Meet Pete

Meet Pete. He's my cat. Pete is a Manx. He's bob tailed and his back legs are a little longer than his front legs so he looks like his back end is jacked up. That is a normal characteristic of a Manx cat.

I was going to make him an indoor cat but that didn't last long. It was clear that I wasn't going to "make" him anything he didn't want to be. A small space and an athletic, determined cat is a recipe for disaster. I've managed to make every pet I've owned needy and neurotic but Pete just won't buy into that. My job is to feed and water him, open the door, and pet him IF he wants to be petted. Otherwise, back off!

This is actually a good thing. While he's curious about visitors, he doesn't harass them. He likes men better than women and after his curiosity is satisfied he goes on his way. We've all tried to visit around an obnoxious, insistent cat so I'm glad Pete is like he is.

Unlike Levi, who had to have constant monitoring and attention, Pete just wants to be left to

his own entertainment. It's almost too easy. If he's in the condo when I leave, fine. If he isn't, fine. He's usually on a porch chair when I get home, ready to go in for a nibble and a nap.

I sit on my porch and watch him making his rounds. His nosiness gets him in trouble sometimes. One day he came home smelling just awful. When I got close enough to him I recognized skunk scent. Horrified, I locked him in the bathroom until I could go buy something to bath him. Petco told me to go buy tomato juice and drown him in it. I put this unhappy cat in the bathtub and poured a couple of cans of tomato juice into his fur. By the time we were done the bathroom looked like a CSI murder scene. I had tomato juice on all four walls, the floor, the mirror, and me. It took longer to clean up the mess than it did to clean up the cat.

Pete is a good hunter so I keep a bell around his neck. In spite of that he's brought me a squirrel and several wrens. This makes me sad but I can't fault a guy for doing what he's engineered to do. Right now I'm watching him very closely because we have a couple of bluebird houses with eggs on the nests. One of the boxes with eggs is on a light pole out front and he'll climb up and sit on the box. The daddy bluebird guards his nest and divebombs at Pete while Pete swats at him like King Kong swatting at airplanes on the Empire State building. The real danger will come when the babies start trying to fly. I can't sit and watch a bluebird box day and night but I'm making it my business to monitor it as much as I can. Life in the wild is tricky business and Pete is a tricky guy.