There’s a neighborhood cat that comes around to my front door periodically now. All I know about it is it isn’t a feral, it’s a young male tabby, and supposedly he belongs to someone in the apartments a block over. 

It began as it has every time with me. First the cat starts coming around because I put out bird feeders and that attracts cats. A cat comes around and next thing I know we’re sitting on my porch together. Then it starts letting me pet it. Next thing I know I’m letting it in the house and from that point on the cat thinks mine is a second (or third, fourth, fifth, sixth…and so on…) home.

This time around I decided I would not feed it, because after the calico I don’t want another second hand pet. I will go to my grave wondering if I could have done things any better for her last days. She was a feral who I spent years gaining the trust of. Then she got sick, I took her to a vet but she got worse, and then she wandered off and I never saw her again. She was maybe eighteen years old. You get really attached and when things go wrong you blame yourself for every little thing you think you could have done better forever. Like when I let Claudia go outside that morning.

So this one, and I still don’t know his name, gets no food from me, but I will put out a water dish. Then when he started coming indoors more often I put out a litter box in the upstairs bathroom, on the principle that it really isn’t a good idea to let the cat choose for itself where it goes to the bathroom. The calico taught me that one. I figured he would usually do his business outside and I keep the same agreement with him that I’ve kept with all the other outdoor cats that have come my way, which is when they want out the door opens. After what happened to Claudia I’d rather his owners kept him inside, but once an outdoor cat always an outdoor cat and I just accommodate as a matter of trust. But since he was spending more and more time in the house I put out a litter box. He ignored it for slightly more than two months, but then one day I found he’d made a deposit. 

Several weeks of random visits went by until yesterday when he made another one. This was during the usual routine of inspecting the basement, then racing up the stairs to the second floor, only to lounge in the hallway cleaning and groom himself for a while. Occasionally he decides to take a nap on my bed, which I’m fine with. We’ve napped together twice. But he never stayed more than an hour or two and that was probably because I wasn’t feeding him. Which was the plan. No more pets. It’s too much for me anymore.

So…anyway…This morning he presented himself on my front porch to be let in. Then raced up the stairs to use the litter box. Then back downstairs to be let out again.

Wait…what?

I’m not sure I like where this is going. But then the plan all along is I don’t want him getting too attached, so maybe this is how he sees the bargain we’re making.