What Our Cornish Rex Cats Taught Us About Loving Difficult People

A story about setting boundaries.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Odo Rex Tremendae.

Sleek and slender with short wavy black and smoke downy-like fur, large golden eyes, enormous ears, this was our Odo. He was an almost perfect show cat specimen and absolutely gorgeous.

While my husband and I would typically adopt domestic short-haired cats we had become enamored with this pedigree and imagined adopting this unusual feline would be a fun and unique experience. Oh wait, what’s that old adage?…

Be careful what you wish for?

Odo came “as advertised”. Personality and then some, a six-month-old kitten always desperate for cuddles. Within minutes he could win hearts and minds, despite our friends' first impressions of his alien-like appearance. He wanted to be held like a baby and as he gently placed a paw on each side of your neck, he would rub his nose into your ear or against your face and purr with a deafening roar.

That cat LOVED to love and he did it with 100% of his soul.

The Cornish Rex is renowned for this kind of affection, their boundless energy, and an unexplained attraction to water. They are very entertaining, interactive, and quite dog-like in many aspects; it is typical for them to curiously follow you from room to room. And while you’re in that room together, they seek the highest point to jump to. Thinking it’s fun to blindside you at their whim, they will leap from the ground to your back, then spring from your shoulders to the top of the kitchen cupboards, your shredded skin be damned!

Playful and affectionate: great kitty-cat characteristics. But like any creature bred over generations for particular characteristics, pronounced quirks became obsessions. Let me explain.

Odo was an obsessive lover:

A lover of mayhem. Tipping over any vessel holding water (every single time!) was one of his favorite pranks. Funny right? It loses its hilarity over 17 years.

A lover of humans, he was on a relentless search for your sinus cavity when smashing his nose into your nostrils. It’s so cute until you’re in the middle of sipping your very hot morning coffee.

A lover of Éowyn, our other Rex, “romancing” her at every opportunity (even though they had both been altered). Yes, Dum-Dums that we are, we adopted a second Cornish Rex a few months after Odo.

However, considered a “reject” without any fur at all, Éowyn (or “Tator Tots” as she became known) required re-homing from a previous failed adoption. She was absolute sunshine and steel. She was incredibly sweet but always set her boundaries. No one screwed with scrawny but mighty Queen Tators!

Why stop at cats? We adopted three retired racing greyhounds: gentle, sweet, unassuming. Odo took advantage of the low prey drives of these particular ex-racers, batting at them while hiding under furniture, tormenting these athletes with his antics.

So I submit to you, Odo’s high jinks were eventually responsible for driving all four of them to their graves. How do we know this? He was the first adopted and the last of them to go. Think about it!

Wits’ End

As time went on, he did not slow down. We adopted him at six months old and by the time he was six years old we were almost at our wits’ end with him. His crazy behaviors had escalated to the destruction of property, annihilating the stair’s carpet on a couple of our homes.

I think what was wearing us down the most was his consistency. He just couldn’t help himself; he was compelled to repeat on a loop with everything annoying action.

With the negative reaction he was soliciting from us we were feeling guilty about how our feelings of frustration were mounting. Ask anyone, my husband and I are animal lovers and consider our pets as companions, as our fur-kids. We grew up with cats and dogs our entire lives but I kid you not: we had never encountered an Entity with a capital E like “Odo Rex Tremendae”.

After this description, you may not believe he was a sweet cat in many ways — he really was! We loved him but he was costing us our sanity.

Odo reminds me of some humans. While they may not literally be trying to enter my nostrils with their cold wet nose or tearing up the carpet on the stairs, the emotional carnage is pretty similar.

I think you know the kind of people I mean. They range from relentlessly annoying to emotionally destructive and completely oblivious to their behavior. If you encounter them on a regular basis, they start wearing down the goodwill you are trying to extend to them. Some of them are even destructive to your soul. Mostly, these people are wholly unaware of their behaviors. Some of them, like Odo, give no figs.

How To Cope With Jerks

Feeling a deep commitment, we felt re-homing Odo was out of the question. When we were millimeters away from losing our minds we decided the onus was on us to devise solutions. Here is a cat with a brain fully hard-wired to be exactly who he was. He had been designed not only for his physical appearance but also for his personality. He was never going to change and being a cat, he felt pretty awesome about staying exactly who he was.

So we introduced some changes that were kind to him and a relief to us.

Gentle Quarantine

One of Odo’s most disruptive actions was his nighttime activity. He kept us awake most of the night instigating fights with Éowyn under our covers as we tried to sleep.

Finally, our lightbulb went on. We created a special cozy cat apartment just for the two of them. They had access to a small cushy loveseat with a ton of pillows and blankets to nuzzle in together. They had toys, a scratching post, premium food, fresh water, and clean litterboxes at their disposal. These were their nighttime quarters.

We made bedtime a happy ritual for them. Positive reinforcement all the way, we would guide them to their space with their favorite cat treats and while they gleefully munched away we would slip out the door. It worked!

OMG! Sweet merciful uninterrupted sleep!

Odo taught me that there are kind solutions to coexisting with difficult people too. I’m certainly not naive to the fact that some may consider me an annoying person. We are all who we are and not necessarily compatible as buddies and that is OK.

You can hide away from non-compatible people all you like but they will constantly pop up throughout your entire life. How you react is your choice. Sometimes you can learn to live with their behaviors.

Drawing the Hard Line

Other times something a little more definitive is necessary. I envy those who handle this so elegantly — knowing when to quietly but clearly set down boundaries. Enter Éowyn.

There was no hesitation or uncertainty in her. How did we know? She would firmly set Odo on his ass when she had had enough of his insistent behaviors.

Odo would try to incite a reaction out of her until finally and under no uncertain terms, a play fight would ensue until Odo lost. He always lost because even though Éowyn was tiny, she had the stronger mindset. Then she’d saunter over to the window or our laps and move on, the incident forgotten. It was quick and concise leaving no doubt as to where she stood. And Odo, he’d give her the space she declared was hers. Rule, Queen Tators!

We all want to be loved for who we are. Unlike cats, we can be capable of changing our annoying or destructive behaviors to those around us.

I cannot count on others to conform to the behaviors I expect from them. There are times when you can let it go and find a way to live with it. Or you can calmly and clearly set boundaries like Éowyn did. Even with a cat like Odo.