Chester
...appeared in our back yard one spring morning
in 1991, a bright orange male teenage cat, skulking around our bird
bath. I was having coffee on the deck, got up and fed him, as much to
save a bird as to feed a cat. The girls…either Molly or
Anna-Marie…wanted to name him Chestnut, but I thought Chester sounded
better. He began sleeping in the sun on our back door mat, working his
way into the house, and after a few months, when the neighbors said they'd
like a cat for their two young boys, I carried him 2 houses over.
He stayed there for about a year; was spayed to somewhat slow down his 3-day
binges, at some point acquiring a fang-sized nick in his left ear. We
didn’t lose track of him: he'd stop by our house, as well as others,
sometimes for a day or two. When the Williams left in 1992 for a year
in France, they officially gave him back to us, and there he stayed.
He was always my cat. Yeah, he was friendly to all people and still
wandered in and out of the neighbors' kitchens. But if I sat
down, or he heard the creak of the recliner, he'd leave
whoever/wherever he was, and jump up on my lap. We watched a lot of TV
and read a lot (not out loud…I'm not that wacko) together. He always
wanted to go outside first thing in the morning, if nothing else but to
drink water and look at the rain. Declawing him made no difference in
his lifestyle: he climbed trees, posts, the side of the house, up the
lilac onto the roof. Often, like cats do, he'd bring "gifts." A
favorite was the fresh back half of a bunny, but there were also mice,
moles, bats, baby raccoons and lots of birds (or parts thereof). Only
rarely would he throw up his morning meal….he apparently prided himself on
eating what he hunted. He considered himself a kick-ass cat.
Michael and Rebecca S.
