One Damn Sturdy Tomcat

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we lasted six days between hair-washes and only shampooed this morning because the supervisor was scheduled to come in for a pre-observation conference. Did I feel like washing my hair when it was six degrees outside, with two inches of new snow? Hell no!

But this sermon isn't about hair. It's about a tomcat that I asked Freya to look out for. She has been right on it!

This tomcat has been hanging around my neighborhood for at least two years. He's just a generic tabby, with that chunky tomcat face. Except that somehow the skin got pulled clean off the right side of his face, so now he's decidedly less chunky in the mug. It's a wicked bad injury, and I got some antibiotics from the cat lady at the PETCO, but this frisky tom wouldn't eat the food laced with the medicine.

Right there's a tip-off that Freya's got Her hands on this cat. If he's really and truly homeless and unloved, he would eat cat food with red pepper flakes on it.

Sweet Goddess. The tom pulls her chariot, I'm sure!

Anyway, to make a long sermon longer, yesterday the tom was having a trash talk extravaganza chummy chat with my trophy feline through the barrier of the basement window. This drives the trophy cat crazy, because it's boring in the house.

We've had the coldest winter in recent memory here, and snow was again in the forecast. So I put out a can of food for the tom, without the medicine. He ate it, but not like a starving cat eats ... more like a pampered pet nibbles daintily. Then he went away.

Awhile back I put a little shelter together for this interloper, out on my front porch. Other than the fact that it smells like tomcat, I had no evidence he was crawling in there to keep warm. (The neighbor feline, Mestopheles, was spied napping in it during the day.) But this morning, when I went out in the pre-dawn, six-degree cold to go to work, I saw a set of footprints in the new snow. They began near the shelter and proceeded down the porch stairs, down the sidewalk, and off into the distance. It seems the tom is indeed camping in his lean-to. At least occasionally.

Through all of our bitter cold, this intrepid puss has rocked on, with half his face pulled off. I can't tell you how many nights I've gone to sleep listening to the roar of the wind and imagining the critter slipping into mortal hypothermia. Oh, me of little faith! I petitioned Freya for her help, and She is caring for this cat.

On Freya's day next, I will have a dual-purpose party. Extra Chair, not surprisingly, wants a bit of the old home culture for Chinese New Year. So we'll eat hot pot, but I'm going to decorate everything in red and then set off some sparklers. This will honor Freya on Her day and perhaps bring a little holiday cheer to poor Chair, who had two weeks off for a meaningless holiday last month and now must work through her country's biggest fun time.

Hail Freya, the great not-so-bored Goddess!