Red Oak

Remember my little trees? I once rescued a trio of kittens from the woods and then named them after the local biogeography: Hemlock, Tulip Poplar and Red Oak.

For various reasons, Red ended up in a shelter near Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. She was originally dropped off with a three legged, half blind orange cat called Simon, for whom she'd been acting as a seeing eye guide. It took me a few weeks, but I found them on the shelter's website, listed as Jewel and Jersey.

While I definitely appreciated the orange cat being called Jersey, I could not live with my little Red being called Jewel. What is this, Lillith Fair? No. No no no no no.

I needed to adopt these cats.

I called the shelter to inquire. "Jewel" was listed as having this brother Jersey, but he was not listed on the site. The woman who answered the phone seemed kind of startled that I was able to so accurately describe him to her, but alas, he'd already been adopted.

What kind of person adopts the three legged, blind, weird cat?!

A good person, I suppose, and I'm glad to know he's in a good home.

Somehow, this did not deter me. My original intention was to keep. them. together. But knowing Simon was adopted, possibly as Jersey, possibly renamed again, I still couldn't get Jewel Red out of my head. Mike and I had talked about getting cat(s) after he gets back to Arizona from his summer break back east, and I just really, really, really wanted this cat back.

So I did it. I adopted her. The people at the shelter were actually very kind and actually listened to my story, and did not think of me as a crazy cat lady (or at least, did not act that way to my face or over the phone). And so: roadtrip. Because driving to Virginia over the weekend wasn't enough driving.

It made sense to take the last two days off from camp, now that I'm back working there, because stuff was going on this weekend. Thankfully, all of these years of working at camp have left me with a pretty great network of friends scattered all over, including the amazing Emma Neischloss out close to Pittsburgh. She was a wonderful host and we had a great evening catching up. Visiting her made me feel slightly less crazy about driving a 700 mile round trip for this cat.

Man, I am not helping myself here. I sound like a crazy cat lady.

I hadn't done quite this drive through PA before, and it was strange to me to see mountains covered in grass and trees after my experience with mountains out west this year.

Whatever. Red is great. She is a sweet little love, and slept almost the entire drive home. She is happily exploring her new digs, and not deterred by her less than warm welcome from our other cat (who I kind of thought liked other cats, but I guess she's still a bit confused and lost over the recent changes to the population of my parents' zoo-- the addition of a very loud small dog and the loss of a cat who, as aloof as she was, was kind of her friend). I went back and forth with feeling silly about the effort I have made to rescue this cat, but it's going to be really nice to share this with Mike, and to know he has some company out there, and have this little thing in common as we spend the next year apart.





 

Oh yeah, I still owe an explanation of New Orleans. I promise it's coming soon. Really.