*Originally posted by Master Wang-Ka *
**Guinastasia: Buffy is a longhaired orange tom, only tom currently in the house, excepting yours truly. He is not named for the TV series, but based on my rules about cats.
Y’see, once you FEED a cat… and give the cat a NAME… it’s your cat.
Buffy integrated himself into the herd one day, and wandered in with everyone else, you see. My wife still marvels about how the other cats didn’t growl or hiss or even really seem to notice him. He was one of the gang from day one… except that my wife blocked him from entering with one foot, remarking “Who are you?”
He looked up as if to say, “Well, you called “kitty kitty.” I’m a kitty,” and began trying to climb over her foot to get in.
She wouldn’t let him in, of course. Not OUR cat. But remarkably laid-back and… domesticated. Rather than leaving, he simply hung out on our porch all day. Finally, my wife began leaving food out there for him. “I’m not going to let him starve,” she said.
“A cat won’t starve to death, honey,” I said. “A cat will move on, looking for food. Unless you put some out there for him. Then he’ll decide this is home.”
But who listens to ME around here? “Don’t give the cat a name,” I said. “When you give the cat a name, you’re attached. You might as well invite him in, then.”
So the cat became “that buff-colored cat.”
The day my wife and daughter began calling him “Buffy,” I knew we had another &%$# cat…
Took two Christmases to break Buffy of the habit of climbing Christmas trees. He wasn’t a tinsel eater, he wasn’t an ornament batter… but Buffy likes high places. He saw no reason at all why he shouldn’t trot under the tree to the trunk and begin insinuating his way, branch by branch, to a comfortable spot at the top, the better to survey his domain.
Three times, the weight of ten pounds of tomcat at the top of that damn tree caused it to topple. You’d think a cat would learn. Not Buffy, though. Stubborn. I mean, if it ever gets into his head that cats could theoretically fly, he’d be the cat to do it, out of sheer iron stubborn perseverance.
Finally began tying the tree to a wall hook, driven into the ceiling and secured with a length of monofilament. And swatting the damn cat, whenever we caught him lurking around the tree… **