I dislike shopping. The trudge from shop to shop, the barrage of choice, the agony of indecision—my personal hell. Except for food shopping, which I don’t mind at all. A lady’s gotta eat. And since I enjoy cooking and baking, I also enjoy purchasing what I need in order to cook and bake.
But there is a type of shopping that I love, though I hesitate to think of it as a purchase. More like an adoption. And that’s visiting the animal shelter to choose (or be chosen by) a new housemate. Hands down, without question, the funnest thing ever.
Believe it or not, even though I’ve lived with cats my whole life, it’s only relatively recently that I’ve had to go “shopping” for one. I don’t know where the kitties came from during my early childhood, and I have no actual memories of them, just black-&-white photos. When I was twelve, a handsome, dark, long-haired fellow turned up at the door and charmed the whole family. Gurgi lived by his own rules and let us know with bites to the ankle if we stepped out of line.
The first cat of my very own was one of a litter of farm kittens from next door to my mum’s summer house. I decided that Gurgi needed a playmate, so I brought home a tiny orange and white girl named Tivi.
Time passed, adventures were had, and the next kitties in the house were those that came with my husband. A chubby grey tabby named … wait for it … Grey Kitty, and a dainty calico without a name. I know! I didn’t need to live with her for long before I came up with the perfect name—Mrs. Danvers (of Rebecca fame). Fit her to a tee. We like to say she lived so long, 22 years, out of spite. At the same time, another handsome, dark fellow joined the family. He walked in from the street one day and never left. We named him after the street, Calvert.
Now we get to the shopping. We had been many years without an animal companion, and our boys needed the joy and responsibility of a cat. We all went to the shelter and met a few of the adult cats. The most affectionate by far was a chubby calico named Portia.
She’d had a bit of a hard life—a limp, missing a few teeth—my heart melted. She chose me as her favourite person, though she was friendly with everyone. But her hard life caught up with her and she left us far too soon.
About a year later, we returned to the shelter and were again taken with an adult cat, black except for a small white patch on her belly. (Touch the white patch. Go ahead - I dare you.)
After Mogget had lived with us for a month, it became clear she hadn’t, in fact, been spayed. Cat in heat—oh joy. After that was taken care of, the once cuddly cat wasn’t. She wanted to be close to her humans, but only so close, as determined by her.
Every cat needs a playmate, right? Back to the shelter we went and this time we chose a kitten, a feisty tuxedo boy.
Bruno was such a guy! And he never grew out of his teenager stage, much to Mogget’s annoyance. But they played together, by her rules, hunted voles and shrews together, and grew old together.
So you can keep your clothes shopping and furniture shopping and shoe shopping (ugh!). Invite me to go furry companion shopping and I’ll race you to the car.
4 comments:
Fun post! Put me near a rock shop and I'm a gonner. Furry family? not so much although I did find my last furry companion, Duke, at the Oregon Humane Society. He did choose me and I am so very glad he did!.
Great cat stories--thank you, Luanna! We are also cat people. Our first one was a stray that lived in a welding supply warehouse, so her name was Tuesday Weld, just Tuesday for short. She loved my husband and tolerated me. Since then, we've had cats that loved me too. :-)
I really enjoyed your post! We have no animal companions at this time.
The neighbors cat comes over sometimes, he is a good hunter and almost everyday we see him carriying a mouse or vole home to his human.
when the cat is in the backyard my husband talks to him:))
These stories remind me how much joy our animal companions bring to our lives! Thank you, Luanna.
Post a Comment