Home At Last
After wandering in the woods, wondering where my next meal was coming from, saw a house.
I climbed up the stairs of the back deck and heard someone on the other side of the first window. I jumped as high as I could several times and saw a lady doing dishes. She saw me and a few minutes later, came out onto the deck with some milk in a dish. I finished the milk quickly and then scratched on the door. She did not let me in, so I headed for the wood pile in the back of the house and went to sleep.
My wood pile is gone, but a new one is in its place on the lower right.
Next morning I went back onto the deck and looked in the door. No one was there. I waited and waited and then a man came to the door and said "shoo, I don't want a cat!" I waited around anyway, and soon the lady came out with a dish of vegetable soup! Didn't she know that I am a carnivore? I was so hungry that I became a vegetarian for a while. With the soup and a couple of mice I was able to catch, I didn't do too badly. Still I was worried about living outdoors as the weather got colder. After seeing what happened later that winter,
I was right to be worried. How would you like to search for mice in snow as deep as that! I wonder if my fleas would have survived?
The second day went about the same as the first. Then, in the evening , I was sitting outside the door on the deck and I heard the man say to his wife "do you suppose that we should let the cat in?" When she said "yes", he opened the door and I ran in before he had the time to close it. I gave him a big leg rub and he picked me up. I purred as loudly as I could and snuggled close. He scratched under my chin as I did my best to win him over. The man left the house for a while and when he returned, he had some catfood and litter. They wanted me to stay! After supper, I looked around for a place to sleep, and found a good one.
The man of the house was still not sure he wanted to keep me. He kept making phone calls to see if I belonged to any families in town and then he called the animal shelter. I kept trying to tell him that my second family had left, but he wouldn't listen. I was very friendly to all humans that came for a visit UNTIL the vet came and did all sorts of mean things to me. After that, I always hid from strangers.
The man and woman of the house finally decided to keep me. Actually I now own the house and let them live in it, but that is another story. Things went very well for several years. Oh, there were some problems, such as the time I fell out the window, and had a wonderful time exploring the woods. Then in the fall of 1996 disaster struck!
