A number of years ago, when our neighbor, Bill, lived south of town, he had an orange cat named Timmy. One day Timmy failed to return home, and Bill assumed he had met an untimely end, perhaps at the hands of a predator. Four years later, Bill got a phone call from a local vet. He said, "We have your cat." "I don't have a cat," said Bill. The vet told him someone had found a cat, turned it in to the vet, and he had checked the chip in the cat and found Bill's name. So Timmy was returned to his original owner. No one knows where Timmy was during those four years. He may have found a new home, or he may have been out on the loose.
During those four years, Bill had married and moved to the house next door to ours. Now they have a dog and a new cat, a Siamese named Obie. Apparently, Timmy doesn't like the dog or the cat, and doesn't much care for the new wife either. So he refuses to go in the house except to eat. When we moved into our house, he was spending most of his time in the front arborvitae hedge. We eventually made friends with Timmy, and he seems to consider us his family. Whenever one of us is outside, he is right there to keep us company.
Now that the front hedge is gone, Timmy has found some new places to sleep. When it's cold he sleeps in the arborvitae hedge in the backyard. We've just planted a couple of new trees near the house, and he seems to like them, especially now that we've put down nice soft mulch.
I recently put straw mulch in the vegetable garden, and he finds this to be comfortable as well.
But Timmy's all time favorite place to sleep is on 'his' chair on the deck in the shade. He's really figured out how to get comfortable there.
Timmy almost never comes in the house, except for an occasional mad dash if we happen to leave the door open. But as soon as he's inside, he quickly realizes his error and dashes out again. He's pretty much left the birds alone, except for going after the occasional juvenile junco on the ground. His primary prey is bees and other insects, which he eats if he catches them.
What's amazing is that Timmy doesn't seem to mind that we disappear for four months. When we arrived home in April he was still here. He probably wondered why no one had come out to refill his water dish, but otherwise everything was back to normal.
As far as we're concerned this is the best kind of pet to have. Someone else feeds him and takes care of his medical needs. We get all the love.
No comments:
Post a Comment