That title doesn't mean that Neutrino's a Cheshire cat, fictional but full of personality - our abundance of scars and the rapid turnover of martini glasses confirm his existence - but that he's made a concerted cosmetic effort to look cuter. Since he's starting as a leopard-skin-tuxedo-wearing cat with little white gloves that's a tall order, but if there's one thing my ex-glassware has revealed it's that no height is beyond his reach.
It started with his feline fascination with our washing habits. Whenever we're rubbing, scrubbing, or showering he stares with wide eyes as if to ask "What's wrong with you people? I know you have tongues! I've seen them! Why do you use weird smelling horrible non-spit on yourselves?" This confusion upgrades to outright horror when watching me shave, aghast at my self-mutilation. I guess watching someone shaving their own whiskers off is the cat equivalent of a Saw movie.
We didn't realise that he'd decided to try it for himself, mistaking months of desperate scrabbling of every pot and bottle on Xin's cabinet onto the floor as standard "Destruction = Attention!" buggery. In our defense his entire existence up to this point supported that view - we'd no more suspected that he really wanted to try the cosmetics than you'd think The Incredible Hulk kept ripping shirts because he was looking for a good tailor.
But poor Neutrino persisted in his frustrating, thumbless quest to open one of the containers, and his limited "knocking things onto the floor" strategy eventually succeeded! One Friday afternoon we walked in to find tiny blocks of brown powder scattered over the floor (painful experience instantly assured us it wasn't excrement) only to see an artfully eyebrow-powdered Neutrino staring back at us. But this isn't like the college movies where a little make-up (and taking off the glasses) turns the quiet girl into the belle of the ball. All eyebrow powder does for a cat is give it extremely brown eyebrows. And nose. And paws. And bellly. (That'll be the lack of thumbs again.)
Then again, your make-up must be successful if it motivates a married couple pounce on your body and drag it to the nearest bathroom. I'm not sure exactly what he was expecting, but a few minutes of vigorous rubbing under the taps disabused him of the notion that cat cosmetics was the next thing, as well as most of the powder. The problem is that cat fur is to human hair what the Amazon jungle is to a shrubbery, and the eyebrow powder had adapted to this new environment like a lab mouse shot to the Moon by NASA finding it really is made of cheese. It was Not Coming Out.
That's when Neutrino started getting seriously mixed messages, when the lady who'd been vigorously rubbing his wet flesh moments before shouted that he would NOT be allowed into her bedroom for a long time. But then, the finest minds of our generation cannot understand the heart of a woman. What chance does a cat with a make-up kit have?
It's now a full week later and his paws are still shaded. Our only hope now is erosion eventually removing the stain, or that the whole "every cell in your body is replaced every X months" eventually removes it along with his entire current body. Because if seven days of cat-licking can't remove it, we humans have no chance.
