On the Road Again...

For the latter part of last week, we realized that Merle (the outside cat) hadn't been around much, if at all.  We set his food out in the mornings, as we left for our daily walks, and then in the evening, we brought the food dish, with pretty much no food eaten, back in so as not to feed Rocky the raccoon.    Merle was one of three surviving boys in his litter.  When Mom and Dad were getting ready to drive them to the vet to be fixed, I said that they needed names because the vet was going to ask.  So Dad popped out with "Willie, Waylon, and Merle."  So it became official, we had Willie Nelson, Waylon, and Merle.  I never really called Waylon and Merle by their full names, but I got a kick out of yelling for Willie Nelson to stop playing on the road again!  Hahahah!   One by one, the boys did what happens to outdoor boy cats and either got hit by a car (Waylon) or disappeared, presumably to cat around (Willie – although again, it would have been funnier if he'd been hit by the car, playing on the road again.)  So that left us with Merle.  By our calculations, and relatively foggy memories, we think Merle is about 5-6 years old.  I'm pretty sure we had Merle before I got Sophie and Gizmo, and they had their 5th birthdays this past April.   For an outdoor cat, especially in the country what with raccoons and coyotes out looking for a snack, 5-6 years makes Merle an old man.  The only other cat I recall hanging around for more years was Boots, and he survived a myriad of things, including being kicked in the hip by a cow and he had to wear a satellite dish on his neck and he'd get his head/neck caught in the fence and I would laugh hysterically as I helped him get loose.  Boots would wander off, sometimes for weeks at a time, but then he'd roam back home.    So the ostrich in me just assumed that either Merle had found himself better digs or that he was out roaming and would be back.  The realist in me was thinking that we had a lot of Meow Mix and no one to eat it.  So yesterday on our way to church, mom and I were discussing what we should do with all the food – either donate it to a shelter, or to Haley, as she has recently adopted a family of kittens in her garage.  We'd pretty much voted on Haley.   When we got home from church, though, who is sitting on the front porch looking for us (or more likely, his food dish), but Merle!  Merle has the prettiest green eyes I've ever seen in a cat, and he loves to have his belly scratched.  So we get out of the car and tell him how happy we are to see him, and quick like lightning, he runs to us and starts lolling on the sidewalk looking for scritches, like we haven't been worried about him for 4 days!  Men!