This is the tale of Missey, The queen of the Oak Court Cats.  Missey is a “weegie” a Norwegian Forest Longhair, born in the summer of 98 in the backyard of a older house on the other side of town.  My daughter’s friend found her in the corner of the yard, called my daughter and we brought her home.  Seems she was about 7 weeks old and orphaned; her mother didn’t survive an encounter with a dog.

The first few days we tried to keep her sequestered in my daughter’s bedroom.  The vet advised us that we should let her get near the other cat for a few days.  At the time the resident feline was Mr. Worf, a rather large Manx, 5 years her senior.  For the first day she sat in the corner and meowed piteously, stopping only long enough to eat, drink and sleep.  Seems that Mr. Worf was concerned about Missey; he knew how to rattle the doorknob  while leaning on the door, opening it up.  I was reading the paper and noticed that the house grew quiet. I was surprised to see the room opened and Worf sitting on the bed, Missey sound asleep leaning against his side.  We didn’t have anything to

Roomates

worry about;  from that day on they were a team.

While Missey was an active kitty, she was by no means as graceful or athletic as Word or any of the neighborhood cats.  Jumping up on a chair was difficult and a leap to a table top? Nope, not going to happen; she just didn’t get the altitude required and would frequently miss.

To this day she will leap to a high spot only if she can stand up on her hind legs and check things out first.  Reminds me of a meerkat  the way she’ll stand up and carefully look around.

These days Missey likes to sleep, a lot.  Something like 19 hours a day.  If she were human, she’d be around 68 years old now so I guess she can sleep if she wants to. Her favorite spots are on my bed or on the sofa.  On cold mornings she’ll look for a sunny window sill or doorway.

Missey, Queen of the Oak Court Cats

She is the queen here, the senior member of the herd of cats and let’s the others know their place.  I’ve seen her swat the big cat (the maine coon) and stare down the neighbor’s dog and growl at the mailman when they disturbed her slumber.  She chased one of the cats through the house and into the ba

ck yard when they tried to push her out of the way at the water bowl.  She can get cranky when she needs to.

So tonight she is sleeping on my bed; I’ll have to put my pillow case into the wash tomorrow as she found it to be ‘just right’ for her bed tonight.  She’s sleeping soundly tonight, just a hint of a cat snore.  The other cats slowly drift into the room and take up their places on bureaus, chairs and on the bottom of the bed.  It’ll be hard f or me to stay awake much longer;  something about the sound of 4 cats snoring that makes me sleepy.

Nite.