My parents wanted me to keep pets when I was young to teach me how to take care of things. I was the only child and possibly this was kind of a substitute for a sibling. My dad actually wanted more kids but my mom had her hands already full with one so I started keeping fishes. Something easy to handle. I kept fishes from young till Primary 3. That’s when we adopted a stray cat. His name was Tiger and I would consider him as a loyal friend of over 13 years. Tiger lived with us from 1995 to 2008. He passed at the age of 13+. I will write more about Tiger in a future post. He was our fourth family member in many ways. It’s amazing what a pet does.
Fast forward 4 years, two cats popped up in my neighbourhood. They were both ginger coloured and one was noticeably thinner than the other. These two seemed to go around everywhere together and looked relatively young (say 1-2 years old) so it was thought that they were formerly owned kittens who got dumped. I have a neighbourhood that is relatively cat loving. Some of the neighbours fed them and the fatter one was always bossing the thinner one off until he was done. The thin one would get the scraps then. I took pity on the thinner one and started feeding him when the fat one wasn’t around. A volunteer soon came to get both of them sterilized. He then removed the thin cat and placed it in another neighborhood citing some complaints about noise (I never heard them making any noise though). It was then that my mom took a liking to the fatter one. Let’s just call him Garfield for convenience.
I didn’t mind keeping a pet and so did my Dad. Garfield turned out to be a really polite cat. When we allowed him in, he waited at the door after entering and did not dare to roam much unless we brought him there. A huge attribute of Tiger that appealed to us was that he naturally preferred to do his toilet work outside the house. We live on the first floor and there was plenty of grass around. Further more, cats clean up after themselves (they cover it with soil/grass) which made things really easy. Garfield was thus introduced to our home with the same mindset. We fed him but made sure he got the signal that anytime he wanted to take a dump, he had to go out to do it. Thankfully, that went smoothly or it would have been a deal breaker.
My mom as usual was hesitant about keeping him so we created this trial period where we would welcome him in but he was fed just outside our door and wasn’t allowed to bunk overnight. He soon turned out to be a good cat and grew attached to us. We’ve now decided to take him in fully and will be collaring him soon. Then he will get a good bath he desperately needs.
Here are some videos of him in the house (you can toggle the video quality to get a clearer picture).