Sometimes, I find inspiration in the funniest places. As I mentioned, this has been a rough week and I’m still catching up from it today, working at home. But while I’ve been plugging away at work in the office, I’ve had a little companion keeping me company. You’ve probably seen him show up a fair amount in my instagram feed, but if you haven’t properly met him yet, meet the Binker:
He may look like he’s got it pretty good, but his life wasn’t always that great. We refer to our older cat, Alex, as our “planned cat” and the Binker as our “accidental cat” because when we moved to New York, one cat was fine and we had a small apartment {and after having dogs growing up, I was still learning to be a cat person}. But then, a late fall morning, I was getting ready to head to work, but when I walked outside the apartment to go get my car, I heard the most plaintive crying. I couldn’t tell quite what it was. Maybe an injured bird, maybe something else, but I had to go see what it was. I looked under my car, and this is what I found.
This teeny little guy was under my car, cold and wet and screeching his fool head off – just as he’s doing in this picture. I figured he’d gotten out of someone’s apartment and since we had Alex’s cat carrier, my husband could take him to the office until his owner was found, so I fished him out from under the car. As soon as I felt how scrawny his little body was and as soon as he clutched my shoulder and started purring as if his little life depended on it, I was done. I knew he hadn’t just gotten out of someone’s apartment. Someone had tossed him and he was on his own.
I came back inside and my husband, big tough guy that he is, just melted. We did put out word in the apartments that we’d found a kitten, but we pretty much knew we had ourselves another cat. He went through several names before we ended up just calling him the Binker. That’s the sound the little bell on his collar makes when he’s up to mischief. He “binks” all the glasses off the counter tops because when he does, we come out running to see what he did, and he gets attention. He’s a smart little turkey. Anyway, he found himself a new home. And he thrived.
We still don’t know how long he was on his own. He was so little and scrawny when we found him that the vet had a really hard time figuring out how old he was. But it didn’t stop him from growing into a silky-soft, healthy cat. He’s still small – he’s almost two and his paws are still too big for him, so we think the abandonment and malnourishment stunted his growth – but he’s healthy and he’s happy. He managed to survive.
If a stubborn little cat can survive being tossed out of his home, malnutrition, a hurricane {yes, he was out in nature when Hurricane Irene hit}, and lots of things that probably tried to eat him, and thrive after, then something as stupid as a bad week is not going to get me down.
