Seeing Double?

Happy Saturday!  I’m letting Mom take over again just like I SAID I would earlier this week…….Isobel of IsobelandCat suggested that Mom tell a bit about some of her past kitty cats.  Today, Mom’s going to tell you about someone who looks JUST LIKE ME!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi All….thanks for the intro Sam.   Sam and I were going through photos looking for likely Tuesday Teasers for next week and I came across this photo of a sweet and darling cat named Charli who owned me many years ago.

Sam and Charli would have made a cute couple!

Charli was a cat I who was with me through some big changes in my life.   I adopted her from a home where their cat had a bunch of kittens and the owner was looking for homes for them.  A friend and I each adopted one!

They were VERY tiny little things and Charli was the only red tabby and the most active of the bunch so I took her home.  My husband at the time and I weren’t sure if the kitten was male or female (duh!) so we called it Charlie…….soon thereafter we found out SHE was a SHE so we decided to drop the “e” and just leave it Charli – short for Charlene.  This was back in the mid/early 80s. 

We were living in a rented house at the time – the first house we’d lived in vs. apartments so it was also our first YARD.  We also already had two other cats (I’ll tell about them another time) – Ricky and his sister Linda Sue.  Ricky was ALSO a ginger tabby and he and his sister were around five or six years old.  Both of them had always been indoor cats for obvious reasons living in apartments.

Charli would have NOTHING of being inside all the time……she insisted on exploring outside right from the start.  We had a screened door on the kitchen out into the fenced back yard and she’d climb the screen constantly and just hang there sniffing the smells of outdoors.  We decided to let her out in the yard and she loved it.  She stayed in the yard too amazingly enough.  There was one HUGE and very tall tree in the back yard and she decided to climb it one day – quickly – too quickly for us to catch her – and she climbed almost to the top of it and began screaming to get down.  LOUDLY.  She was way up there too!   My husband and I tried to coax her down over about an hour’s time to no avail.  I was scared to death that she’d just let go and fall and she was WAY up this tree……….she figured out that she could come down to a branch but she would come no further.  My husband climbed the tree – which was tough since there were very few branches…………….but he got her, tucked her into his jacket and down she came – still screaming!

 

She was always very adventurous and that got her into trouble once……..we had eventually moved from that house into another house closer to the hospital where I worked.  Charli wore a bell on her collar and we’d formed the habit of my shaking a bell out the door and she’d respond to the sound by coming home from WHEREVER she was.  She ALWAYS did this – for years.   This house had a higher fence than the last but she figured out a way to climb it and go over the fence and explore the neighborhood. 

 

One day I rang the bell and Charlie didn’t come……and didn’t come……and I went out looking for her with my bell.  I walked everywhere and called her……..nothing……….eventually I posted notices on all the phone poles, in the local library, called the local vets and shelters – NOTHING.  Then about a week later a miracle happened!

 

We had a “cat door” in a window in one of the unused bedrooms that Charli used to come and go.  I was watching television one night when all of a sudden there was Charli.  She hopped up on my legs and just stood there like nothing was wrong – staring at me……!!!  She had a minor limp and I’m thinking she’d been injured somehow and COULDN’T come home or someone took her in to care for her and she “escaped” and came home.  Anyway, I was so happy to see her………she was a very loving, happy, creative, funny, sweet girl and when her time to go to the Rainbow Bridge came, I thought life would never be the same. 

 

We always do, don’t we……….think things will never be the same…..but then we find another little soul to take care of that needs US as much as we need THEM.

 

So that’s the story of little Charli………..who looks so much like Sam it’s amazing!!

Pam (thanks Sammy…..you’re a pal for loaning me your blog space!)