Talking about cats. Well. A cat.

Everyone’s read those stories about the neighbourhood cat who embarasses their human servants by stealing small, portable household items - socks and the like.

But what if you have one of those cats, and that cat is agoraphobic?

Meet Sophie.

Sophie is a black and white domestic short-haired spayed female cat. We got her from the SPCA in January of 2013, so she’s nearly two years old.

She’s also a massive weirdo.

I don’t blog about our individual cats very often but I feel that an agoraphobic sock-stealer warrants a few words.

She will go outside - she actually waits for the front door to open, bolts outside and then turns around like she’s saying “I have made a terrible mistake.”

If she’s out for longer than a few minutes, she goes under the house and we get to hear about her trials and tribulations until J can coax her back in.

The socks … our hallway is always decorated with at least two socks. I wear thick socks instead of slippers and I’ll often find one or two of them in the hallway. Given half a chance, she’ll also pinch them straight out of drawers if the drawers are left open enough for her to get her paw in.

I went into Patrick’s room one day and she’d emptied his whole socks and undies drawer on to the floor. I can’t even imagine why.

She’s not a lap cat, in the traditional sense. She won’t sit on my lap at all if I’m on the couch. If I’m on the bed, or in the bed reading, however, I am - apparently - fair game.

She has a permanently startled look, not aided by the fact that her face looks like she stuck it in an inkwell and the colour stuck.

She is odd, and endearing and squawks when she meows, like she never learned how to make the noise properly.

An agoraphobic, sock-stealing cat who can’t meow properly and who has her own very clear boundaries with humans.

Well. It could be WORSE.