prairie point

quiltcat

Meet Silky Sam. Our oldest cat, he lived with Tricia before we merged households. He was injured by a car while still a kitten and found by a co-worker of Tricia's who thought he was Siamese. Tricia was looking for a Siamese and went to see him. Though she knew immediately that he was not, she took him in anyway. He does have pale blue eyes.

When I first got to know Sam he was the timidest cat I had known. He seemed to spend most of the time either in a closet or under the bed. There were two dominating females living with him who kept him in his place.

I wasn't sure what would happen when Sam came to live with my two cats. We gave him his own room upstairs. Well almost his own room. It's Tricia's sewing studio and gets called into service as a guest bedroom on occasion too. It's a big room with wide window ledges. There is also a wide flat table in the middle of the room next to the sewing machine right under a ceiling fan. Sam spends a lot of time there on top of whatever quilt project Tricia happens to be working on. That's her "bug jar" quilt in the picture above. For the longest time Sam had that domain pretty much to himself because Sapphire and Julie didn't like the sound of the sewing machine. Eventually Sapphire's curiousity overcame her fear though and now she and Sam have become rivals for this spot when Tricia is working upstairs.

Sam really came into his own after moving here. Although he is still the number three cat he is accepted by the others and is a lot more outgoing than he was before. It helps that he has his own place to retreat to.

But what is really interesting to me about Sam is his behavior outdoors. He had always been an indoor cat before he came here; whereas my two had always been permitted out in the garden. When we first let Sam out with them he didn't quite know what to do and five years later he still doesn't. But he watches the other cats and copies their behavior. Ever once in a while he will be stalking something in the grass and he will suddenly seem unsure of what it is that he needs to do next and start looking around for cues.

Lately there has been a strange black cat interloping in the garden. Our two females hiss at it but generally keep their distance. Sam though seems to have decided to make a stand against it and we've had to intercede a few times. It's like some remnant of his masculinity is finally asserting itself.

Posted by Bill Hopkins on May 20, 2003 09:06 PM