Back in the summer of 2004, my brother Mark moved back in the house temporarily. He was in transition, since he was looking to buy a house and planning to get married the next year. I don’t remember him taking a lot of stuff in with him, but one thing he brought with him would need special attention: his cat Buddy. I also understood that the cat would probably stay with us once Mark found a house and moved out. His fiancée already had two cats, and adding one more was a little too much. Since I loved cats I didn’t mind keeping Buddy once Mark was settled in his new place. It had been a while since we had any pets, so it took a while to get used to having a cat around the house again.
I also realized that because of Mark’s job and the fact that he was looking for a house and planning to get married, he was not going to be around a whole lot. It was understandable given his situation. My father sometimes said that he hardly noticed Mark had moved in with us. When he said that, I had to say that one thing for sure was that his cat had moved in with us. He was also a little hesitant to take Buddy in, even though he too liked cats. But he knew that I had a way with cats and would want to take care of Buddy if Mark couldn’t, so he didn’t object to keeping him. We got to know the cat and he got used to us while Mark was by necessity absent most of the time.
The first problem that arose was my father’s choice of cat food. He was not a grandfather yet, but he spoiled the cat in a grandfatherly way. Mark had Buddy on a strict diet and made it clear to us that we were to give him only one scoop of diet cat food a day, and nothing else. I didn’t want to go against Mark’s wishes, but my father felt it was a good thing to give him something different for a treat, which happened to be cans of Fancy Feast moist food. My gut feeling was confirmed soon, because once we gave Buddy the Fancy Feast, he didn’t want anything else. He would still eat some of the IAMS diet food, but only when there was no Fancy Feast for a while. He had previously been quiet and keeping to himself, but now he was constantly meowing for the moist food, especially early in the morning. We got used to not being able to do anything in the morning before giving Buddy his Fancy Feast.
At first, we would hide the cans from Mark, and clean out the food dishes before he came home, but he eventually found out. I tried to let him know that I didn’t approve of the Fancy Feast, but my father insisted on giving it to him. Of course Mark didn’t like it, but by then it was too late. Once cats have the moist food, they don’t want anything else. In Mark’s words, Fancy Feast is like crack to cats, and from what I saw, that description is fairly accurate.
After about six months of living with us, Mark brought his new house and moved out. Buddy stayed behind with us as expected, and he was our cat now. It took a while, but by that time Buddy was used to his new surroundings, and began to warm up to us. Since I was now the human father figure in his life and had a way with cats, he developed a liking to me. I realized it shortly after Mark moved out. Buddy liked sleeping in different spots around the house, and he also liked laying in my laundry basket whenever it had freshly cleaned clothes in it. I remember one time as I was lying in my bed, he was making his way into the room and about to jump into the basket and get his hair all over my clean clothes. I saw him and said hi, and after looking at me for a second, he jumped up into the bed with me and slept there. At that time, I knew I had won his trust and was now his best friend.
My father started to notice that too. He also noticed something I wasn’t totally aware of, and that was that Buddy was going everywhere I went. After coming home from work and feeding Buddy, I would sometimes take a nap, and I came to expect him to make his way back up to my room and sleep with me there. I just got used to having a cat sleeping with me, and got used to sleeping on one side of the bed. But he was going other places I went inside the house, too. When I was downstairs on the computer in the front room, he would find a spot nearby and sleep there. When I got home from work, he would either be waiting for me, or would show up soon after I arrived. Not all cats are like that with all people, but again, since I had a way with cats and some dogs, and since I was his main caretaker, he was now around me most of the time. It has been several years now, and Buddy is still here, although he is older and slower that he was before.
No comments:
Post a Comment