillow beside her, stroking her little kitten paw through Roxanne’s hair as if soothing her. When she realized I was watching, she shook her paw free of the hair clinging to it and – I swear - the little demon smiled at me - and swatted Roxanne across the back of the head, digging her claws into the tender flesh of her scalp. Roxanne jerked awake at the sharp pain and, of course, the first thing she saw was me.

 Score one for the kitten – maybe she wasn’t as guiltless as I thought.

Then came the coups de gras. 

One Sunday afternoon, I had a horrible headache.  One of those headaches that can make you beg for the silence and darkness of the grave.  Trying to find some relief, I took a few Tylenol and lay down on the couch with a cold rag over my face, charging Dalton with looking after his sister and keeping her quiet.

I managed to doze off but hadn’t been asleep long when I was rudely awakened by a deafening crash. Lurching up off the couch, I went reeling down the hall to see what, or who, was broken.  Outside the bathroom door, my two children stood frozen in horror. Muffin sat plastered against the backs of Roxanne’s legs, trembling with fear.  I didn’t waste time asking stupid questions and pushed them aside to see what they were staring at. 

It looked like a small bomb had exploded in the bathroom.  The toilet tank top was broken with half of it lying at a crazy angle in the tank and the other half shattered on the floor.  Porcelain dust hung in the air and floated to the carpet like a fine snow.  Roxanne’s doll stroller was turned up on its side in the bathtub and Dalton’s toy cars were strewn about the floor.  My sleep addled brain searched for an answer to this bizarre tableau and hit upon, what I saw as, the logical guilty party; Dalton.  Normally, I was a level headed parent and thought before I acted. But this time, I’m ashamed to say, my rage and disoriented state overtook me.  My poor son was about to get what would have amounted to a beating. I snatched him up by the arm and had the other arm in full swing when I felt Roxanne tugging demandingly at my clothes and heard her crying “Mommy! Mommy! Don’t!! Dalton didn’t do it!!!”  I stopped short of landing the first blow and glared at her, breathing furiously down on her upturned face like an enraged bull while still gripping a terrified Dalton by the arm.

“Who did it then!?” I demanded “You?”

She gulped hard, but hardly even thought before saying, quite convincingly…..

“Muffin”

I was totally poleaxed. I knew she was lying but there was something about the way she said it so guilelessly that caught me off guard. I let go of Dalton’s arm and he took the opportunity to run for the sanctuary of his room.

The rage drained out of me like water in a sink as I squatted down to look my precious daughter in the eye.

“Would you care to explain to me how Muffin did this?” I asked.  Secretly, I couldn’t wait to hear the answer. I knew this was going to be good.

Roxanne only briefly looked down at the floor before looking me dead in the eyes and then began her tale.

“Well, you see Mommy, Muffin was walking on the top of the potty – I told her she shouldn’t be up there -  and she slipped and she gots her paw caught on the thing and the potty pinched her….it hurt really bad.”  She added the last part for emphasis, hoping to gain an amount of sympathetic understanding for the poor beast.

“I see” I said, trying to keep the stern look on my face.

“But how did Muffin break the potty?”

“She got mad because the potty pinched hers paw, so she jumped down and picked up my baby buggy and……WHAM!!! She hit the potty with it.”

I had absolutely no response.  I slowly and calmly stood up, walked down the hall and out the back door into the yard and there….doubled over laughing hysterically.

How ingenious of her.  I don’t think she deliberately knew that telling such an outlandish tale would diffuse the anger I was feeling, but that’s exactly the effect that it had. I think she probably was desperately trying to save her big brother and if that was her goal, succeeded masterfully. I knew Muffin didn’t break the toilet but after that I didn’t care really how it happened.  I knew the real culprit and later that night she and I had a long discussion about it. She never fully admitted to what she had done though, still insisting that Muffin had been the one to strike the fatal blow.  I pointed out to her that Muffin was physically incapable of committing the offense, to which Roxanne replied,

“You just never seen the things she can do Mommy. She’s tricky”

Muffin sat on the pillow, listening to the whole conversation rather intently and swishing her little tail around.  She had a strange, self- satisfied look on face.

Not long after that, I married.  My new husband moved into our home with his cat, Sunshine, who was the antithesis of his name.  He was big and round and orange but that’s where the resemblance ended. He was so mean spirited he made Grumpy Cat look like Pollyanna; Muffin hated him immediately.  It wasn’t long after they moved in, Muffin got out one day and ran away into the woods.  We never saw her again.  Poor Roxanne was inconsolable and cried and called for her companion for weeks. It broke my heart.

Years later, during Roxanne’s illness, we returned to a state of battling about what she was and wasn’t eating.  Roxanne’s gastroparesis made it impossible for her to eat normally. If she swallowed anything, it simply came back up.  But being a teenager, it was hard for her to be denied her favorite foods.  And she felt like such a freak, having to be fed through a tube and an IV that occasionally she would eat something – knowing full well she was going to throw it up – just to have the pleasure of tasting food and feeling like a normal human being.  Every time I caught her doing it, I scolded her adamantly. She would remind me that the doctor had told her she should try to eat whenever she wanted. I reminded her that the doctor didn’t have to hear her gagging and crying for hours afterward.

One day I came home from work and found an empty container of juice and a half empty box of cookies on the kitchen counter.  Frustrated, I called Roxanne to the kitchen and handed her the evidence. Stupidly I asked, “Who ate these cookies?”

Her big brown eyes twinkled and she grinned at me mischievously

“Muffin ”

She got me again.