Compassion from the Catless

Ryan and I had a flashback today! While we were living in the Terrace I noticed a cat roaming the neighborhood. It was really thin...you could nearly see its ribs. I thought it was homeless. On one particularly hot day I left some water outside for him to drink while Ryan was at work. Weeks later I'm getting nervous because this cat starts showing up at our door every morning to greet us. He's there when I get out of class. Ryan is allergic to cats and I didn't think he thought all that well of them, regardless. I was careful not to feed him anything but I didn't think he'd be drawn back so much by a little water. We didn't talk about this cat for some time. I was kinda hoping Ryan hadn't noticed him much.

One day I hear him meowing incessantly and I realize there is no way Ryan isn't catching this...and as of late he had been bringing his little friend with him. This was becoming a problem! Ryan is not gonna be happy with me when he finds out I encouraged this cat and his little sidekick to frequent our house! 

These weren't the actual cats...just a likeness of them.  Except the big one was skinnier.

Testing the waters to see how upset he might be, I ask "Do you hear that cat? I don't know why he keeps showing up!" ...and as I'm about to confess that I only gave him water once Ryan blurts out, "Well, I know he likes ham!" 

Uhhh, what?!?!?

T: "How do you know he likes ham?" 

R: "I've been feeding him our lunch meat!"

Hahahaha! All this time I had been worrying about giving him one bowl of water and my husband had been providing him tastier food than he'd ever get from home...if he had one.

Well, we'd "made our bed"...so we bought some decent catfood and more or less adopted him.  We named them Maurice and King Julian!

Our favorite moments were when he would watch us pull into the driveway and then jump on the hood of the car and stare at us through the windshield. The younger one was a spaz and was always trying to climb our little tree in the front yard. We'd sit on the grass and let Maurice lay by us. Ryan would always have to shower after but he enjoyed it more than I expected he would. 

We eventually learned that he belonged to someone that lived nearby. They had noticed him frequenting our place but didn't really mind. 

I guess from this experience I should have known we would eventually get a dog. It was a fun time and a fond memory!