Caleb

  

Caleb

All this thinking about stuff, has made me feel a little overwhelmed and sad. Even though my story has turned out well, there is a lot of a sadness in my past. I can't help but wonder from time to time what happened to some of my shelter mates. Especially the ones like me. Did they ever find their "forever homes". Um-mp, I wonder. Somehow I doubt it. I think they went silently and nobly to a quiet, unceremonious death. A death that no one bothered to witness or to care about . Just another lonely, unwanted cat, that someone had not bothered to care enough about in the first place, not wanted enough to keep around when things became inconvenient, just dumped at a shelter , or worse left alone in an empty home. I heard some terrible tales from my shelter mates. I still can't quite account for my lack of remembrance, but maybe I had to forget in order to move on. But it still bothers me that I can't remember a damn thing about my own past. 

Yet, on the other paw, I wouldn't have traded my experiences for any other. Throughout my travails, I have learned compassion, I have learned to be optimistic even during some of my darkest days. Had my life continued on the way it was before the shelter, I would have been just another subdued cat, playing the game, living out my existence waiting for the next can of food to be opened, maybe running to the sound of a bag of treats, that irresistible crackling sound of junky goodness that cats become addicted to . Humans can relate, it is like a bag of Lay's Sour Cream and Onion Chips, or a magical satchel of Hershey's Kisses. Even though I don't remember my existence before the shelter, I have a feeling it was pretty  uneventful up until my time of abandonment. I know I used a cat door, because it was something I was familiar with. D. has a patio door, that for a while had a loose screen panel. I would go out into our little yard pushing myself through the loose screen passageway.  The act of taking a little leap and pushing myself thorough the broken screen, it felt so familiar, and then I remembered at some point, long, long , long ago I had used something similar, but it was a real cat door, not an improvised one.

 I have an adopted brother named Caleb, he's a rescue from the County Animal Services, he got out and disappeared for a week a few months ago. He hadn't really disappeared but he was  just lurking around, scared out of his wits, hiding underneath the back of a house, one street over from the back of our house, that had an open section , where the wood was rotting away. And  he just stayed there the whole time, staying hidden inside all sorts of  nooks and crannies. Then suddenly the whole screen part of the door, which was my door to the back yard, became suddenly closed off with a sheet of vinyl and massive amounts of duck tape. D. made sure Caleb didn't get anywhere that door after that. If he ever got out again, he would just go berserk and freak out again and go running off and then hide. I go out as I please, but I don't go anywhere. I just sit in the little disheveled yard, or on the little concrete entrance way to my front door. She knows I won't go anywhere. That's why she lets me go out when I want to. Although I don't like the idea of being controlled by a human, we've adapted to one another. I do believe she cares about me , and will take care of me until the end. 

Caleb told me about his little adventure when she finally got him back on her search and rescue mission. D. went crazy looking for him non-stop, night and day, she would run out in the street all sorts of crazy hours crying  Caleb, Caleb, Caleb over and over again. I didn't speak to him for a good week at least once he was back. Of course he tried to pull it off like nothing had happened, but I didn't fall for that funny business. I was angry at him for his stupidity, and for acting like such a fool, and not having the balls to get out of his hiding place and come home . I mean he is a lot younger than me, he's only two,  and he's kind of dumb. I mean he's sweet and all, but he just doesn't understand the ways of the world yet, even though he was taken in off the streets by Animal Control. D. adopted him at the County Animal Services, which makes the SPCA, where I lived for a while look like the Hilton. That place was packed full of non-stop crazed barking dogs. I don't know how Caleb survived it, but he's just one of those cats that goes with the flow, and lets everything roll off his back. He is somewhat needy though, and always wanting to be petted either by me or D.  I won't groom him, but I allow him to groom me as it should be. I show him that I am the Superior Cat here. After-all, I am the first one, well the first since her other two passed away. That is another story for another day. And I hate to admit that sometimes I resort to behaviors that have been genetically transmitted into my being for centuries on end, and yet I have this capacity to think, and to pontificate, and to philosophize which like everything else in my life is both a blessing and a curse.

Anyway, this blogging thing is a lot more exhausting than one would think. 

Xoxo, Coco