Just up from my nap with the pest.
You may have noted that I usually call Cherokee stupid. There is good reason for that. Just as an example, back in Massachusetts, whenever Mom would move her feet under the bed covers, Cherokee would jump on them. The only problem was, he forgot to be careful and would draw blood with his sharp claws and teeth, even through several layers of blankets. Mom kept telling him not to do that, but he kept on not paying any attention. Finally, she started spraying him with water every time he did it. He would stop for a couple of days and then start again. After numerous sprayings, he finally got the idea and quit - until we moved to Phoenix. He started all over again there. She started spraying again and yelling at him. He finally stopped for good. Took him long enough! Couldn't he tell that it was just her feet under the blankets and that he would hurt her with his teeth and claws? Just plain stupid!
Cherokee also had very long hair and a huge, long, hairy tail, and he was also very skinny. My hair is long, but not nearly as long as his was. I found him to be the epitome of ugliness, but Mom always stood up for him and called him handsome. There's just no accounting for tastes. The pest is black and white, too, but she has a cute little round face . . . She's still just a pest! Anyway, Cherokee was not very good at taking care of himself, so I often had to wash his face for him. His long hair caused me so many hairballs I can't even begin to count them. Mom hates it when I give up hairballs; it really grosses her out. I can't help it, though. When Mom adopted Cherokee, he was very matted because of his long hair and because he didn't take care of himself, and they took him to the vet to be put to sleep so they could comb him out. Well, there was no way to comb him, it was that matted. They ended up shaving him so that he had a Mohawk when he got to the house. That was pretty funny. That's one of the reasons he hid, because he was so embarrassed.
Another of Cherokee's bad habits was that he often would leave a very smelly deposit in the litter box. Whenever I smelled it I would rush to the box to see why there was such an odor. He usually just didn't cover them up. That really grossed me out! I would have to go into the litter box and cover it for him. Who was I - his mother? Thank goodness our litter box is covered, so the smell often did not travel too far.
"Patchy, what's a pest?"
"Go back to sleep, you don't have any place here."
"I liv hear, too. I just lern tipe."
"Go to sleep!!! You need to learn to type much better than that!"
Cherokee loved to eat! Whenever Mom would put our food down for us, he would gobble his up as fast as he could and then he would nudge me away and eat mine. What a pig! He would eat pretty much anything, so if I didn't like something, I knew that it would be eaten anyway. That sort of defeated the purpose of my not eating something, though. Sometimes I felt very sorry for him for being so skinny, and that's why I let him eat my food, too.
Whenever Mom would sit down, we would join her. I would get comfortable on her lap and just start dropping off while she was stroking me, when, of course, Cherokee would jump up and take a place on her lap, overlapping me some. What nerve! I would put on my outraged face and jump down. He would then take over the entire lap and take up all of Mom's strokes for himself. He purred very, very loudly and it was most disturbing. Mom seemed to like it a lot, though. She would always call to me to come back, but I would just turn my back and sleep by myself. The only time Cherokee was of use to me was when it was cold and we would lie together to keep warm. Sort of reminded me of the old days on the wooded hill, with our furry family.
Well, enough for now. For some reason I can't seem to see very well just now, kind of blurry. I'm very tired. More later.
Yours,
Apache
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