Chloe is right at home. Photo by Faceboy.
BY FACEBOY | There’s a very young girl in my building — let’s call her “Sally” — who is absolutely obsessed with cats.
I came home one day to see her pounding on my door and exclaiming most insistently, “I wanna see the kitty!” I have no idea how she knew I had a cat, as my cat, Allie, is very quiet.
Quite the opposite is Chloe, who is the subject of this edition of NYCritters.
Chloe is a 20-year-old domestic short-haired female who resides in the West Chelsea Veterinary. Her primary caretaker is Liz Luboja, who describes Chloe’s personality as quite demanding, very confident and very sweet. When asked if she has any quirks, Luboja said, “Yes, her most identifiable quirk is her extremely loud meow. We suspect it’s so loud because she’s deaf, so she can’t hear herself — but yeah, it definitely has to be her meow.”
During our five-minute interview, we were interrupted no less than 17 times by her distinctive meow — which doesn’t really have an “e,” and sounds more like “MOW!” and sometimes “ROW!”
I would imagine this caterwauling could get tiresome to one in a NYC apartment (as well as the neighbors). But at the vet, Luboja assured that it just makes her funny. “I mean, with a meow like that, there’s not a time when you’re not funny,” she commented.
Chloe loves people, and also loves her brush, which is placed on her bed so she can rub on it as she pleases — but she’s very specific about the placement of her bed. “When she’s out at night,” Luboja explained, “she has this whole area back here, but she has only one spot where she wants her bed. If you move her bed, she won’t use it. So you have to have her bed and brush in one specific spot. Everything else you can move around, but you can’t move her bed and her brush.”
Since it’s now the holiday season, I thought it prudent to ask about the practice of giving pets as gifts. Luboja said, “I usually think that it’s not the appropriate thing to do. As you can see, like in Chloe’s case, they can be a 20-year commitment — and to surprise someone with a 20-year commitment is usually not the best way to go about things.”
On the subject of human or animals friends, Luboja said, “She has all human friends. She is not a fan of other cats. Dogs, she’s okay with, but other cats she prefers not to have anything to do with. So she’s got the whole hospital filled with the West Chelsea team as her best friends.”
So as not to leave the reader wondering, let’s get back to Sally — who, as you’ll remember, is very much a fan of cats. Her mother caught up to her at my door and apologized for the intrusion.
“It’s no intrusion at all,” I said, as I opened the door for Sally to meet my cat. Sally saw Allie, who promptly ran and hid (Allie, it seems, is not a fan of excitable children).
Apparently just seeing a cat is enough for Sally, who happily shouted, “I saw the kitty!” and went about her day.
West Chelsea Veterinary is located at 248 W. 26th St., btw. Seventh & Eighth Aves. For services and other information, visit westchelseavet.com or call 212-645-2767. I recommend Dr. Farber, who has taken excellent care of most of my family’s critters for many, many years.
