Mandatory Parker: In the Beginning
The origin story of the Lint-Covered Breast Implant
Dog people always mock us cat people about our situations. We don’t plan and organize to get a cat, they say. The beast just shows up, right about the time you’ve reconciled yourself that another cat in your life is going to be at someone else’s house. Sometimes they fall out of the sky, sometimes they come up through the floorboards, sometimes they enter via random packages dropped off at the front door. And then you have the ones that simply show up at the front door, arguing “I don’t care if you didn’t get the move-in paperwork, but I did, and I just need a place to sleep.”
Honest to Elvis, that’s the backstory on Parker. Nearly two years ago, I was managing a carnivorous plant gallery in Dallas, Texas, and happened to be out at the gallery one Sunday afternoon waiting for a client who wanted to pick up a commissioned carnivorous plant enclosure. Two minutes after the client left, I was cleaning up and getting ready to shut everything down and go home when I got another visitor. He meeped a bit and begged for an ear-scritching, and I just stood there looking confused. While he flopped on the gallery porch, I rolled some possible scenarios in my head, including one involving my next-door neighbor Mohammad, who both volunteered at pet rescues and brought his cat and dog to his office when he had to work on weekends. One hand on the cat and one knocking on the door, I was stuck when Mohammad opened his door to see what his dingbat neighbor was up to.
“Mohammad, I think your cat got out.” I wasn’t SURE this was his cat, but it was as logical as anything else.
He looked down at me, looked down at the cat, and looked confused. “Dude, that’s not my cat.”
A few shared observations, and the cat came inside the gallery for a much-appreciated drink of water while I checked out the local SPCA lost-and-found listings. No report of a lost cat matching this one’s description, and I certainly didn’t have a chip reader on hand to check his microchip. Hence, he stayed in the gallery while I scooted to a nearby pet shop to get food, toys, and a carrier so I could get him home until I discovered where he came from. I came back to his flopping on the floor of the entryway, having claimed the place for himself.
That night, he stayed at my house thanks to severe thunderstorms coming through the area, as I was NOT going to try to bring a strange cat to a 24-hour veterinarian in the middle of a thunderstorm. Once he got to the house, he took that over, too, and settled right in to watch the thunderstorm pummel the neighborhood. First sign that he was different: this was the first cat I’d had in over a decade that didn’t freak out and hide during a thunderstorm. If anything, he just looked out at the stormclouds with an expression of “You’d better not mess up my sure thing, or I’ll come up there and kick your ass.” As far as he was concerned, he was already home.
The next day involved a trip to the vet, where the techs complimented his looks and his attitude while scanning his chip. Grand fun: his chip came with a listing for a pet rescue group that had shut down about six months earlier, and the only name given was “Stray.” He didn’t answer to “Stray,” so I contemplated possibilities while he lounged on my couch. Finally, he broke his vow of silence shortly after my alarm clock went off the next morning by jumping on the bed and loudly stating that it was a good time to discuss the bonus situation. From that point on, he was “Parker,” and no other name really fit.
To be continued every Friday…