Frodo

I spend time every week reading the blogs of quilters. Many of them have cats and share photos of their precious felines. I tend to smile when I see those photos of sweet cuddly furballs and think - "In my dreams. . ."  You see, when we got our cat, he was about 8 weeks old. He was from the litter of some family friends and the kids were thrilled to have another cat. (We had a cat named Simba and we all felt it would be great for Simba to have a playmate). We got him during the Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and thought the name "Frodo" was cute. Well, as time went by, we decided a better name for him would have been "Gollum".  I think Frodo was jealous of Simba. Simba was (at that time) the Lion King of the neighborhood (yes, our cats are outdoor cats - we live in Phoenix, after all!). Simba was quite Kingly in letting others know what his turf was. There were many mornings we would go out front and see giant tufts of fur and know Simba had been in a fight. But, I digress. This is about Frodo.
Gollum would have fit him better as a name because - Frodo is Evil!!! This cat thinks about what he does and how he can show his superiority. One time he had a stare down with our dog (Penny) in the kitchen. Penny peed the floor! Penny is a 50 pound mutt!!!!  Frodo became more bold as time went by. He would come into the house, eat his food, taunt the dog, then disappear. We soon learned those disappearances resulted in unpleasant arromatic incidences throughout the house. So we threw him out of the house. Oh, we would give him attention outside and feed and water him, BUT, he was no longer allowed to come inside.
One morning I opened the front door to let Simba out and made eye contact with Frodo. It was 7am. At 7:15am, I went out the door to get into my car to go to work. As I got closer to the car, I saw something on the top of my sunroof. It was cat POOP!!!! I ran into the house and hollered at Louie to come outside and see this spectacle on my car. (I needed a witness!). It was so fresh it was still WARM! What cat does that? Don't they usually bury their duty? He was sending me a message - let me in the house OR ELSE!!!
My resolve to keep him outside was even stronger after that. UNTIL, one night we had a terrible storm. Pelting rain, cold wind and I felt sooooo sorry for evil kitty who was outside. I opened the door and called for him. He was close by and darted into the house to safety. Since then, we have a love/hate relationship.  Here's "My Precious". . . .