Jamie Patterson Managing EditorI hate to admit this, but I am so relieved that the cat who hangs around our house is finally gone.
We “inherited” a cat when we bought our house a couple of years ago. I’m not sure if the former owner forget about her or simply wanted to leave her for the next person, but we were the owners of a new pet.
You are probably shocked about my first statement, but this cat had few redeeming qualities.
My family and I had taken in a little mutt we found at the Dumpster around the same time we arrived at our new home. The white and black spotted dog is so sweet and great with our two children.
We named her DeeDee, and she is part of the family. She never howls at night or whines by the door. She has a little spot on the front porch. She lets James get a little rough with her and seems to enjoy it. She licks baby Elsie’s feet every time we catch a few moments in the rocking chair on the front porch. And she greets us at our cars every time we pull up to the house.
This cat, on the other hand, was ruthless. We named her Bonnie after Bonnie and Clyde.
Bonnie would pounce on you the second you came outside. She has knocked the children down a few times trying to get inside the house. She would make strange noises at the doors all night long. She never let you pet her. And she scratched at the children without warning.
No matter how much we fed her she always acted like she was starving. She would finish her food and then pick a fight with DeeDee for what was left in the dog bowl.
It sometimes took me five minutes to pull my vehicle up to the house because she kept moving in front of me and stopping. Every direction I turned the wheel to avoid her, she would move in front of me. It got to where I had to blast into the front yard at 80 miles an hour to make it to my parking spot before she saw me coming.
I never could unload my groceries. I left the trunk opened once to take some bags of groceries inside. I was distracted by a potty-training son at the time so it was a good ten minutes before I made it back out to my car.
Bonnie was inside my truck, eating my pound sack of honey ham. She had ripped a hole in my bread and transformed it into bread crumbs. She somehow took out six hot dogs too.
Once when I had a group of girlfriends coming over for a visit, Bonnie decided to snoop around in a glue-like substance. In an effort to clean the mess off of her, she began to tear off sections of her fur.
When my friends came out onto the side porch to leave, Bonnie was covered with glue. The hair around her neck was completely gone and she was bleeding from where she ripped her fur out. It looked like something out of a horror movie. I think one friend covered her kid’s eyes on the way to their car. Which by the way, it took them ten minutes to back out of my driveway because Bonnie kept getting behind them.
I never did figure out where she found the glue in the first place.
And I can’t count the number of times I have had to return home from town because Bonnie would sneak in the back seat. I debated a few times to leave her at a gas station, but I didn’t have the heart.
So, I can’t begin to explain the joy that came over the Patterson family when Bonnie returned home one night with a collar around her neck.
I began to frolick around a tree. Jason gave himself a high five. James invented a dance. And Elsie gulped down a bottle in celebration.
“Someone must want her for a pet,” Jason said. “This could be it.”
But it wasn’t it. A few days later Bonnie returned with no collar.
“They must have gotten wise about her,” I said.
However, Bonnie came home yet another day with a new coller. This time there was even a cute little tag. Not wanting to jinx ourselves, we controlled our emotions this time.
That was months ago. Bonnie hasn’t returned.
I truly hope she found a home where she is happy. She never seemed to enjoy ours.
But Bonnie truly left a mark on us.
I still won’t leave the trunk open when I go grocery shopping. The children are practically scared of cats now. I check the back seat of my car when I head into town.
You always hear stories about people who have those “crazy” pets. Well, the Pattersons have one of those now too.
But like the sequel to a horror movie, we are on edge to see if Bonnie will ever return to us. We gaze off into our neighboring woods and wonder if she is out there...waiting on the trunk to be left open once more.