We’ve been adopted…

Meet Frankie.

Several months ago someone graciously decided to gift us with a young male cat. (What is wrong with people? Don't they know there are shelters and vets that will take in unwanted animals? That's better than having the animals have to fend for themselves.) They dropped him off in our neighborhood and, because we already have a cat and leave food out for him on the patio, Frankie started coming here to eat. We tried to shoo him off thinking that he belonged to a neighbor somewhere, but he’s taken up residence much to the chagrin of our (actually our daughter’s) cat, Tinker. He knows which side his bread is buttered on! We have had many cat fights so far.

The thing is, he was dropped off when he was so young that he has not developed any social skills (sounds like some of the students I might have had). He was not nurtured and does not know how to interact with humans (or cats and dogs for that matter!) For Frankie, it’s just been about survival.

Teddy, our dog, has to run an obstacle course to go outside to take care of his business. Frankie chases him and swats at his rump all the way to the grass and back. Sometimes Dan and I have to run interference for the dog! Oh, the joys of pet ownership!

We’ve been working with him a lot and he now lets us pet him, but only on the back and tail. He won’t let you pet him on the side or on the stomach. I’ve tried to pick him up and that scares him to death.

He loves it when we come home from work. He rubs our legs, purrs and and meows up a storm. He wants us to stay outside with him and tries to swat us when we go in the back door. We are trying to get him to go into a kennel so that we can take him to the vet. He needs his shots and we need to have a little surgery because we don’t want any other Frankies roaming around the neighborhood. Why did we name him Frankie? When we first looked at his eyes they looked blue, so he was named after Frank Sinatra, of course.

This is Teddy thinking “What did I do to deserve this?”