Annabelle Lee

Six fateful weeks ago, a little calico Manx cat showed up in our house. The “in” is not a typo. She was in the kitchen, and she was demanding food. Loudly. And with gusto!

Jack and London, heretofore our only cats, were horrified. Who was this intruder? What happened to her tail? What was with all the haphazard markings and the oddball colors? Who did she think she was?

This is our house!

Make her go away!

We did not, of course. I mean, could you really expect that a person incapable of stepping on a bug or eating a hamburger would be able to throw a little Manx kitty out into the cold? Not gonna happen. And it wasn’t only me. Mike quickly came to believe that she was heaven sent, filled, in fact, with special pain relieving and angst reducing powers. She cozied up to him, doing that warm, fuzzy, purring thing against his neck that only cats can do, and he felt immediate relief, as if he had been “touched by an angel.”

His words, not mine.

I posted her picture online, but no one has claimed her. I guess if she is from heaven, no one would.

So, she stayed, and we are all adjusting to her being around, though Jack and London are still a little miffed. There has been a tiny bit of hissing, but no open warfare.

Annabelle is a good kitty with legs shorter in the front, rabbit-like in the back. She is very bouncy. Her tail is about an inch long, which I think makes her a Stubby Manx. There are apparently many different types of Manx cats, dependent on the length, or lack thereof, of their tails. Due to their unmatched leg lengths, front to back, Manx cats have an unusual gait. Annabelle Lee walks like she just got off a horse, a little bit stalky and bow-legged, which makes her a good fit for our little Western town.

She never would have gotten in, of course, if Mike hadn’t put in a kitty door. At least not as easily. But he had good reason to install it (too much to go into here). By install it, I mean only that he cut a hole through the kitchen door and tacked leather flaps over it on each side. (Kind of makes you wonder what the rest of the house looks like I bet.) We live in an unusual town, one with fewer people than cats, fewer dogs than deer, and fewer cars than crickets, so it was only a matter of time before something came in through that hole.

So, I have a new writing companion. And oh yes, also a walking companion!

Here she is following us a couple of hours ago. We tried to sneak out, not wanting her to think it was okay to walk along the road, or worse, to cross the highway, which is not too far away, but there was no evading her. We had to cut our walk short and devise another escape route.

Do you think we could get her to accept a leash?