The bathroom stalker

Be you human or feline, if you go through a doorway or open a closet in this house, the youngest cats Nick and Daisy will both be there shortly. They are not starved for entertainment. They just like to see what their people are doing.

Nick and Daisy are cats #5 and #6 for us since 1995. What a contrast with our second cat, Lily, and our third cat, Jeoffrey. Lily was a lady, only 6 pounds, but she tore open the face of a gentle greyhound next door, impaling herself on a fencepost at the end of the episode. The x-ray revealed that she had delicately curved whorls on her pelvis, the like of which the vet had never seen. Soon after that ordeal, Lily was a featherweight rock for my husband during some dark times at work.

Within a couple of weeks of bringing our third cat home from the Waffle House in Baldwin, we could see that Jeff had thrown himself into exploring our territory. He had started in quarantine on the screened porch, had his shots, had his kitten-reduction surgery, ignored the surgery, and refreshed his tomcat life in his new surroundings. I came home from school one afternoon to hear him in the branches of a sweet gum tree at the front corner of our yard. I brought out the tallest ladder we had. Fully extended, it reached 11 feet, and standing on the third rung from the top brought my hand within reach of Jeff. I could not get close enough to tuck him under one arm. I told him he would have to climb onto my shoulder. We had only known each other for two or three weeks. I explained to him what he needed to do, and then I explained again. He listened, and calculated, and hesitated. I don't know how I earned his trust, or why he did not carve canyons in my skin on his way down the tree. It took a long time for him to agree that his best option was to climb down my arm onto my shoulder. Down my arm he came, with the balance of a dancer, onto my shoulder. Then he let me cradle him and we came down the ladder together. From that moment at the bottom of the ladder we were bound.