Cats Can Light Up Your Life… Among Other Things…

Looking back, I should have known from the start that my cat, Ezzie, was going to be unique. For starters, the animal shelter I adopted her from thought it would be funny to put a black cat in Cage #13. I’m not superstitious, but I still think it had to be more than a coincidence.

Second, she was not a normal cat. Her nicknames ranged from Klepto Kitty — because she stole everything from phones to shoes to clothespins and hid them throughout the house — to Butt Cat — if she caught you laying face-down, she’d curl up right on your backside to sleep. I had a feeling she wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I loved her anyway.

One day, we had company over and my mom lit a nice-smelling candle and set it in the middle of the kitchen table. As we were making small talk with our visitors, Ezzie jumped onto the table and stared, transfixed, at the candle.

Mom: “She’s going to touch the candle.”

Visitor: “No, she’s not.”

Mom: “Watch, she’s going to stick her paw in it.”

Me: “Mom, she’s not that dumb—”

And cue Ezzie sticking her paw into the flame of the candle at that moment. She held her paw there just long enough for us to see smoke curling up from her burned fur, and then she pulled it back SLOWLY and stared in fascination at her paw. I could almost see the single observation ping-ponging through her tiny kitty brain — like Olaf from “Frozen” saying, “So, THIS is heat!”

Thankfully, Ezzie seemed unharmed by her little escapade, and she came away with just some singed fur and a new nickname — Smokey. She’s since passed on, but I still fondly remember my dim but lovable cat.