Winston the Wise

I love this picture of our cat Winston. He has such a wise expression on his face.

Of all our animals, Winston is my favorite (except when he's whining because his food bowl is empty). We have a bond that I don't have with the other animals. I can talk to him about things and he looks at me with an expresson on his face that seems to say he understands.

He's a lap cat, with me at least, and has been from the very beginning.

He was rescued from the streets of Santa Fe. His owners were moving to Florida and couldn't take him along, so they just put him out on the streets to fend for himself. He wasn't very good at it and got in fights with other cats. A mutual friend took him in, but she couldn't keep him and was about to take him to the shelter. That would have been certain death for him, since people go to the shelter wanting cute little kittens, not an adult cat, even a one-year-old with huge green eyes.

So Ron brought him home, surprising me. We needed a second cat. Our beloved Panther had died a few months earlier and we wanted Shadow to have another cat to play with.

Ron came home from Santa Fe one evening and without any warning, plopped Winston into my lap. Completely delighted, I petted him and loved on him and welcomed him to the family. He settled down and made himself comfortable in my lap, curling up and going to sleep. He stayed like that for about two hours and would have stayed for longer, but finally I had to get up. That was a little more than three years ago and I'm still completely delighted to have him in our family.