Toby, meet everyone. Everyone, meet Toby.
Toby is our third child, we adopted him this fall because he was a stray. While
I
do believe that 2 cats are more than enough, and 3 cats are pushing excessive, look at that face and tell me that you would let him live on the streets!!
Now, Toby is Hubs 'little boy', and he subsequently babies him. For instance, if either of the girl cats do anything naughty he chases them around the house and tosses them around; if Toby does the same thing Hubs yells at him and then says "You can't help it that you're a cat" and picks him up and coddles him. Geez, 8 years down the road check back at this blog and see if I am saying the same thing about children. (By the way, I originally typed 5 years, and then quickly changed it to 7, then 10, and finally decided that 8 was an OK number)
Toby has learned a bit more in his short little life than his elder sisters. You see Toby had it rough on the streets, and the girls have lived with me since they were 5 weeks old (spoiled?). One of Toby's 'street smart' tricks is this thing called scavenging. He will either scavenge in the open or secretly. He will scavenge openly when I am cooking dinner, quickly inhaling anything that may drop to the floor no matter what it is (he is worse than a dog!). Then he will scavenge when you least expect it. Like the one morning, Hubs was making breakfast and had just put bacon in a hot frying pan. Hubs turns around (I don't remember exactly what he was doing, we'll say blowing his nose?) and when he turns around again, there is Toby on the counter, with a piece of raw bacon half in his mouth and half in the frying pan. I wasn't there personally, but I can just imagine how Toby would have frozen with the bacon hanging from his mouth into the pan. Ohh man. Toby is quite the opposite of his sisters who have no interest in human food (aside from one episode with Olive and cream cheese icing). This is probably why even though Toby is younger, he is also 4 pounds heavier.
Toby is also boyish in the fact that he has nasty smelly gas: all . the . time. In fact just today he hoped up in my lap, farted, and jumped back down. What a lovely present. He also for some time had this smell of dirt, which is hard to pull off being an indoor cat. Hubs once found him rolling around happily in the grimy basement: mystery solved! Then Hubs went to give his little 'baby' a bath, and Toby actually liked it: weird. Not very cat-like! Actually he is quite clumsy too, not a cat characteristic either! We once had someone over to the PT House and this someone was holding Toby belly up, our guest then thought to gently flip Toby over to land on his feet: and Toby fell with a thud, not on his feet. What kind of a cat is this?!
Toby is a very quiet cat, except from when he is trapped, then he lets out what Hubs and I call his "Cry for Help." For example he likes to run through a door way as you are shutting that door, and once he realizes he is trapped he will let out one single solitary high pitched "mew" and that is it!
Toby looks so old, but he still has a kitten "Mew". It is so precious.
Chloe is generally less amused with Toby, especially when she wants to play and he is always right there with a "mousie, my mousie, must chase it!" expression on his face. She gives him a look of elder sisterly disgust, and pretends to no longer be interested in the toy. Pretends. Then she beats him up.
Between the hours of 4-8 PM you can generally find him napping on our bed, and when you turn on the lights he instantly lifts his head and looks at you all squinty-eyed like "What? I wasn't sleeping, I swear". Every time, it never fails.
