The other day I titled an entry ‘Alley Cats’, because the topic was about walking alleyways in the city.
However, this is probably just as appropriate a post for such a title, as the cool cat of ours, Eddie, was a true alley cat at one time. The winter before we adopted him from the street was the coldest on record and I distinctly remember seeing him run across the street one day in the snow, and wondering why a cat was out on such an awful day. I didn’t know at the time that he was on his own. Poor guy.
I didn’t see him again until the following spring, when all thin and dirty, he followed another stray that we were feeding into our yard. Actually, by then and unbeknown to me, he had already been to our place quite a few times while I was at work, including inside the house, sitting on Nick’s lap while he worked from our home office! This had been going on for I-don’t-know-how-long, when one day Nick called me to the yard to “Look at this cat”. That first moment of eye contact with the feline who was to become Our Eddie, is indelibly stamped in my memory. I remember saying “Ohhh, can we keep him?!”
Upon closer inspection, I saw that he had been neutured and his front paws had been de-clawed. This being the case, we understood that someone could very well be looking for this fellow, so we called the Humane Society in an attempt to get him back to his people. We persisted with them for quite a while, but he didn’t seem to have anyone looking for him. And after the first emotional reaction of “Oh I want this cat!”, our more reasonable thinking had kicked in. Did we really want another cat at that time, considering we already had our old sweet orange cat, Johnson? (who has since died). And though not feral, this foundling seemed to have a little (a lot?!) of street-cat in him. But he had nowhere else to go and decided that he liked our place just fine thank you very much.
Attempts at disciplining him were a sometimes humorous challenge. Like the time I was teaching him not to go in the bedroom. I sent him out and then I sat within view of the hallway, where I could see the hind-end of him just standing there in front of the bedroom door. Then suddenly he bolted in. I went after him and found his bum sticking out from under the bed. I dragged him out and put him in the hall. Then, with my finger pointing the naughty-wag, I said “No … no” very clearly and directly. And you know what he did? He walked over to me and standing on his hind legs, batted by ankle several times with his ineffective claw-less paws. Then huffed. Yes huffed! And turned and walked away down the stairs. I was left standing there with my mouth hanging open until I started laughing!
We have no idea how old he is now, but eight years later he is getting older and slowing down. He still likes to go out for a walk in the ‘hood, but his sojourns are shorter these days, and mostly he just likes to hang around with us. Needless to say that we have grown to love him a lot and can’t imagine life without him now. We see him as a precious gift that found it’s way into our lives!
And nowadays he is welcome on the beds where we are more than happy to give him cuddles and coo coo kitty love talk.
