A cat story

I never had a pet in my life. Not a dog, or a cat or even a little hamster. So, you see, I don't know how to react to animals. At best, I can view them from afar but hold them close? Never.

I never thought any of my kids would have a liking to pets. Sure, they have asked me for some but I told them about the responsibilities of keeping one. Feeding it is the easiest part. Maintaining it, as in cleaning after it, managing its poop, washing it to prevent fleas, etc... That is big work. Besides, putting a dog on a leash or just plain keeping it inside a tiny enclosure is not my idea of having a pet. To me, what's the use of having one if you can't play with it? And how can we afford having a playful dog inside a tiny house with so many breakable things? It;s just impossible. So, we never kept pets!

However, when our present neighbor moved in, more than ten years ago, they introduced cats in the area. They would let their cats loiter around knowing that these cats would survive on their own. One of these cats sneaked into the house one day and I told my mother-in-law and my wife not to feed it so that it would go away. Unbeknownst to me, they did. At least my mother-in-law did. "You;ll never know when this cat can become handy. It is good for catching mice." And so, that cat stayed. And it gave birth, and soon enough, we got to have cats around our little fence. I remained adamant not to let any of these cats inside the house as it might defecate anywhere. And so the story goes. Cats became old and went probably to oblivion.

Until this new liter of white ones. The white cat produced three kittens which were just as white as their mom. Now from among these three, two caught my attention. The first one has blue-eyes while the other has green on one side and blue at the other. Neither their white color or the specialness of their eyes was remarkable to me, though. Remember, I don't like having pets. They're just plain responsibility!
Well, it turns out that these two cats are different after all. I began to notice that these cats would approach me everytime I went outside for a cig. They would go around my legs, purr silently keep on rubbing themselves. Now, I've seen how lions behave when they socialize. This is some form of bonding or so I thought. None of the former cats did that.

Then one day, while I was sitting on a chair outside the house, the two colored eyes cat jumped and stayed on my lap and purred as if pleading for me to pet it. I did. And that started it all. Every night, these two cats would take turns sitting on my lap asking to be petted. It's beginning to recognize my gestures and learning to come and go away on cue. Something happened which I thought would never do. I now call them my own. I even eagerly await my smoking time to spend some time with these cats. Sometimes, I feel like they were the ones who trained me, rather than I training them. Nevertheless, I never thought two innocent cats would soften my heart. At any rate, I plan to have them neutered.