“PUDDY”
I have spent a lifetime with good friends, namely dogs. My first one was a little nothing dog named Tippy. Tippy was a cute little female terrier of mixed breed, probably so many mixed breeds you would never be able to figure out which one was in what part.
From Tippy many other pets came along, Blaze, Thor, Sam, Bruser. There were some in-between these that were not as memorable. The one thing I do recall is that there were never any cats. You know as well as I do that cats for for women and sissys. Men don’t have cats. Cats sneak around, tear up drapes and eat birds. Yuck!!
Well now we have Jake. Jake is a Snoodle. Now for those of you who don’t know what a Snoodle is, it is a cross between a Schnauzer and a Poodle. Of course ours is a little guy called a miniature. 22 pounds of terror and bark, one who likes to growl threatingly and then hide somewhere until the danger passes or who or whatever he was growling at has left.
The other day I took my usual after breakfast walk with Jake on his leach, PJ at my side, a chill breeze infesting our jackets and fresh air invading our lungs. From no where a visitor appeared and decided to tag along with us. It was a small, skinny little cat. The poor thing appeared to not have eaten for some time but was more anxious for companionship than food so she looked to Jake for some friendship.
Now as I said before cats are for sissys and women, not for us real man-guys. PJ looked at the poor thing with sympathy, Jake with his normal questioning nostril twitching and I with receding comtempt.
For the next few days whenever we took our walk, or approach glass storm door to look out, that darned little cat would be waiting for us. The only cats we came across before were those that just sat and stared at us, and waiting to sink those wicked claws into our flesh.
This was a new experience. It had no fear of Jake and loved getting close to him, arching its back and rubbing against him as it purred. He did not know what to make of this new “friend” in his life. If Jake did not come out in a reasonable time, Puddie would stretch up from the porch floor and put her front feet as far as she could reach on the glass and peer inside to see if he was there.
The days progressed and the cat learned the routine. Jake would pull at his leach investigating each twig or grass stem, each leaf or stone that wasn’t there the day before, and that darned cat our nestle against my leg and wait for Jake to move forward again on his walk. On our walks we would cross the highway and go up the hill by the cows. Jake was never too sure what those big animals were but he knew they were a lot bigger than this new friend he could buffalo when he needed to feel superior. We it came time to return to our home we had to once again cross the big road, Jake would sit and wait for the cars to pass while the cat stretched low to the ground in anticipation of a car coming.
It would roll over on her back, exposing what shouldn’t be exposed and letting us know it was not an it, but rather a she.
As I said before, women like cats. PJ could not stand to let the poor creature be so thin so she purchased a small bag of cat food.. It was easy to see that no one had ever really cared about this little creature before. She would eat a portion of the food given her and leave some for later. She was neither gluttonous nor anxious. After all to have bad manners at a time like this would certainly shatter any dignity about cats and she could not let this happen.
The days went by. I was coerced into building a cat house. Jake learned to play with her by creeping up on her as she approached him, belly close to the ground as though getting ready to pounce on his prey and she would just keep coming toward him paying no attention to the threat. She would walk past his nose and nestle against his side and purr and he would stand up straight as though to say “Hey, you are supposed to be scared of me.”
To make a long story shorter, we gave her a name, Puddie, or Pud for short, a nice house to live in, food to eat and we have adopted her as our own. Now it is just me, PJ, Jake and Pud.
