As many people know, Stuart and I have been obsessed with getting a dog. It's all we want in this life! We have our home. We have our cat. We have our hamster. We have each other. Now, we need a dog!! We want German Shepherds, preferably younger than a year so that we can train them and bring them up how we want.
God laughed at this plan. He laughed oh so very hard as we continually live in places where our landlords have one major rule: NO DOGS!! Stuart and I halfheartedly accepted that fact. Instead, we go to the animal shelter and walk those dogs, pretending that they are ours. Or, we spend time reading books or watching documentaries about raising and training dogs, planning on one day being PUPPY SUPER PARENTS!!! Watch us pick out a Marley and all hell breaks loose.
God laughed at us again on the evening of November 3. It was cool night, and we had the windows open to let in that fresh mountain air. As usual, Sparta was glued to the windowsill in his efforts to live outside vicariously by smelling and watching all he could through the screen. Then, I noticed Sparta had a very familiar body position and was making familiar noises. They weren't his "I see a bird or a bunny" noises. It was his "THERE IS A FREAKING CAT IN MY YARD!!! GET OUT OF MY YARD!!! I WILL KICK YOUR BUTT!" noise.
Sure enough, a completely black adult cat stood frozen in the dim glow of the outdoor light that flooded over the stepping stone pathway and front steps. When I saw him, my "save every animal in the world" gear kicked in, and I went to the door expecting him to dash away into the night. However, I was surprised to see the cat come straight up to the screen door and start meowing even though there was a hissing, spitting, angry feline in the window only a few feet away.
"Baby, I think he's lost!" I said sadly, petting his thick black fur. He was so playful and sweet that I thought he couldn't be older than 2. But, man, was he huge!! He was just your perfect big, meaty black cat like straight out of a storybook about witches. All he wanted to do was rub himself against us and crawl over our laps.
It wasn't long before the worsening cold drove Stuart and I to make a decision about what we should do with the cat. It was Saturday night. The animal shelter was closed on Sunday. Several questions and scenarios raced through our heads. What if he has fleas? What if he starts spraying because he smells Sparta? What if Sparta gets at him? What if Sparta starts spraying? What if the black cat doesn't know how to use the litter box? What will our landlord say? My brain was spinning!
"It's so cold outside," Stuart said.
His heart had already melted at the cat that looked just like his childhood cat Snickers back in Raleigh. I, too, couldn't make a decision worrying about Sparta and how the cat would fare in the cold weather outside. Thinking about the essay I had just written about my devotion to Sparta, I told Stuart to put the cat out.
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| He hates the harness. |
Poor Stuart... he had to listen to the kitty whine, scratch, and cry all night long. All the cat wanted was a warm bed to sleep in. Instead, he slept in the airless, tiny bathroom with a shoe-box-turned-litter-box taking up most of the floor space.
Stuart raced off to work early the next morning leaving me with Sparta and the new cat. It wasn't long before my reserves against bringing him into the house changed to a love for him.There are two notches in his left ear, and his left eye often "cries." He has a black nose and black whiskers. He is the perfect-looking Binx from Disney's Hocus Pocus. He also has a very strange habit of constantly kneading. For the first five days, Binx constantly extended and retracted his claws. He even did it while standing still. Once, he fell asleep and his feet kept kneading!
That morning and afternoon, I put flyers up about a found cat in our neighbors' mailboxes, posted a status on The Sylva Herald and The Western Carolinian Facebook, and the night before Stuart had called our neighbors through whitepages.com. Nothing!!! No one had lost a black cat. No one even owned a cat! We were stumped.By the time Monday rolled around, I had become attached. Sunday night, I had a speech all ready for when Stuart came home about how I couldn't stand to take him to the shelter. Black dogs and cats are usually the first ones to be put down after aggressive animals. People just don't like the ordinary normalness of a black animal. They are overlooked, especially black cats because there are so many of them. I knew that if we took him to the shelter that I would have to wait weeks before returning to make extra sure I didn't see him in a cage. I proposed to Stuart that we bring into our family Binx as our new outdoor cat!!
And, God bless him, he said yes!!
