Uh oh. I gave him a cookie.
Isn’t that how it always starts? The peanut to that little squirrel on your back porch becomes a full-blown city park of fat, sponging rodents you eventually call an exterminator to “deal” with. I know from experience, since I was a Planters’s perpetrator, and my husband – an animal lover in every way – had to endure the ugly side of my sentimentality.
After leaving Manhattan for a condo in Connecticut, we couldn’t believe the sheer number of abandoned cats heartless and/or ignorant young insurance industry employees left behind, the mistaken assumption being cats can take care of themselves. No. They bloody can’t. They’re domestic animals that have been dependent on humans for 5000 years, you morons. We wound up taking in four ferals (all of whom lived to be 20+, thank you very much), finding homes for about 13 others (with the generous help of my former Sunday School teacher, who was also a veterinarian), and feeding the rest to the best of our ability.
Okay. Got off on a thing there. I was joking about feeding Johnson – the cookie being the metaphor. Unlike those adorable, destructive New Hampshire rodents I was apparently enabling in their actively eating my house, Johnson is a productive, loving, interesting, smart, fellow smitten by an eighth grade b****. And he is relentless, but no exterminator will remove him.
So hang on. He’ll surprise you.