Boo

It was a cold Autumn morning in 2005 and I had gone to visit my grandmother. My aunt was there, and happened to mention that there were some wild cats living under my grandma's house. She said they had tamed the kittens by feeding them at least once in awhile, and they would let you pet them.

We went out to the backyard. It was bone-chillingly windy and drizzly outside, and my aunt clapped her hands and three little kittens, probably 8-10 weeks old, ran out from under the base of the house, skidding their little butts sideways in their rush toward excited thoughts of food. They sat in a perfect row and looked up at us. There was an all-white one, an all-black one, and in the middle, an orange tabby.

I had a black cat, and a white cat. I had never owned an orange tabby. The idea of the poor kitties shivering in the cold wet was hard. He looked up at me and meowed, and I was so taken with him that I just picked him up on the spot and carried him through the house. My grandmother and aunt followed me saying, "Hey -- what? Are you going to take him home?!" and I said over my shoulder as I went right out to my car with him, "Yep! I'm taking him!"

We debated names for him and finally Rykah decided on "Boo," because first of all it was nearly Halloween and he was orange, and also because we had already come up with many "extensions" of Boo. We call him Booster (like a rocket booster), Boo-man, Boo-jangles, and we tease in that Yogi-Bear voice like, "Ehhh boo-boo?" and things like that.

He has always had a problem with his claws being longer and sharper than the others cats' for some reason, and poor Boo spent much of his young life with us, seriously hurting us, and then we would bleed and cry and get mad at him and he would be in disgrace. I don't know if maybe orange tabbies simply have longer nails than other cats. Anyway, he eventually grew into a teen and got neutered.

We have a love-stress relationship with Boo at the moment (Dec 2006). There are two other male cats and he is the youngest and least dominant. There are also five females, of which two are far more dominant than he and one maybe. He seems to really want "a place of his own" so to speak, his own territory. He loves Rykah fiercely, but he keeps going into her room and peeing on her bed and often all her clothes if they are anywhere available. Then he is in disgrace again!

I think he just wants her to be "his" and wants her room to be his territory. But now we have to lock him out of it unfortunately.

He is a very loving, sweet, sensuous kitty who would really like nothing more than to curl up with you in the sun and take a nap.