(This will be short because I’m exhausted but wanted to write something for today.)

Caspian has a phobia of (among other things) gardening gloves.

I store my gloves in a box under the desk (which makes sense because the desk is by the porch door and this way they’re handy for doing gardening but won’t be outside to get things living in them) and every so often I catch him peering into the box at them. He’ll poke them and then jump back with his tail a bottle brush when the gloves move because he’s poking them. Sometimes I will even find them on the other side of the house and I’m sure they have “chased” him there over the course of the day. It’s pretty funny, but I couldn’t figure out why garden gloves terrify him so.

And then I was telling the story of how I adopted him today…

When Caspian was tiny, he was dubbed “Tiger” and we were given him on a trial basis. The woman from whom we adopted our kitties knew I wanted a kitty friend for Leena but only had one kitten close to Leena’s age… and she wasn’t sure if he was even tamable, much less adoptable. We agreed to give him a week or two and let her know how he did while she looked for another kitty for us (in case he didn’t work). Well, within a couple of hours of coming home with us, Caspian entrenched himself under J’s dresser and wouldn’t come out. If you reached in to give him food, water, or touch him, he turned into a spitting, hissing, ball of claws and fury.

And that’s how things went for two weeks.

For two weeks, I had to poke little bowls of food and water under the dresser and for two weeks he shredded my hands… until I finally started wearing my gardening gloves…

Ah ha! I thought at this point in the story. From the time he was tiny, the GIANT GLOVE THINGS used to come in and move his food and water, and sometimes haul him out into the open so we could make sure he was still okay.

And now the garden gloves are SCARY. I’m glad it’s not ME that’s scary.

The end of the story is that after two weeks I was so fed up with him that I sat down to email the cat adoption lady and tell her we couldn’t take him… when I heard a mew behind me, turned around in my desk chair, and there he was. He jumped into my lap and purred and has been my little shadow ever since. Go figure.