A Little Insight on Charlie

This is my Charlie cat back when he was a kitten. Adorable, I know. Back in June of last year, my grandpa was out at the barn when he found a cute little gray kitten just old enough to have his eyes open. My grandpa brought the kitten into the house and let my grandma mess with it. Granny called us a few days later and told us to come over so we could see the new kitten. He was a sickly thing, his eyes kindly goopy, but he sure was cute! He wasn't like other kittens though, because when you held him, he would bite your fingers and try to claw up your hand. We dismissed it though, because seriously, look at that face! He was at my grandparent's house for about a week and a half more when my Granny asked if I could take him home with me. She had her hands full with 2 handicapped dogs and the strain of another needy animal was taking its toll. I agreed, and I took Kitten and his cage(which was a old bird cage) home with me, determined to find him a home!

Well, Kitten turned out to be quite the handful! Every morning, he would meow and meow and meow until I woke up. I would crawl out of bed, open his cage door, and then try to go back to sleep. I say 'try' because as soon as I got back in the bed, I would hear rip snag purr purr grunt purr and find myself face to face with Kitten! Let me tell you, it made my heart just about melt to think that this tiny ball of fuzz had worked so hard to climb the bed just so he could look at me. Turns out though, he wasn't just trying to "look at me". This cat had(and still has) more moods swings than a teenage girl. He would start out purring and being sickening sweet, but then he would quickly turn into mean Kitten, biting my nose and fingers as hard as possible, growling at me when I pushed him away. It didn't hurt, of course, but it was still a shock to see this little bitty kitten treating a big tall human this way. I would finally get out of bed, and the kitten would tumble down off my bed, waiting for me to swing my feet off the edge of my bed. As soon as I did, ATTACK! He would clamp his little teeth and claws into my foot, determined to take me down. I'll admit I even swung my foot back and forth, but don't tell me that I'm mean, because you didn't see the way Kitten was acting.


After I was done getting ready for the day, I would go back into my room and take hundreds of pictures and dozens of videos of my foster kitten. He was cute, but I already had cats. 5, to be precise. Just when I would see him do something REALLY cute, I'd hop on the computer and send out emails asking anyone if they needed a kitten. One girl had a cat who just had 6 kittens, another wasn't allowed to have cats, one was allergic, etc. I went on searching for about a month, when one night, I was on the computer, Kitten asleep in my lap, when my mom walked in the room. "So, have you named him yet?" He was known as MY Charlie cat after that.


Oh, the funny games me and Charlie played with each other! He was more like a toddler than a kitten. Charlie had absolutely no respect for me, treating me like his sister instead of his mother. I would be sitting in the floor reading, and Charlie would run up, bite my hand, and then dive under the bed where I couldn't reach him. I'm partly to blame for his behaviour, for I congratulated him on his weird ways, laughing and hugging him because it was just so cute and funny! One of our favorite games was when I would get down on my hands and knees and play just like him. I would growl at him, crawl over, grab his tail(my form of biting with my hand), and run off. Then he would do the same to me, then I'd do it back, and so on and so forth.


Another game we(or should I say Charlie) liked to play is I Spy: Charlie Edition. I like to collect natural things like nests, small animal bones, rocks, and bugs. I would find a particularly nice wish bone and put it on my dresser. Charlie would wait till I wasn't looking, sneak on top of my dresser, pull the bone down, and hide it somewhere in my room. My room is not very neat, so it was always quite hard to find something once Charlie got a hold of it. Pretty soon, I had to learn to hide stuff better. I'd put things like rocks that Charlie found amusing in my jewelry box, but even then I had to sneak. If Charlie saw me put it in the jewelry box, he'd sit in front of it and meow until I finally got it out and moved it. Life with Charlie was a constant game, but we loved every minute of it.


All was, by simple standards, well, until the one night Charlie went berserk. Charlie was sitting on the kitty table looking out the window at my grandparent's cat, who likes to come over and eat, who was outside. This was apparently very upsetting to Charlie because his tail was twitching and he was ignoring everyone around him. My mother decided to playfully grab him, and all Hell broke loose. Charlie whipped around, latched himself to my mother's hand, and bit, cut, scratched, & bruised as much of her right hand as possible. I slapped Charlie off, and he ran into the living room. My mother's hand was terrible looking, all bloody and red. I got the cat carrier and threw Charlie in it, not caring if he got hurt. Boy, was my mom mad! We had been talking about putting Charlie outside anyways, but now it was a done deal. Charlie was to be an outside cat....... once the weather got nice.


My mother, her hand swollen, pussy, and sore, took Charlie outside when the rain and cold had finally blown past, and there he's been ever since. My mother's hand healed in about a week, thank goodness, and no shots or doctor's trips were required. Charlie is MUCH sweeter now that he's outside, always rubbing against my legs when I come out to do anything. He hasn't bit anyone since and he LOVES it outside. I've never seen him happier. He likes to take running jumps off of the pool deck onto a tree, climbing way up high before jumping back down onto the ground. He likes to chase lizards, he sleeps in a dog house, and when my brothers play soccer, Charlie likes to run after the ball.


I love my Charlie cat to death, more then I've loved any of my other cats(though I love them dearly as well.). Whenever we have friends over, they always say how much they love Charlie and how cute and sweet he is. Well, he is.....most of the time.