Baby and Lance Sjogren: Furry Friends Fur-Ever Tail
“I’ve just had one cat before, and that was many years ago,” says Lance. “Baby is the name she had when I adopted her. It seemed like a good idea to keep her name the same. For one thing, when I post a picture of her on the Furry Friends Volunteer Facebook page’s comments thread, it should help other volunteers who knew her to remember her.
“I chose Baby because she had some traits that made her hard to adopt, and I believed that my home environment might work well for her. To be cautious, I started by fostering her, but after several weeks I knew that I wanted to adopt her. When she first arrived, I kept her in my guest bedroom, and since she was somewhat shy, she liked sleeping under the bed. After a week or so, I kept the door open and allowed her to explore the house. Within a few weeks, she was fairly comfortable with the whole house.
“I live alone and it’s nice to have a companion. I haven’t had family over since I got Baby, but I hope to introduce her to my grand nieces and grand nephews in the near future. But I’ll have to teach them to approach her in very particular ways to avoid spooking her.
“Baby loves playing with toys, and although her favorite is the laser, she sometimes likes playing with a wand toy. She lies on her back while I dangle it above her and she grabs for it. She enjoys petting and cuddling, but there are very particular ways I have to do it so as not to spook or overstimulate her. When she’s in the right mood, she also likes being brushed ever so gently.
“Sometimes she wants affection and other times she wants to do her own thing. I put birdseed on my patio and she loves watching the birds and squirrels coming to eat it. Once it attracted some raccoons, while every now and then a neighborhood cat comes by – much to her displeasure -- to probably hunt birds.
“Baby’s most endearing habit is how affectionately she greets me when I come out of my bedroom each morning. She lies on her side in the living room, I lie on the floor nearby doing my back stretches, and she watches the two of us in the reflection from the sliding glass door. That’s when she purrs the loudest. Once in a while, she’ll watch TV with me, but instead of watching the screen she’ll watch the reflection of the TV’s images on the sliding glass door or window. Then there’s her habit of giving me what seems like a very stern look as if to scold me! Case in point: When I have ice cream, her look says, ‘Why don’t I get some of that?’ What I don’t understand is how she knows it’s a treat.
“Baby sleeps on various chairs throughout the house as well as on a table or two. When she greets me in the morning, I’m always curious to see if she comes up the stairs, which tells me whether she was sleeping in the basement or upstairs.”
________________________________________________________________________________
Furry Friends Fur-Ever Stories are compiled and written by Nomi Berger who is the bestselling author of seven novels, one work of non-fiction, two volumes of poetry, and hundreds of articles. She is a volunteer writer for Furry Friends in Vancouver, WA and also volunteers her writing skills to animal rescue groups in Canada and the USA.
