The Cat that Duped 2936 Ave

Cats own their lives.   And...they seem to also own the lives of the people who shelter and feed them.  Case in point - Sasquatch - affectionately known as Squash.  He is our 1and1/2  year old Maine Coon kitty.  He came into our lives at 8 months old and was everything we hoped to find in a cat - able to hang out with dogs and other cats and a good hunter.  We had no idea how much he would bring us.

He is black and white and has silky long hair - the kind you can sink your hand into and lose before you find a back to scratch.

He has the longest whiskers of any cat I have ever met.  His confidence and imagination seem to stretch the entire length of his body nose to tail.  A piece of paper crumpled up is just as exciting to him as the little red squirrel or birds flying from the house to the Juniper tree in the fountain.  He is not bothered by the dogs and I think he sometimes fancies himself a part of their pack.  He sits for their breakfast and dinner.  We usually place a bit on the floor in a hurry because if we are too slow he sticks his face right in the dog dish.  Thank goodness we have good stays with those two doodle dogs.

He entertained a house full of kids after they had much too much sugar during the holiday cookie decorating party last winter.  He ran around the house with the kids he was chasing a dancing fake mouse on a string on a pole held by one of the children.    Gromit and Chewie were absolutely exhausted from having to try to stay out of the way.

Gromit has some karma coming around with Squash's ability to not take life too seriously.  He challenges Gromit's sense of party and laid backness.   Daily he crouches behind doors and waits for Gromit to walk through the door. Then he leaps in the air both paws drawn and bats that big white dogs face from both sides.  You might think he was a boxer disguised as a cat the way he goes after Gromit.  Gromit sometimes play bows and does a little howling yawn - sometimes Gromit just shakes his head like his ears tickle from the cat paw swipe.

He has built a daily routine that involves duping the adults in this house by getting out each day.  For a while we had a tally count on the dry erase board to count the number of days since we were last duped by Squash.  Alas, instead we had to change to the number of times Squash got out each day.   If only we understood how he does it - he is not a small cat weighing in at 17lbs.  However, he sneaks by and on occasion scrambles by so fast you cannot get your hands down to catch him.  Sometimes he gets out when Gromit slams the unlocked dog door open with his paw when the people don't respond fast enough to his subtle scratch.  Sometimes he hides under the Ikea shelves behind the aprons and ducks out while Chewie takes his time coming in from the outside.

Once outside he has taken to gradually longer itineraries of what needs to be accomplished before he will come back in - at first it was just get under the porch and wait for the magic cheese can to appear and run back in to the house.  Now however, he has moved to investigating the neighbors yard, climbing on top of the fence to the garage roof and leaping to the neighbors garage.

I am sure that the most embarrassing day was the one that Kristin and I were both outside in our Ralph Lauren pajama pants and sleeping t-shirts trying to grab him while he just ran back and forth between us just out of reach.  When he was tired he just laid down in the driveway and stretched like - "come and get me for my treats."  I believe he was truly mocking us that morning.  Here he is after Kristin gathered him from the driveway -

When Squash gets out - Kristin feels conflicted because her day has taken an unexpected turn, Heidi feels freaked out, Paul feels nervous and excited.  I don't think Squash is taking our feelings into consideration with this duping behavior.

Squash adds an interesting element to our house.  He keeps us all on our toes and besides duping the people he also entertains us all.  He is his own cat and while he doesn't share his catnip or cat food or litter box - he does share his imagination and sense of playfulness with us.