Introducing...

Feebe.

Feebe is just Feebe.  She has no formal name and no middle name – she is simply Feebe. As Gerald has explained it, Feebe is a diva, and divas stand alone.  This was not intentional as we did not try to further her idea that she was a princess but nothing has stopped her from acting the part.  Given her humble beginning, I suppose she is entitled to some degree. 

In the fall of 2002, as I was driving home from work one evening, later than usual, I spotted a small calico kitty in the middle of the road.  The two cars in front of me swerved around it, however, I stopped.  I got out of the car, and did the whole, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” thing.  I fully expected it to run away as soon as it heard my voice but she did quite the opposite.   She ran, full speed, over to me and put her paws up on my knee, purring and meowing the whole time.  I didn’t really know what to do but I did the most logical thing I could think of: picked up the kitty and got back into my car. 

I slowly drove the rest of the way home; all the while this happy little cat was running around my car, jumping on me, the dash, the steering wheel, etc.  When I pulled up, Gerald walked out to the car to meet me and froze in his tracks as he saw this kitty laying on the dash of my car.  He just shook his head as if to say, “Here we go again!” 

We took her into the bathroom as to not expose the other cats to her in case she had something they could catch and get sick from.  We sat in there and talked for about 30 minutes, trying to figure out what in the heck we were going to do!  Finally it was decided that she was too fat and friendly to be a total stray – she had to have an actual home.  So we drove down to where I found her and I canvassed the houses – knocking on doors and asking everyone that was home if they were missing a little calico kitty.  No one was.  We drove the rest of the way into town and happened to see someone still at the vet’s office.  I guess we asked nice enough because they allowed her to stay over the weekend but the condition was I had to pick her up on Monday.

First thing Monday morning I called the animal shelter to see if anyone was looking for their cat.  No one was.  I called the newspaper and put a ‘found’ ad out, thinking I would get a call.  I didn’t.  Reluctantly I called the vet’s office and asked them to test her for feline leukemia, give her a check-up, and vaccinate her.  If I had to take her home she had to have a clean bill of health.  That afternoon I picked her up and we went home.  I thought we had a new kitty.

Friday evening as we were eating dinner, the phone rang.  It was an old guy who said he saw our ad and thought that it might be his son’s cat.  (His son lived about ½ mile from where I found her, on the other side of a creek.)  He added that his son probably wouldn’t care if I wanted to keep it but if I was going to, “throw it out the window,” I could drop it off at his house – it was a barn cat after all.  He gave me his son’s phone number and told me I should call him the next day.  I was crushed.  In just 5 short days I had gotten attached to this little kitty.  I liked her and best of all, Gerald liked her.  That night I sat in the living room in the dark with the little kitty and cried.  I didn’t want to give her back but I didn’t want to say I wanted her as we already had three others at the time.

The next day, as I was scooping litter boxes, Gerald came into the room and said, “If you want to keep her, we can keep her.” I did and we did.