Sunday, May 4, 2008

needful things

               I would like you to meet my cat. 

                          

                                            NEEDS

                        Thanksgiving, 2004, my daughter Sarah brought home a small grey kitten.  This kitten had been left at the doorstep of a local pet shop.  Sarah was friends with the shopowner' s daughter, and had been visiting the shop that day.  She brought this kitten home to a household with two labrador retreivers and an adult male cat.  Barely able to walk, and barely able to see, this one truly was a special needs case. 

                        Our labrador retreivers, Middy the female and Wizzer the male, were wonderfully friendly and faithful dogs.  They had tolerated all sorts of oddities in the household.  We'd had a pet alligator, a couple of varieties of snakes, seventeen bunnies, several iguanas, even a cormorant.  Each incident has a story all its own, but my point here is their  acceptance of every other creature that we brought home.  This kitten was no exception.  Although innately frightened by the dogs, kitty soon dispelled the fear and grew comfortable with them.  The cat was a different story.

                   We'd had a few cats over the years. At first, I resisted.  Two dogs was enough.  Occassionally the girls would whine and implore, and when I finallygave in, I conditioned it. It had to be a male, seal point Siamese- or some absurd concoction.  His name was Miles and I don't recall what happened to Miles.  Then there was Killer Kitty, who brought in decapitated squirrels with bodies twice its size.  Then there was the kitty with no name, who became Big Kitty on this Thanksgiving in 2004, when this litte grey thing appeared.

                Big Kitty was weird.  Bought at a pet store, he was seriously disfunctional.  He never adapted to the dogs, was afraid of his own shadow. Friends who would visit never saw him. He wouldn't go outside, rarely made a sound. 

                      When I moved in 2005, I got the cats and he got the dogs.  Big Kitty didn't take well at all to this change, and one day when the door opened, he ran out and has never returned.  This scrawny grey thing that grew up like a dog, would go to the door and meow to go out.  He'd be gone for a day or so, and come home with some pretty nasty battle scars.  But by golly he's always sprung back.  He's truly a Special Needs, but is known affectionately by all who meet him, as Mr. Needs. 

 

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pleased to meet you Mr. Needs.