The Ghost of My Orange Diva Cat

I grew up with this tiny orange and white cat named Pumpkin. One of our neighbors found her as a stray; her previous family had spayed and declawed her, but somehow she’d been separated from them. I remember going over to that neighbor’s house and looking under the bed where Pumpkin was hiding. For me, it was love at first sight.

This is Pumpkin, unashamedly sitting on the stove and "helping" with dinner.

Even as a fully grown cat, Pumpkin was so little that my mom used to say she was made of nothing but fur and air. Despite her size, Pumpkin thought she was a tiger. She’d hunt baby bunnies, chipmunks, mice, snakes, and birds--all without any front claws. She would go up to dogs in our neighborhood, some of which were a lot bigger than her, and smack them in the face with all the confidence in the world. Some weeks, a family from our church would come over for small group meetings and bring their little dog Sasha with them. Sasha was terrified of Pumpkin.

On the flip side of the coin, Sasha instinctively knew that she could chase and bully our other cat Talula.

Talula used to be the exact opposite of Pumpkin.

Where Pumpkin was tiny, Talula was big. Pumpkin liked to talk to us, and Talula was pretty quiet.

Pumpkin was a smart hunter. Talula watched the wildlife in our yard with these vacant eyes that said, “The lights are on, but nobody’s home.” We used to say that in a post-apocalyptic world, we would want Pumpkin with us for hunting, because Talula would be useless in that scenario.

Pumpkin was fearless. Talula was scared of just about everything.

Pumpkin hated Talula when we first introduced her to our household. She became more tolerant over the years, but she never truly warmed up to her. Whereas, Talula just wanted to be friends with Pumpkin and didn’t really understand that that would never happen. Whenever Pumpkin crossed Talula’s path, we would hear hissing and growling that sounded like a hive of angry bees. Sometimes, Pumpkin walked into an empty room and hissed at nothing, just in case the house had forgotten that she didn’t approve of Talula.

And Pumpkin, for whatever reason, decided that I was her person. Our little orange diva staked her claim on my bedroom, and for the most part, Talula respected that and stayed away. Talula’s relationship with me was not so cuddly. Where Pumpkin wanted to snuggle with me, Talula was more likely to attack my hands or my feet with her sharp claws and teeth.

Pumpkin lived to the ripe old age of nineteen (we think, since we don’t know for sure how old she was when we took her in). The day that she died, Talula started acting kind of strange.

Our gray kitty, who rarely showed an interest in my bedroom, came into the room, curled up in the corner behind my bed, and took a nap. Then, a few days later, we discovered a rabbit that had been killed and left on our back patio. It could have been one of the other neighborhood cats, but then why would they leave it at our door? What was even weirder for me was the fact that Talula started sleeping on my bed and snuggling on my lap.

Then my brother’s girlfriend brought her cat Scrappy to live with us.

Talula hates Scrappy, even though the poor little Munchkin cat just wants to be friends with her. Rarely, if ever, did we hear Talula make the same angry beehive noise that Pumpkin used to make, but these days we hear it all the time whenever Scrappy comes too close to her. She is officially becoming a grumpy old lady (although she doesn’t sound like a life-long chain smoker like Pumpkin did).

And now, we’ve had visual confirmation that Talula is in fact dipping her toes into hunting. We’ve seen her catch a chipmunk, and just this past week, she injured a bird in the backyard.

In the weeks and months immediately following Pumpkin’s death, I had joked that Talula was being haunted by Pumpkin’s ghost. Somewhere along the line, that’s become less of a joke. Now, we say in all seriousness that Talula is slowly but surely turning into Pumpkin. Now all she needs to do is shed her fear of dogs and cars, and her transformation will be complete.