Omigod! We've just agreed to adopt a cat! No. No! NO! Not in a million years would we ever again have a pet...and if so, it would be a DOG. We are NOT cat people. We hate cats, don't see why people put up with their stupidity, their inability/unwillingness to learn the simplest accommodation with the humans on whom they depend, their studied contempt for our values, their solipsistic, utterly sociopathic behavior. We love dogs. Dogs are what humans would be if they were truly Christian. Our current favorite bumper sticker is, "I'm trying to be the person my dog thinks I am." For cats, the slogan would be, "I'm trying to ignore all moral values in slavish furtherance of my cat's program to conquer the universe."
About two years ago, we noticed an orange tomcat hanging around our driveway. The most reliable way to deal with unwanted feline attention is to ignore it, and this we did. We didn't throw water or yell or in other way discomfort ourselves, but we did NOT encourage it. This seemed fine with the cat. He was not intrusive, and he seemed to think we were cool. He sort of hung around the edges. When we went for an after-dinner walk up the hill, the cat would follow, companiably, but at a distance...at least as far as the first set of dogs. As we returned, he would emerge from the bushes, and join us on our way back home.
Well, it was kind of charming. First, he wasn't anything like what we've grown to know as a "cat". He was not needy, not demanding of attention, he didn't "mark" us by slinking around our ankles, he didn't, in short, require anything from us. He seemed simply to enjoy our company. From a distance.
It wasn't that hard to gradually make friends with this solitary cat. After all, we're allergic to cat dander, so we couldn't have him in the house...all our contact had to be outside. And after a while, we offered him a bowl of water, which he accepted with dignity, and then there was a detente established. He certainly didn't "live" here, he was someone else's cat; but he liked being around us. And after a bit, he would be hanging out when I drove home from class. Not all "Omigod-you're-back-I-thought-you-were-gone-forever-I'm-so-glad-to-see-you-slobber", but more like someone who merely happened to be taking a nap there at the right time. He would wake, and stretch, and come out to greet me.
It grew colder in the fall. He stuck around – not all the time, but often enough that we began to look forward to his presence when we arrived home. It rains a lot in Humboldt County. So I found a carpet sample and put it on the shelf beneath the garden table under the overhang. And now when I returned, the cat would be settled in there. OK, so he wasn't "the cat" anymore; we'd looked at his collar. His name was Calvin, and his address was just a couple of houses down from us, a retired woman. A "cat lady" with several cats.
Only somehow, Calvin preferred being with us. At night he went home. But during the day, he was mostly "guarding" our house. It was kind of charming. We found ourselves talking about Calvin, as though he were "our" cat. When I made up a list of fantasy anniversary presents for my wife, one of them was a fancy outdoor build-it-yourself "cathouse" – for Calvin, of course. Without our intending it, he'd become a fond part of our lives.
Then came the day when Calvin didn't show up. We weren't worried; he often took time off for his own affairs. But the day stretched into a week and more, and finally we looked up his owner, "Dawn". She said that Calvin had never adjusted to living with her other cats; so she'd given him to her daughter, who lived in Sacramento. He was gone.
We were unaccountably sad. It isn't as though we could have offered him a home, even had we known he was available. But he was a friend, and we'd lost him. That was almost two years ago. We got over it.
Yesterday when I returned from school there was a message from Dawn. Calvin was back, and she was looking for a home for him. His rural freedom had not served him well in the big city: he'd been hit by a car, and was missing part of his jaw. But he was otherwise the same. The vet had recommended that he be confined inside hereafter, presumably because of his injury. So would we be willing to take him?
Well, the end of this story is not yet known. Calvin is the most intelligent and social cat (read: dog-like) we've known. He is a fairly short-haired cat, which might, just might, mean that we can get around the allergy problem by some of the many solutions other people use. We're going to give it a try. He is, after all, our friend.