Just We Two - My Brother

Sometimes in the past, Cherokee had startled Mom considerably.  He rarely said anything - he was the strong and silent type.  Once in a while, though, he would do what surprised Mom so much.  He would speak the old language from back in the Massachusetts woods.  Mom described it as sort of like "eh, ih, ah," a very choppy sort of sound, repeated many times.  She thought maybe he was trying to speak English.  She didn't know it was the old language.  I never really learned it, because I was busy learning to hunt, while Cherokee had lots of time to play and contemplate and learn different things.  Mom looked up Maine Coon cats online (because we were part Maine Coon) and found that they sometimes spoke the old language.  After that, she really liked to hear it, but, as I said, he rarely spoke anything, let alone the old language.  No one around him understood it anyway.  Cherokee never really developed that connection with Mom that I had, although he completely adored her and would do just about anything she asked.

Cherokee was not as good as I was, though.  He often would get into trouble.  Food was his passion, and he particularly loved human food.  As I have said before, he could jump very well and often jumped up onto the kitchen counters, looking for the remains of food left in pans on the stove or hoping to find food in the sink that had, unfortunately for him, already been pushed down into the garbage disposal.  Mom liked to leave the butter out so it would be soft.  Once in a while she would forget to cover it and would come back to find tongue prints in the butter.  She would then throw it away, wash the butter dish, and get out some new butter and be careful to cover it all the time.  What a guy!  I was never into jumping all that much.  I was fast on my feet, but I didn't care too much for jumping, especially as I got a little older.  It just seemed a little childish.  I had everything I needed within reach, why did I need to jump anywhere?

Another thing that Cherokee often did was get Mom up for breakfast.  As I said, food was his passion and he had a hard time waiting for breakfast.  So, when it got to be light, even just a little bit, he would decide that it was time Mom got up to feed us.  He would go upstairs, make a running start into the bedroom and leap on the bed and Mom’s stomach as hard as he could.  That sure woke her up, let me tell you!  She was usually so startled that she didn’t have time to get mad at him.  Sometimes, she would shut us out of the bedroom after that, but most of the time she would get up and feed us, just as Cherokee wanted.

 

My brother was not too picky about grooming himself, but he liked to try to do some grooming on Mom.  Sometimes he would lick her hair and maybe try to pull some out.  He didn’t seem to realize that she doesn’t shed as much as we do and she usually didn’t have any knots in her hair.  I think it’s kind of funny that she has hair only on her head!  What kind of silly idea is that?  She has some hair on other parts of her body, but it’s very short and very light-colored so you almost can’t even see it.  Cherokee also like to try to pull off Mom’s fingernails and toenails.  At least that’s what she said.  Actually, he was trying to pull off the claw sheaths, like the ones we have.  I guess he never knew that she doesn’t have any.  He would grip one of her nails in his teeth and pull away.  Mom said it didn’t really hurt, but she found it very odd of him to do that.

 

Well, my memory’s getting sore and I think I must take a nap to cure that.  It’s a wonderful day for a nap!

Yours,

Apache