Memories - Dude's story, part 1

If you have ever read Mom's own blog, you'll know she's fond of memories and if you don't stop her, she'll share them with you. To be fair she usually warns people she's hard to stop once she starts.

I'm a great jumper, I'm a cautious walker and I can lie down very properly - all of that if I want to, that is. Just as easily I can knock over everything on Mom's desk with my tail or I tear down garments that have been left hanging over a door. I really have to be in a mischievous mood to throw down the wire spools on her nightstand, though. Whenever Meffi does that, she goes nuts. Mom going nuts is unnerving, she gets that whiny sound in her voice calling out "Oh Meeeeeeff!"
What I am trying to say, is that these are the moments she starts telling stories from a long time ago (sounds as if this could become a regular category on his blog, too ...). Just yesterday she started reading a book about a blind cat and when I knocked over Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (it's not as if it's the original, it's just a notebook!), she heaved one of her "memory sighs" and started telling me about Dude, the guy who prepared our humans for all other cats in this house.

The story started in October 1992 when our humans visited a friend in Northern California for the very first time. Mom had been told the story about the white cat with the blue and the yellow eye on the phone already, the cat that had been left behind by the former inhabitants of the friend's house. Jenn had two cats of her own, small Chocolate and her big tabby son Reggie, both very territorial. They wouldn't let him into the house. Every, now and then White Dude, usually called Dude, sneaked in to sleep on the couch. Several possibilities were discussed, but in the end Dude lived in an abandoned car in the neighborhood, but got his food and snuggle time.
How much he needed it showed when Mom arrived at Jenn's house a week before Dad who still had some business to take care of. Mom more or less got out of the car and into a chair in the little back yard underneath a lemon tree. There she sat for hours, her new love in her arms. Dude had come, seen and won her heart within one second and all she could think of was how to take him home. A week later Dad arrived and although he played the tough guy, he lost his heart just as quickly.
That's how Dude finally became a foreign exchange kitty and the first cat ever in this crazy household.

To be continued - part 2 will tell you why a blind cat reminded Mom of Dude.