Friday Follies ~~ Stray Cats

It seems to me that the best and most interesting of my friends and acquaintances are “stray cats” and “odd ducks.”  I’m talking about people here, but people who just don’t quite fit into the “normal” categories.

Then there was Burl.

Burl was a stray cat in the literal sense of the phrase.

I was out riding.  It was a warm day in late Spring.  I was hot, dry, and tired.  I stopped and got off the bike to sit and drink in the shade.  That particular shade was the loading dock of a business.  I don’t remember now if it was a weekday or not.  It was just a relatively quiet place to park it for a bit.

I was enjoying the mild day, and beginning to feel refreshed when…  This little cat walked up.  He was white, but only just barely.  He was kind of dirty.  He was in the late stages of kittenhood, not quite an adult cat yet.  He was skinny.  He hadn’t been eating well lately.  He was also friendly.

He climbed up in my lap and purred.  We were instant friends.

I felt it was time to go, so I put the little creature down.  He jumped back up.  I stood and put him down again.  I walked over to my bike.  He followed me, mewing inquisitively.

I mounted the bike and started to ride slowly away.  The cat ran after me, his cries now bordering on panic.  Under the right conditions, I am subject to these impulses.  But…

I was on a bicycle.  I wasn’t wearing a lot of clothing.  There was no place to put the little guy.  But I could not leave him.  So I picked him up and attempted to ride, holding him.  That didn’t work.  He inflicted a couple of good sized wounds and sprang free, leaping to the ground.

I thought that was the end of it, but no.  The small cat did not run away.  He again tried to follow me.  When I stopped he put his paws up on my leg and meeped at me.

I thought about walking home, carrying the cat and balancing the bike.  It was something like ten miles to my trailer.  I couldn’t see it as a good choice.  So I took my jacket out.  The day too warm for a jacket by then, but I couldn’t think of another way.  I put the jacket on, scooped the cat up, and tucked him inside the front of it.  I zipped it up, until only his head was out of it.  It was way too warm, what with the sun, and the two of us inside that jacket.  More, the cat was not happy with me when I mounted the bike again.  Let’s make that, emphatically unhappy.

We made it home.  It was an eventful trip.  I don’t think I lost more than a pint of blood.

Once at my trailer, the cat made himself right at home.  He was friendly, companionable, ornery, a nuisance, funny, and my friend.  We had quite a few adventures.  He survived an odd relationship between me and my then current girlfriend.  For a while he was her cat.  She left.  Burl stayed.

His most endearing feature?  He loved all cyclists.  His least endearing, but possibly most amusing trait?  The only people he liked more than cyclists were folks who didn’t like cats.  He was especially fond of people who were terrified of cats.

He was a cat, and my true and staunch friend, there to watch my going out and coming home again.

And no, we never went for another bike ride together.  Once was enough of that.