THE McELROY ZOO: Meet Bessie, the beautiful girl who’s still scared

By David McElroy · July 24, 2011

Bessie has lived her entire life in fear.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely correct, but she’s at least lived her life just on the edge of fear. She can go from relaxed and happy to tense and terrified in a split second. She’s not just scared of people who might try to hurt her. She’s even scared of the one person in the world who’s fed her and taken care of her for two and a half years — me.

I wrote about Bessie’s sister, Molly, last week. You can read that story if you’d like, because most of it applied to Bessie, too.

Bessie was one of two kittens who appeared outside my door with their mother about two and a half years ago. They wouldn’t let me touch them or even get near them. I still have no idea where they came from. They were beautiful — as you can see in the picture that’s with last week’s story — but they clearly had a lot of fear in them.

The mother cat disappeared one day and I’ll never know what happened to her. It created a real dilemma for me. I certainly didn’t want or need two more cats — and these didn’t seem terribly adoptable — but I couldn’t just leave them outside alone.

You know from last week’s story that I wasn’t able to find homes for them, simply because they were too scared of people. (The top photo on this story is when she was still a kitten.) Most people just aren’t going to put up with a pet who runs almost every time a human approaches, because most people are much more interested in what they can get from the animal than in providing a home. I understand — and I’m not going to judge them — but that’s not the way I feel about it.

She’s still terrified, for the most part. It’s especially bad when there’s something going on that she doesn’t understand. For instance, in the picture above on the right, she was having to go to the vet because of swelling on her lip. (You can sort of see a pink swollen area in the picture.) She has a look of terror in her eyes, not just a normal fear, but an absolute terror that something terrible is going to happen.

I have no idea whether she simply inherited all of this fear from her mother or if terrible things happened around her as a kitten. She might have seen experienced her mother dying. I’ll never know. She was named Bessie in honor of my grandfather’s sister. My Great Aunt Bessie had more natural fear in her than any woman I’ve ever known. She was a wonderful woman, but she couldn’t shake being afraid of the world. She was a natural to lend her name to this new Bessie.

She’s very happy today, living with her sister, Molly, and her three nieces — Charlotte, Emily and Anne. During the day, they also spend time with Thomas, William and Dagny. As long as the humans stay away, this scared girl is happy.

There’s one odd exception to her fear. I have no idea why this happens, but it’s amazing when it does. Every now and then, she apparently feels a need to be touched and rubbed. It’s no more than a few times a year — and it’s only when she decides she’s ready.

She will come close to me, but then run who I reach out my hand. Then she’ll do it again, this time lying on her side and exposing her tummy. When I reach for her, she panics and runs. This can continue over a period of a day or two. Then, finally, she gives in.

She’ll let me touch her and scratch her side and tummy. She’ stretch and roll her body on the bed and purr. Every now and then when this happens, she’ll even let me pick her up and hold her while I scratch her tummy. When it’s going on, she purrs loudly and makes little sounds of pleasure.

Then — as suddenly as it started — it’s over. She’s finished with trusting me for awhile. She withdraws, pulls away. It’s frustrating, because I like to be able to make her happy and purr. But I don’t let it bother me too much, because I know she’ll be back in her own time. Even though she’s scared — and even though she wouldn’t want to admit it, if cats could “admit” things — she needs me. It’s not just for food.

She needs love and attention. She just needs it on a schedule that most people wouldn’t put up with. I’m happy that she trusts me at least that much.

Editor’s note: If you enjoyed meeting Bessie, you might enjoy previous stories and pictures aboutMolly, Oliver, Munchkin, Sam, Maggie, Henry, Lucy, Amelia, Charlotte and Emily.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

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Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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