One night at a meeting of the Fairbanks Needlework Guild, a woman sat down next to me, nodded towards another woman across the room, and said, ‘She told me to talk to you.’ As I asked her what she wanted to talk to me about, I was curious about what her answer would be. She proceeded to talk about a black cat, less than a year old, named Bentley. He was given that name because he was found as quite a young kitten stuck in the door of the Michaels craft store in the Bentley Mall (the northernmost mall in North America). When rescued, he had leg injuries so needed to have some surgery. His leg was saved and he could use it, but it was bent in a funny direction (another tie-in with his name!) and he limped a little. Nonetheless, he had recovered well and his injury didn’t impede his movement in any way as he grew. The problem was, this woman’s daughter turned out to be allergic and they needed a new home for the little guy. I was apparently seen as an easy mark, so she was pointed in my direction.
I told her I’d talk to Bill about it and when I got home, that’s the first thing I did. He was not hostile to the idea, but he wasn’t overly enthusiastic, either. We’d just adopted white rescue cat named Frosty from the Humane Society (we quickly renamed him J. Frost E.). We weren’t sure about introducing another cat into the house so soon, but Bill emailed the woman and asked a few questions. After she’d answered, we talked about it and agreed that we’d bring Bentley home. We needn’t have worried, because J and Bentley became friends very quickly. Bentley came with a feather duster, because he loved it, we were told. He was uninterested in it when he came to our house, but J loved it! He would flop onto his back, holding the feather duster with his front paws, then bite it and start to attack it with his back paws. It was funny. Bentley, although younger than J, was kind of mellow. It all worked out beautifully and we were glad that we’d agreed to become Bentley’s people.
