"I'm not a 'cat' person." I've said it for years. But there's been a cute one hanging around our neighborhood for several weeks now. It is clean, friendly, but collarless. Well, when we first noticed her she had a clear collar with a handwritten, hospital ID-ish number on it. Then that disappeared. We all (the neighbors) assumed the owner had removed it. But still, nobody claimed her.
And yet, she seemed to claim everyone. "Don't feed her!" I said, when Big Daddy mused over the idea. "I think [our neighbor] Pearl or Li'l B have seen her eating their dogs' food." And I've seen her sitting sentry at our other neighbor's garage door, like she belongs there.
One day I was unloading groceries from the car, and got the bejeezus scared out of me when I returned for the next set of bags. As I leaned into the back of the car the cat BOLTED out of it!
She came to visit us one sunny afternoon when we were hanging out in the backyard. Big Daddy was working on his computer and I was crocheting. She jumped up and snuggled at my feet on the chaise for a half an hour! (Kinda weird that I let her, huh? She was so very clean, and we really assumed she belonged to someone in the 'hood because she was so very tame and friendly.) Then we started to see her hanging out back there on her own.
So we broke down and put a bowl of milk out for her.
Which she then began to expect and clamour for.
It doesn't appear that she's going away any time soon. She started growing on me. I said to the kids, "Maybe we'd better name her," and they laughed, and we continued to call her "Cat". I said to Big Daddy, "I kind of like having this outddor cat." And he put a hand on my shoulder and said, "I would like to go on this journey with you." Which cracked me up a) because he's such a dork, and b) because he's "not a cat person" either, especially allergy-wise. So we bought a Cat a bag of food at Trader Joe's.
And BD, without a peep, disappeared into the garage at some point and emerged with a house for her! A house! And she loves it!
She doesn't go in there all the time. We're not sure if that's where she warms up at night. We still kinda think she may spend her nights at her "real" family's house.
We welcome Cat to hang out in our yard, kick back on our lawn furniture, and have a little snack (as long as it does not come out of our pond!) as long as she likes.
But she can't come in the house. Sorry, Cat. We already have a furry snuggler and my guess is you two wouldn't get along very well...
Nope. We wouldn't do that to you, Edward!
