Romeo, Romeo...I know where you are, Romeo!

So...we have a cat.  I don't think I've actually done a post about it yet, which really surprises me.  Maybe it's because I really don't want to be one of those cat people.  Ok, so back story on how Romeo came to be Romeo and how he even got here to begin with:  Zach = huge animal lover and tender hearted.  Finds kitten at the high school boys football practice one day and the poor little baby is starving!  Tender heart feeds him some sunflower seeds because it's the only thing he has.  Kitten is meowing like crazy and Zach calls to see if he can bring him home.  My response?  NO!  We have dogs that would like kitty bbq and I'm allergic so it really wouldn't work out Z.  But Mom...he's so cute, he's so tiny, he's so hungry.  NO, Zach, I'll be there to pick you up after practice. 
So, I do.  And we've had this kitten ever since.

We thought it was a girl so Ryan names it Ana.  It never really looked like an Ana or a girl so we kept trying different names out.  One day I said to Steve, I just don't know what to call this cat...she doesn't look like a girl.  He says, I'm not so sure it IS a girl.  I said, what makes you say that?  Steve says, he's got balls.  So of course I had to look.  Sure enough, Ana was no longer and we really had to come up with a different name!  The boys come home and they were just as surprised as I was that we had a boy cat instead of a girl cat.  We went around and around with names. I wanted Romeo because he's such a little lover.  Alfonso Soriano was thrown into the mix (Ryan has a thing with all the animals needing a middle name) and Ryan also wanted to name him Warhammer because he is feisty and has zero fear.  ZERO. 

Ok, so now the cat is called Romeo Alfonso Soriano Warhammer the 3rd (I don't know who the 1st and 2nd are but, there you have it) but he mostly goes by Cat. 

I've never had a cat long enough to know how funny they actually are (remember the allergy and dogs?)  but did you know they can entertain themselves for hours, hours! just by skidding stuff across the hardwood floor?  I never knew they liked to do brodies around your living room using every single piece of furniture you have, bouncing around, peeling out, sliding across the wooden tv stand (because you just dusted a few minutes ago and it's puuurrfect for sliding, all slick and shiny).  Romeo likes to used the hallway as his runway, launch himself up onto the arm of the couch, bounce to the 3rd cushion, on to the tv stand, s-l-i-d-e across, jump to the mama chair and run along the back of it, hop onto the end table and then onto the back of the recliner.  Where he sits up high and looks at the dogs as if to say, "Let's see you try that". 

Mostly the dogs ignore him.  Jerry is pretty cool with him and actually seems a little intimidated by him.  If you knew Jerry, this would not surprise you.  Rex merely tolerates him.  Romeo attacks Jerry sometimes, bites his tail nub and his jowly flabber.  Jerry walks away and tries to hide.  Romeo gets to within 4 feet of Rex and he starts growling.  Romeo will get as close as he can to Rex, until Rex just gets up and walks away.  NO FEAR for this cat. 

He also fetches like a dog.  Do all cats do this?  He runs downstairs, grabs a mini helmet the boys (Steve) have collected and comes back upstairs with it in his mouth.  Rolls/chases it around the kitchen floor, over to the basement stairs, knocks it off, chases it down the stairs, carries it back up and starts again.  For hours.  You almost always know where this cat is.  He also likes to play peek-a-boo in boxes.  All boxes, but especially the one that has the plastic around it for the bottled water we buy.  When he was smaller, he would lay in there and hide and poke a claw out when you would walk by.  Or his head would come out the little hole you make in the top to pull water out.  Sometimes the hole was too small and he'd get sort of stuck.  He finally has hops, too.  He can now get on the table and the counter, all those high, out of reach places that he couldn't get to before.  Accckkkkk, that freaks me out!  Furniture is one thing, but the place where you prepare your food and eat is another thing entirely.  I've polished the kitchen table only to come home later and find little kitty footprints across it. 

It's a learning process for all of us.  We need to learn to be cat people and he needs to learn how to quietly approach Jerry from behind so he doesn't see him coming.