I am sure no one reading this will be surprised to learn that they went back, signed all the papers, and agreed to be humble servants to another feline boss. And boss is the word. Pearl made it known from the start that she was in charge and everyone else could either obey (humans) or get out of her way (canine and feline).
Pearl was an adult when she hired us and set in her ways. None of our other cats were outdoor cats, but there was no way to keep Pearl inside. Because we lived on three wooded acres in a place without much traffic, she was safe. She would go outside even in the extreme cold of winter.
One thing she liked to do was sit on the stovepipe of the sauna cabin, surveying her territory. When she was ready to come in, she would sit on the outside windowsill glaring at us until someone noticed and rushed to let her in. If we did not hurry to the door quickly enough, she got down, stood on her hind legs and scratched at the window with her front paws while meowing (not that we could hear her). We started calling out, ‘Code P!’ when this would happen and we’d let Daughter take care of it. Then we got a gift that came in quite handy for such moments.
Someone gave us a torch (flashlight) that included a radio and a siren/alarm setting, complete with flashing light. Once we had that, whenever Pear was scratching at the window, one of us would yell, ‘Code P!’ and set the alarm off. ‘I know!’ Daughter would grumble as she stomped towards the door to let in she-who-must-be-obeyed.Some years later, Daughter moved away and we moved to a cabin in a town 20 miles away, where we lived for about a year. When it was time for us to move from there, we were unsure at first about where we would go and what our situation would be, so we reluctantly placed ads looking for good homes for the three cats. The first couple to answer the ad came to see them. In addition to Pearl, we had two more rescues who had come to us as adults and who were already declawed. Pearl was not declawed. The couple had a baby. The wife insisted she wanted Pearl, even though Pearl was not friendly towards her. They took Pearl with them. A few days later, another couple came to see the other two cats, one black and one white. They also had small children. Everyone was thrilled—they wanted cats for the kids, but didn’t want kittens. The cats were friendly. They adopted both of them.
A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in my usual chair reading the newspaper. On Saturdays, they published the ‘pet of the week’ at the Humane Society. I called up to Bill, who was upstairs, that there was a cat that looked like Pearl in the paper and I started reading the accompanying story. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘This doesn’t just LOOK like Pearl! It IS Pearl,’ I exclaimed. Bill came rushing down the ladder-like ‘stairs’ to have a look. Then we called the Humane Society and talked to someone there, saying we’d be there soon to pick her up. We found out that the people who took her brought her there the very next day because she’d scratched the baby. Why they didn’t call us and say it wasn’t going to work out, I don’t know. We would have taken her back.
