Bad, Bad Bob

Most of you will remember Bobitha Grace Stubbins—the latest stray to throw herself on our mercy. Melissa and I were utterly smitten by her, but knew deep in our hearts of hearts that we were pretty much at our limit, feline-wise. So, hard as it was to do, we began to look for a home for the sweet girl, hoping we could find one near enough that we could go for visits.

One of my coworkers fell for my wouldn’t-an-extra-cat-make-the-holiday-season-extra-bright? appeal. It also helped that Bobitha has her charming little stump of a tail, as their current cat is a shortie as well, which would allow them to develop a theme of sorts. They came over for a visit with Bobitha, and quickly agreed with us that she is an absolute charmer.

So off they went for their holiday, and off went Bobitha to the vet—because we wanted to make sure we would be giving them a healthy cat with all necessary vaccinations. It wouldn’t do if Bobitha brought in some nasty bug to infect the current resident.

That’s when the surprises started. To start with, Bobitha is not Bobitha—she’s plain old Bob. We really had looked, and the lack of anything noticeably bumpy or lumpy under her nether fur had led us to certain conclusions. The vet had a time of it herself, figuring out Bob’s status: she poked a bit (gently, mind you) and pulled her glasses down off of her forehead for a proper look, before announcing that Bob is definitely male.

Then, the vet ran the microchip scanner over her… er, him. Beep! Bob was no orphan of the storms. Bob was AWOL. A call to the pet tracking company, a few more phone calls, and we’d connected with Bob’s—actually his name is Henry—mom, who came to pick him up the next morning. She used to live in our neighborhood and has had trouble with Bob going walkabout since they relocated to an apartment eight blocks away. Bob/Henry behaves like a perfect little gent until he wins her trust, then convinces her he’s responsible enough to go outside—and he’s off!

Case in point: two days after she’d picked up Bob/Henry, he was back in our yard, and we had to call her to fetch him all over again.

I have to admit that the whole process has left me feeling slightly less enamoured of Bobitha (we’ve decided to keep the original name and the female pronoun, after all, that’s the cat we knew). It’s as if I’ve been seduced under false pretenses. She won my heart, and played on my sympathies, when really she didn’t need me at all.

So that’s our latest feline adventure—sort of a Crying Game meets Prodigal Son thing. I expect we haven’t seen the last of Bobitha, but now we’ll know she’s feeding us a line when she claims to be a helpless waif.

Bobitha/Bob/Henry: one very cute kitty—and a bit of a flim-flam artist.