Our Little Rent-a-Pet

For a few days at the beginning of last week, I thought we had a new pet. Last Monday, when my husband was at work, a brown tabby started meowing at our window. Every time I looked up, the cat would stare at me and meow louder. I let this go on for about 30 minutes, before I went outside. I'm not sure what I thought I was going to accomplish, but I thought maybe the cat would be scared or it would just let me pet it and then go away. Instead, the cat timed my opening of the door perfectly and ran right past me and into the warmth of our house. I tried to lure it out, but it had no interest in leaving until I threw a piece of a cookie (about the size of a piece of cat food) out the door. The cat looked pretty disgusted when it got over to the cookie and realized that it wasn't a cat treat.

He's Inside!

It returned to its perch on the window and stayed for about 30 minutes longer. Just when I thought it had left, it appeared at the back door, and once again started its incessant whining and eventually attempted to get in the locked cat door.

Cat at the Window

When my husband got home, he tried to chase the cat away. He poured water on it and stamped his feet towards it. It stayed put in the garden area, unfazed, and continued the whining meow. Later, as we were watching TV, the meow got louder, and, turning, we realized that the cat had figured out how to unlock the cat door and was now in our kitchen. Since he was so persistent in his begging, we gave him a little treat and a name -- Bum. Before going to bed, we put him back outside and rigged a fence with our table in front of the door so he couldn't get back inside.

Here's a video, so you can hear the cat.

The next day, the cat was back at 2, meowing again at the window. I went to the store to buy some cat food and let the cat inside. After eating some of the food, it jumped into my lap and went back and forth between sleeping there and in the chair beside me for the next couple hours.

Curled Up, Sleeping

Around 5, our landlady and her father came over to look at a problem we were having with our faucet. As she walked in, I said, "This cat seems to think it lives here!" At first glance she looked surprised, and at first I thought she was going to tell us not to have cats in the house, but then she said, "That's Tom. That's our cat!" They recently moved back to the area, and I guess the cat was just returning to its old home. Now that we know that it has a home and that it gets fed, it can still come and visit (and often does), but we make sure to let it out in the evening so that it can return home on its own or our landlady's husband can come by on his bike and pick it up.