Cat Man Do

It's been almost two years since our much beloved cat Maggie died. We've talked about getting another cat, not as a replacement because Maggie simply could never be replaced, but just to have a cat around the house. I missed being greeted when we came home; I missed the weight on my lap as I was reading; I missed being bumped into by an empty little head. We kept stalling, knowing what a commitment we were staring at. One of the hurdles was the carpet in a bedroom where Maggie had peed when she got old and feeble. We figured a new cat would zero in on the spot and we just didn't want to face that.

So this morning, I leapt form bed at the crack of noon, hauled all the furniture out of the room and we ripped up the rug. Fortunately, sort of, there was Congoleum (the sheet vinyl flooring of choice thirty years ago) under the rug, not very pretty, but better than the plywood sub-flooring everyplace else in the house and, more importantly, impervious to cat pee.

Then we went cat shopping. Wheee! First to Animal Care and Control (aka the pound) and then the SPCA. We must have seen at least thirty cats and wound up picking the very first one we had seen. He jumped in my lap when we went into his little cell and was immensely charming. He's tiny, which we both like, three years old and a tiger stripe, but more yellow than the usual orange or ginger. The people at the cat jail had named him "Kris," a name which has to go. We plan on calling him "Zim." R Man nixed my many other proposals, including Bitsy, Cowboy and Elvis. I don't know why.

He has to have his lovely little nuts clipped this week (yow. I'm trying to not empathize too much.) and then we pick him up on Wednesday. I can't wait.