Little Boy

by Doug
(Oregon)

Little Boy came to us as a kitten. He was feral, starving, very tiny, and extremely aggressive. Other neighborhood cats were fearful of him due to his possessiveness of the food dishes and his propensity to hiss and attack.

The time came where my wife and I were moving across the country. Little Boy happened to come to the house on the morning of the move. For some reason, I grabbed him and tossed him in the truck with us. What was I thinking? We were on the road for eight days with a feral cat and in a motel room for six weeks with a feral cat after we arrived at our new town.

We learned of his intelligence while at Motel 6. He watched as we opened the door and figured out how to open the door on his own by jumping up, grabbing and holding on to the lever handle of the door. Luckily we were present when he opened the door.

Little Boy is very affectionate with me. He is not so much with my wife. Little Boy talks to me when I enter a room, when he wants food, and alerts me to what is taking place outside of the house. He stands guard around me when I'm in the house. He is seldom more than three feet away from me. He sits outside the shower door waiting for me. When I'm in the garage, he sits in house on the other side of the door patiently waiting for me.

At night, he tells me it is time for bed, leading me to the bedroom. He curls in my underarm with his head on my chest.

Little Boy is possessive of me. He slaps at my wife when I'm in bed and she reaches for me. He hisses and has a fit when I pay attention to the cats that visit our porch looking for food. When I return from the porch, he hisses at me and runs downstairs to pout. My wife says that Little Boy is worse than a jealous woman.

We thought that we lost him after a truck hit him last Fall. I searched throughout the night for him. Twenty two hours later, he was making his way across the front yard toward the steps of the house. He was injured but coming home. I took him to the vet. A couple of weeks later, he was physically ok again. The meeting with the truck changed him though. He became more affectionate, he became more tolerant toward the porch cats, and he became a bit more accepting of people other than my wife and me.

I look forward to many more years with friend.