The two women who live upstairs have two cats and one dog.  Sonny, one of the cats, is an explorer who doesn’t waste any opportunity to get outside, although his jaunts are never long and always result in him sitting either by my patio or by the front door begging to be let in.  His sister Cher, on the other hand, is a homebody who doesn’t even like being out on the balcony (oh, how she cries…).

Aside: No one will ever accuse those ladies of being creative in the naming department.  Add to that the cats being brother and sister and the names become even more, um, lazy, if not downright incestuous.

Sonny loves to hang out on the balcony and can spend hours and hours enjoying the weather and all the wildlife that comes and goes, and he even has learned to use the tree to get down.  All the way down.  This has happened many times and I’ve caught him on more than a handful of occasions.  Most of those times resulted in keeping him in my bathroom until someone got home.

I was out running errands this morning and returned with tons of stuff (cat food, cat medicines, beer, lunch, etc.).  Just as I walk out of the kitchen with the cat food (so I can stash it in the closet where I keep it), I see the feline thud onto the ground outside my patio fence in a most ungraceful landing.  I immediately recognize it’s Sonny, and he immediately realizes he can’t get back upstairs and starts trying to dig under my fence (he knows that’s the next best option if he can’t go home).

Needless to say, I retrieve him and bring him inside, put him in the bathroom with a litter box, food, water, and some toys, and then I go to my neighbor’s door and knock and knock and ring the doorbell until I’m certain they’re not home.  I’ve since placed a note on their door letting them know where the cat is and to let me know when they return so they can get him back.

In the meantime, I have six cats at home.  And it ain’t pretty.

Sonny appears to not be happy at all about the other cats.  Meanwhile, all of mine are curious and even a bit insulted that yet another feline has been carried into their domain, but otherwise they’re not entirely concerned.  They already know they’re in charge.  They already know another cat is nothing more than an odd inconvenience at best, if not a downright home invader at worst, but it certainly isn’t an issue over which one should get one’s knickers in a twist.

The funniest aspect of it is Vazra.  His integration with the rest of my spoiled brats has been unusually easy.  I suspected for quite some time that he was not overly concerned with other cats; curious maybe, but not concerned.  Introducing him to my household proved that assumption to be correct.  Now, with Sonny in the bathroom speaking up from time to time and reaching under the door when something catches his attention, Vazra is the one over there trying to play and to see exactly what Daddy has hidden away in the WC.  The rest of them?  They’re all “Ehn… Whatever.”

On a side note, I’ll be sure to grab a few photos of Sonny.