Shy, a.k.a. Shi-​​shi

I have been given to under­stand that my fas­ci­na­tion with the female ani­mal, woman, is in fact plea­sur­able to many of them.

To be scru­ti­nized or even dis­sected by some­one who gen­uinely wants to learn about you and what makes you tick actu­ally seems appeal­ing to many women. I can­not tell you how free­ing that is to me, and in turn how appeal­ing that is to me.

If she is shy and you get her to thaw and open up, or if she is a fire­cracker and you get her to slow down and open up, in either case you are rewarded by radi­ant beauty. When you focus on a woman, when she opens up to you and allows you to begin to under­stand her heart, how can you not fall a lit­tle in love with her?

One of my two cats, Shy, or Shi-​​shi, as she later became known as, a sturdy but not fat, beau­ti­ful, and stat­uesque cal­ico was a res­cue and I adopted her some 14 years ago. I did not know her his­tory but when I brought her home she imme­di­ately fig­ured out how to open the cup­board doors and dis­ap­peared in there, thus her name. She is not skit­tish or shy now, but there is a haunt­ing mourn­ful­ness to her stance, of melan­choly, per­haps. But that’s just the way she is.

She didn’t purr. No mat­ter how cozy you got with her and how much she liked being pet­ted and scratched under the chin, she never purred. It took four years before I was rewarded with the first ten­ta­tive purr. And it freaked her out in the begin­ning because she didn’t know how to turn it off. Now she has a won­der­ful and thun­der­ing purr and she will lay just out of reach when I sleep and purr for me in the dark. It is such a sooth­ing sound.

My eyes welled up that first time she purred for me. I was hav­ing an awful day and I felt alone and unloved and Shi-​​shi came to rub against my legs and I picked her up and the next thing I knew noises came from her that star­tled us both. She gave me proof that I had reached her and that she felt safe with me and I will never for­get that feeling.

If a cat can make you feel that way, what do you think a woman can do to you? If a lit­tle fuzz-​​ball like Shi-​​shi can pluck on your heart­strings, a warm vibrant woman can drop a grand piano on your head. I’ve been incred­i­bly blessed hav­ing been treated to not just one woman’s first purr, and every time I only had to pay atten­tion to her, see her for who she really was, and not break her trust.