Maybe I do not have enough to do as you might think, but I have been wondering about, missing and watching for George.
George had the biggest personality, But it did not seem to matter to him that I was not a cat person. He was our neighborhood cat, a long-haired yellow cat. Kind of like a tabby cat… I think, as I do not really know much about cats.
George liked to get around. He seemed to make just about every house on the street his own when on his daily rounds. His independent nature caused him to stay out many nights doing what cats do best. He slept overnight at other houses, including mine, as evidenced by the long, pale light hair on my/his favorite seat cushion on the porch. But it was a fair trade-off as he kept the wild critters at bay, especially the chipmunks.
Many early mornings when looking out the window, you could catch sight of George crouched low with his ears at attention as he spotted something he was stalking to sneak up on and surprise. No matter the season, he seemed to like them all.
However, one early cold winter morning, before I discovered that he had a real home, he showed up at the door with icicles hanging on his fur. Unlike me, like a crazy woman — at least that was the look he gave me — I dragged him inside. We bonded with petting while he warmed up. When it was time for him to go back outside, he was quickly gone. But it was not an escaping kind of run just in case you are wondering. As usual, it was a couple more weeks until I saw him again.
Even though our neighborhood is generally a friendly one, no one discovered where George really lived for quite a while. Maybe we were all secretly hoping that he could just live at our house. Surprisingly, it took a while to figure out where he really lived.
Of course, in the summer, we would see George more often as he would sleep on the porch so much that my visitors thought he was mine. I explained that he was not mine, but that we enjoyed the fringe benefits of having a cat without having to take him to the vet, buy cat food or have a litter box.
When George’s real family was getting ready to move, he disappeared for longer than he ever had. Everyone started asking each other if he had been seen. It was discovered that at least three other houses had been putting out food and water also for him. He had a couple of porch cat beds at different homes — even one heated! It was a wonder he ever went home at all. He clearly had won the hearts of everyone on the street. However, no one had seen George.
The neighbors and George’s family agreed that when he showed up, he could continue to still live here. He would ‘officially’ be the neighborhood cat. A couple of designated families would see to his vet visits, health and general well-being. There would not be a shortage of care and love for George.
A couple of weeks after his family moved, he showed up looking healthy, well-groomed and especially well-fed. He had a ‘look at me’ kind of look. George looked like he had been living the life of a cat… inside, though we were clueless as to where. And then, in George-style, he disappeared again. It has been a summer and now a fall without him. It seems he found a new home where he can just lay around living the life of leisure, at least with one of his nine lives, sleeping on someone’s bed. We all miss him, except maybe not the chipmunks.
