He is Franz Kafka!

I’ve always wanted a cat but I’ve never actually owned any pets before. I had a hamster when I was really young but he died an untimely death, as they’re prone to do. Suffice it to say, that did traumatize me for a bit. MamaS doesn’t like cats so much; she thinks they’re too snooty and have a bad attitude.

Our neighbourhood has a lot of cats that just like to wander around outside aimlessly. I guess they’re pretty smart creatures since they always seem to find their way back home and I rarely see any “MISSING PET” posters around. Then again, this might just be having no idea about how owning a pet works.

We first met Kafka a couple of years ago. It was around reading week and our friends Ian and Amanda were up to visit in Hamilton. We came back from a night out one evening and saw him wandering up and down the streets. He came up to us and we petted him for a bit before heading home. While we were in the kitchen talking, Ian randomly pointed to the window and yelled “CAT!”. After first thinking that he officially lost it, we noticed that the cat had indeed followed us home and was spying on us through our kitchen window.

We let him in, he ran around the house for awhile and almost electrocuted himself on some power bars before we finally decided to confine him to the living room so we wouldn’t have to chase him all over the place. We named him Kafka because we had just spent the weekend watching this episode of “Home Movies” and we were singing the song all weekend, randomly…even on several crowded buses.

We ran into Kafka a lot around the neighbourhood and he’d follow us home every time. Sometimes he’d even show up randomly on our doorstep. We’d let him in and he’d hang out in the living room with us, take a nap and then go home. Sometimes we’d feed him but we didn’t want him getting testy or anything if we didn’t happen to have any food for him.The thing is, Kafka hasn’t been around for a couple of months now. While I was heading to work, I ran into him sitting on the steps of another house up the road. I went over to say hi to him and he came over but promptly turned up his tail and went the other way. I think he’s forgotten about all of those fun times we had where we either a) confined him to the living room or b) chased him all over the house to get him to stop going into places he shouldn’t be in and having him bite and scratch us as a result.I think I miss Kafka because I missed having a pet without any of the commitment. Sure, I enjoyed having him chase around a piece of string and sleeping on our couch. But at the end of the day, we’d always send him home to somebody else who got to feed him and clean up after him.

We did figure out his real name was Doomers and which house he actually lived in. Apparently, over the summer Laenne saw missing posters for him and it turns out he was quite the adventurous cat. He had been living in somebody else’s house all summer while they weren’t there. What a devious little bugger.