December 26, 2014
My cats were born in Uganda. And it’s kind of cool to think that they’ve been somewhere I have never been and probably won’t ever visit. I adopted them from a person who had them transported all the way to the United States from Africa. So my cats are immigrants.
They were originally given names that I thought were idiotic for African cats. One of them (a girl kitty) was named Tigger, and the other was named Punkin. These names are cute, but c’mon–these cats were born in Africa. They should have African names. I promptly renamed them Simba and Pakka. Simba is the Swahili word for lion or tiger. And Pakka is the Swahili word for cat.
Simba (AKA Tigger) has a starring role in Last Chance Family. And Pakka (AKA Punkin) is the kitty in the short story entitled “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” which appears in the anthology Small Town Christmas.
December 19, 2014
Ollie at 18 years
I am an avowed cat person. Cats size me up and know that I’m an easy mark. The Georgia Good Ol’ Boy, not so much. In fact, when I first married him, he had no use for cats. But that all changed when Oliver North came along.
We adopted Ollie from the local shelter when he was about five weeks old. And he lived with us until he was 18 and finally gave up the ghost. He was the strongest, healthiest cat I ever owned. He could climb up twenty or thirty feet into the big maples in my front yard, and we never once had to call the fire department to rescue him. He was fearless. And he was definitely the Georgia Boy’s cat. In fact for almost two decades he slept between us.
My dear husband often cuddled him as if he were a teddy bear, providing many “awww moments” for me. But in all those years sleeping between us, Ollie always pointed his sharp little claws in my direction while my husband got to cuddle his soft back. The message was clear. The Georgia Boy belonged to him and I needed to keep my distance. To Ollie, I was merely staff, assigned the daily job of feeding him and not much more.
December 12, 2014
I am undergoing a kitchen renovation. The Georgia Good Ol’ Boy is doing this on his own. Anyway, a few weeks back, he had to dig a trench in the concrete to run some plumbing and then he back-filled the hole with fresh concrete. He screed the patch and then we went off to a ball game. When we came back, we had our kitties’ paw prints immortalized in concrete.
Cat paw prints in the newly poured concrete
