Paddington: quite possibly the best cat ever. I’m checking up on him while Kelly is frolicking with friends in the Hamptons this weekend. As soon as I let myself into her apartment, he ran over, meowing all the way, as if to say, “Where were you? I was worried sick you wouldn’t show.” And by “worried sick” I mean “coughing up hairballs the size of potato pancakes,” because there two were, right in the front hallway.
Kelly had warned me Paddington’s hobby is daily hairball expulsion and although the angle of my photo above conceals it, Paddington is a big tom with a large surface area, so I think he just needed a good brushing. But I didn’t see a cat brush lying around with the other cat stuff, so I took a short trip downtown on the 1 and bought one from a discount pet store.
I wish I could remember the name of this brush (or this type of brush), but it was recommended by a woman I work with who lives with a pair of cats she named Jack and Tyler after the characters from Fight Club. The brush is a simple band of sheet steel, about an inch wide, folded into the shape of a loop with a handle. On the looped end, nubby little teeth have been cut into one side of the steel. They’re not sharp, but when you brush the cat, the loose hair is gently raked off in clumps.
There wasn’t enough hair when I was done brushing Paddington to construct a whole other cat, but there was probably enough for an unconvincing toupee. Paddington seemed to like the brushing (“he likes to be stroked by volatile objects,” Kelly confirmed later), but he enjoyed most everything: following me around, enjoying my shiatsu-style sessions of petting, sitting there starting at me as I talked to him as if to say, “You, sir, are a genius.” I lay on the living room floor for a while because I imagine that short animals like it when you’re at their level. He showed his appreciation by playfully head-butting me until I thought he might break the frames on my glasses, then he curled up next to me with his head on my arm. Awwwww.
