I went downstairs twice last night to stand on the front porch and call Camille.  Camille is almost always the last cat to come inside.  She likes to wait until the other cats have come inside, eaten, prowled around and settled in for the night. 
    Camille isn’t our youngest cat, but she’s the smallest and she’s the last one added to our family.  She adopted us after someone had declawed her, let her out and allowed her to be badly injured.  She’s always been the low cat on the ‘dominance hierarchy’ totem pole.
    Our oldest cat, Philipo, is the only one who doesn’t give her a hard time.  Lilli, our ocicat, hates her.  This is because Lilli is possessed by the  green-eyed monster of jealousy.  Camille, you see, competes for my husband’s attention.  There are a number of times when I’ve caught Lilli’s eye from across the room, all snuggled up with my husband.  The look on her face very clearly says: We’d be just as happy if you and the rest of the cats moved out and left us here alone.
    Neal, our Burmese, is not jealous of Camille, but desperately wants her attention.  He’s like an adolescent boy doing all the wrong things to get the pretty girl to notice him.  What he usually does is run up and stop right in front of Camille, adopting this stiff legged pose with his back up and his tail puffed out.  He arches his neck and looks at her sideways.  I am sure he imagines this to make him look devastatingly handsome.  We call it his “Macho Man” pose.  He would wear a black leather kitty jacket if we could find one small enough.
    Camille just regards him as a pesky little brother.  A lot of times, all she has to do is see him to run in the other direction.  “Neal,” I said to him one day.  “I think I would be ashamed if my sister turned around and ran every time she saw me.”
    But, he just doesn’t get it.  He can’t imagine why she doesn’t like him.
    Roberto, our marmalade tabby and the current “Head Kitty,” for the most part, ignores Camille.  If he is thwarted (doesn’t get his way) however, he takes it out on her.  As I have said elsewhere, Roberto has a little anger management problem.
    But, Camille is a street girl and she is just happy to have a family.  The other cats may be a royal pain in the ass most of the time, but pain in the ass is easy if you’ve dealt with abandoned, declawed and on the street.  This elegant Calico ballerina girl comes in at night, wanders and prowls the house, and finally curls up on the cushion of the green bench on the landing.  When I go up and down, she looks up at me, squeezes her eyes shut and says a simple ‘Thank you.’  Cats like Camille never forget a kindness.