In July, we had to put Velvet our beautiful black cat down. We found her when she was a kitten abandoned under our house, and she lived with us for thirteen years. (See the blog titled “The Story of a Cat” posted on July 6, 2011.) She was notorious for trying to escape from the house anytime someone opened a door, especially in her younger years.
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| Velvet |
On Halloween night, as I stirred a pot full of pumpkin sausage soup, I thought out loud wistfully, “Well, at least this Halloween, we won’t have to worry about Velvet getting out whenever we open the door for a trick-or-treater.”
Ten minutes later, Sarah K. and I thought we heard costumed candy collectors coming up onto our porch. She went to answer the door since I was cooking. I heard her gasp, and then she came back in with a strange look on her face.
I was puzzled, “Were there trick-or-treaters?”
“No,” she said and hesitated a little, “There was a black cat sitting on the porch, right next to the pumpkin. She looked at me and then took off. She was skinny, like Velvet when she was young.”
We looked at each other with goose bumps. I welled up a little, “It was Velvet. She must have come back to tell us she was OK in cat heaven.” It was spooky that she came back on Halloween.
A couple of weekends later, John and I went to Ellensburg because daughter Sarah was in a piano competition. It was a stressful weekend. On their way from Pullman to Ellensburg in Sarah’s car, she, her boyfriend and another friend got a flat tire. She called to tell us they were stuck somewhere outside of Othello at 10:00 at night, in below freezing temperatures. There was no lug wrench in her trunk to get the tire off to change it.
AAA to the rescue. They changed the tire and Andy drove them 100 miles into Ellensburg on the little doughnut spare tire. While they were driving, we got online and made elaborate plans on where to get her tire fixed based on which tire places would be open on Sunday in Ellensburg--none, and how close the nearest Costco was-- 40 miles away.
The next day we drove 120 miles to Ellensburg. While they played their pieces in Central Washington University’s music building, we opened Sarah’s trunk to look at the tire. It was totally blown out, shredded. I was thankful Andy had gotten them off the road safely.
Long story short: Sarah played well. Andy and the other friend who’d driven over with Sarah placed in the competition. We ended up having to get two hotel rooms to stay overnight. On an icy Monday morning at 8:00, we had our noses pressed up against Les Schwab’s doors. I was impressed with how fast they could put four new tires (4-wheel drive) on her car. It was like a pit stop in a race. We barely made it back to the hotel, a block away, when they called to say the car was ready.
After breakfast, Sarah and Andy got on I-90 headed east back to Pullman. We headed west toward Puyallup. On the west side of Snoqualmie Pass, we saw the signs for Snoqualmie Falls which we usually whiz past. We hadn’t been there in over ten years. It would be nice to exhale and relax a little, so we took the off ramp.
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| Snoqualmie Falls |
The falls were magnificent! We wandered into Snoqualmie Lodge, where lots of scenes for the creepy TV series Twin Peaks were shot. We ate burgers at Twede’s Café (formerly known as the Mar-T Café), also a Twin Peaks hangout. Of course we finished off our meal with a piece of their famous cherry pie, but skipped on the “damn fine cup o’ coffee.” The pie lived up to its reputation. We stopped at the outlet mall, and then continued home.
Johnny and Sarah K. weren’t home when we pulled in. I wheeled my overnight bag into the house. A sign taped on the downstairs bathroom door warned, “DO NOT OPEN DOOR!” John asked, “What do you think that’s about?”
I clomped up the stairs, “Either the toilet over-flowed and now we’ll have to clean that up, or there’s an animal in there.”
Walking down the hallway John said, “Hey, maybe it’s one of those German Shepherd puppies Sarah was talking about the other day.”
“No, if it was a puppy, it would’ve let us know it was in there right away.”
We unpacked while we did not open the bathroom door, and waited for Johnny and Sarah to get back from wherever they were. Sarah got back first, and told us the story.
She and Johnny met some friends, Adam and Samantha, for dinner the night we were gone. Afterwards, the plan was to meet back at our house. Their friends beat them here, and when Johnny and Sarah pulled into the driveway, Samantha was standing on our front steps, petting a black cat. “Is this your cat Johnny?”
The cat that wasn’t ours was the reason for the bathroom door sign. They had looked on nearby mailboxes--no missing cat fliers. They checked the animal shelter website—nothing. They had even taken him to the vet to see if he had a microchip--nope. He wasn’t neutered either.
They assured me that he was a REALLY nice cat. Then they backed off and relied on the oldest sales technique ever: a good “product” will sell itself.
John opened the bathroom door and went in to meet the mysterious cat. I was reluctant. Neither of us wanted another cat. We want to travel. Pets tie you down.
A few hours later, I finally went in to look at the stray. He came right up to me to say hello. He was so thin, you could see his ribs and spine. He wasn’t a fluff ball kitten, more like a lanky adolescent. He was sleek and black except for a little white patch on his chest. But his most striking feature was two orange eyes.
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| Our new cat, Pippin. |
He saunters around our house like he’s been here forever. He’s not cowed by T-Bone, our 90-lb. Lab-Shepherd mix, at all. On their first encounter, when T-Bone got a little too close, the new cat calmly, but firmly raised his right paw up like it was a stop sign. T-Bone stopped, wagged his tail and backed up. He is fluent in "Cat."
The new guy and Suzie, the dachshund, are great buddies. She tolerates him swatting at her tail, and biting it on occasion. Those two have also been known to nap together.
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| Pippin and Suzie |
The only one who hasn’t been won over is Java, the Manx. That’s not surprising. She has never gotten along with the other pets, including Velvet. When he gets within six feet of her we know because we hear her hiss. He doesn’t understand why she won’t play with him, and he won’t take no for an answer.
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| Pippin and Java in a stand-off. |
Mr. Big Personality follows us around, soaks up affection, and attacks, but never has his claws out. He thinks nothing of jumping up on the 1-1/2” wide rail by our stairs and walking it like a tightrope. He has climbed to the tip top of my china hutch, and clawed his way up the bricks of our fireplace. He sleeps stretched out full length on his back. I don’t know how he survived sleeping like that outside, but I do know how he ate. He’s a good hunter. This morning I found a ball of fun fur yarn on my chair. He “killed” it down in my sewing area, and brought it upstairs to share.
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| Pippin and his "mouse" |
One night, we still don’t know how, he got out. We worried the entire night, and looked for him repeatedly. It poured through the night and into the next morning. Finally, we cracked the garage door open. Fifteen minutes later, on my way to the laundry room, I heard rustling on the workbench in the garage. There he was, bedraggled and sopping wet. That was at least the third time that he found our house with his feline GPS.
When I called Sarah S. to tell her the story after we got home from Ellensburg, I told her I didn’t want another cat. She told me to give it up, we had another cat. He chose us. We don’t know why. That is how he became our cat. We named him Pippin.
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