Happy Charlie Day!

Today is July 1, the day I observe as Charlie Day! Seventeen years ago this month, Charlie came home with me. He holds the title as the non-related male who has been in my life the longest. Charlie has been with me through two marriages, three dogs, and four moves. Charlie loves plastic crinkly bags and freaking ADORES WM.

I don’t know when Charlie’s exact birthday is because I wasn’t his first owner.

Charlie initially belonged to the president of the company I worked for at the time, and after a few months his kids suddenly became allergic to the cat. The onset of allergies came just about the time Charlie grew out of his initial round fuzzy kittenhood. Funny, that. I already had Mickey (dog), Noelle, and Misty (cats)*, but I felt like this guy would have let Charlie out on the side of the road if I didn’t volunteer. I arranged to take him at the end of the workday, but his wife dropped the cat off at my cubicle at lunchtime one July day. My manager wouldn’t let me leave early (that guy was such an ass), so Charlie meowed sadly from his carrier behind my desk all afternoon.

Three weeks later, Gloucester County Animal Shelter read me the riot act on the phone because Charlie was adopted out to his initial family and they were supposed to return him if they couldn’t keep him and such and such and blah. All I did was call and see if they had someone already on tap to neuter him at six months, or if I had to take him to my vet. I told them to pound sand and if they wanted to get their rocks off by scolding someone, try the woman who actually surrendered the cat instead of the women who was feeding him. I ended up taking him to my vet because I was afraid GCAS would have kept him.

Charlie was the mascot of my blog for many years.

He was over 20 pounds at his heaviest. At 17 years old, he’s a bit thinner. My old man cat sleeps a LOT now, which is why most of his current pictures are from my sofa. He’s living his silver years there, grabbing rays of sun as they move across the room. Some older mammals can be difficult to live with, and Charlie’s no exception. If his food bowl is empty, he makes himself spit up on the floor in front of us. And he will spite-poop outside the box if something displeases him. But we’re in it ’til the end, which I hope is many years from now.

Happy seventeenth, Boo-bear!

* It’s weird that my blog has been around so stinking long that I have to explain who my pets were when I started it.