I’m in the middle of a ton of WIP’s right now – its the end of the year and I’m trying to crank out some teachers gifts (see: Kitchen Tribble scrubbers) and also get ready for the onslaught of May birthdays – SIL, Hubby, FIL & MIL are ALL May birthdays. I did however manage to make this silly, bright and clashy stuffed mouse toy from Stitch n’ Bitch Nation for a kitty named Jack. The stuffed mouse ended up being an R.O.U.S (rodent of unusual size.. for those who don’t love ‘ The Princess Bride’ as much as I do) because I used worsted weight instead of sport.
Some of you at this point are wondering… “Who’s this Jack she’s knitting for?”. Here’s a little picture gallery for you.
This is Jack playing with his new mouse…
This is Jack sitting on the rug on my kitchen floor…
And this is Jack sleeping on my husband’s pillow on the bed….
I’m sure you can guess where this is going.. right?? Yeah, Blog- Meet our new cat.. Jack. More accurately I should say, Blog- meet Ms. Kitty’s new cat.. since she’s the one responsible for bringing him home.
About 4 nights ago I heard a loud noise outside and ran out to make sure that Ms. Kitty (who is an indoor/outdoor cat) wasn’t in some sort of trouble and when I opened the door.. a very freaked out looking Ms. Kitty came plowing into me at about a thousand miles an hour.. followed by the kitty you see above.. followed by the biggest possum I’ve ever seen in my life. As my husband went to run the possum off, I reached down to pick up Ms. Kitty and take her in the house and this cat came right up and wanted to be petted! When hubby came back, the cat went over to him to be petted as well – and that’s when my husband- Mr ” no more pets EVER” – said ” he doesn’t seem to be sickly or have fleas, let’s let him inside and give him some food”. (*insert eye-roll here*) I opened the door so that Ms. Kitty could go inside and this little guy went running right after her! They’ve been following each other around the house and the yard ever since.. and my husband decided (with the help of Munchkin) that the cat’s name should be ” Captain Jack” – or ‘Jack’ for short. (His full name is something like “Captain Jack Skellington Sparrow Rackham Harkness” – if you’re really wondering. There are a lot of folks named Jack that we’re fond of around here.. lol) He is still a kitten, from the looks of him he’s about a year old or so… and he LOVES yarn.
I do wonder where Jack came from or how he came to be sitting at my front door.. which is why I’ve waited to write this post. I’ve done some asking around and no one seems to have ‘lost’ a kitty, I’ve let him in and out of the house as he pleased in case he wanted to go “home” (if he had a home), but so far there isn’t any sign of someone wanting to find this guy. There have been a lot of cases (I’ve heard from the owner of the small store down the road) of people dumping animals recently, and there have been a few local rental houses which have recently had people move out.. so I’m wondering if he’s simply been abandoned. We’ve lived here a year and have had our share of stray cats on the property but we’ve never seen this guy.
Morally, I do feel like I’m doing the right thing by not turning him into a shelter (because they are over-crowded, under-funded, and currently putting a LOT of animals down that aren’t being adopted) when even though we don’t have much money ourselves, I know that we can at least afford to feed him and give him a good home as long as we have a home ourselves. I’m going to be checking into low cost pet clinics and having the little guy checked over (which will also check to see if he has a micro-chip) as soon as possible now that we’re pretty sure that his new home is here at Chez Mousie. Besides, how could you say no to a face like that and those big ol’ paws??
by Wendy Johnson
