Rocky

On the off chance that some dear reader may not have construed this from my myriad postings of chickadee photos, let me declare publicly that I am very fond of animals. I have exercised restraint by refraining from surrounding myself with hordes of pets, but we have frequently had either a bird or cat or both and perhaps two of each reside with us. Some were strays (even one bird, believe it or not), and others were foisted upon us. Rocky was foisted.

I don't want to tell the full Rocky story, but let me say that he came to visit with us one Thanksgiving and only left last Thanksgiving — five years later! At the time, five years ago, Butterfly, his human, lived in a bachelor apartment (what Canadians call a little, one room apartment), and the cat was driving her mad because there was simply no escape for her. He would pounce on her in the middle of the night, chew her hair, do whatever it took to send Butterfly onto the brink of utter despair, and there was nowhere for her to escape although she did try the tactic of subjecting him to timeouts in the bathroom periodically.

That's when Butterfly tricked us. She brought him home for Thanksgiving because she declared that he would be ever so lonely without her. True enough: however, when it became time for Butterfly to leave, she declared, as if she had just thought of this and hadn't schemed it all along: "I think I'll leave Rocky with you guys. He loves it here." That was true too; he loved having access to a back yard that he could explore at will.

Rocky was more used to females, so it took him and me a few months to get to know each other. But we bonded one day in the garden and were good friends thereafter.

There are cats and there are cats. Rocky is the latter — a great cat — my best cat . He loves to be near his folk, to get some quality lap time, and to share just about whatever food is on the menu. I miss his inevitable blurp of greeting whenever I enter the house.

But we had to let him go back to Butterfly because, as many of you now know, Cuppa and I like to pick up and go (generally to The Cottage) for protracted periods of time whenever the spirit moves us. Cats are not terribly portable critters, however. So, this past Thanksgiving, we trundled him back across the province to to be reunited with his original human — Butterfly — who has a real home now, not a tiny bachelor apartment.

Despite this extra space, read her blog to see how he is driving her mad once again. Our house is configured in such a way that he could be confined to the lower portion by night, far removed from us. He was prevented from pestering us mercilessly — at least he was after we figured out how to keep him from prying open doors. That was quite a battle of wits ... which we barely won. But Butterfly's house is not so conveniently configured as ours and ... well, you can read her account here. Please pay special attention to the comments. I find some of them to be hysterically funny.