A cat in the house
Older Daughter was away for a week, house-sitting for some friends several hours away. This meant Frumpkin, her cat, was alone on her side of our house. (For those unfamiliar with the story, we partitioned our house several years ago when Older Daughter took over our woodcraft business. Her suite has the two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom, and an “catio” porch with her own outside door.)
Anyway, normally when Older Daughter leaves for any length of time, either Don or I will go into Older Daughter’s suite to play with Frumpkin and give him some attention and affection. But this time, since she was going to be gone for so long, we took the easy way out. We opened the connecting door and just let him out into the main part of the house.
We figured it was easier to just let Frumpkin be part of the household (during the times Lihn the parrot was in her cage, of course) than to spend time giving him attention on his side.
Both Frumpkin and Darcy were both gentlemen about the arrangement. Mr. Darcy hates all cats, but he knows by now that Frumpkin is the exception, so he tolerated him very well.
After spending the first hour or two exploring, Frumpkin – in typical cat fashion – spent the rest of the time sleeping in various locations.
Here he’s curled up on the leather welder’s gloves we keep next to the woodstove. No spot in the house is warmer!
For a full week, he just luxuriated wherever his little heart desired.
I think he tried out every chair.
Yet another chair.
Darcy and Frumpkin came to a truce during this time, and the lion laid down with the lamb quite often.
Interestingly, I wondered if we were creating a monster during the week. Would Frumpkin yowl and scratch at the connecting door, demanding to be let out once Older Daughter returned?
In fact, no. He’s so thrilled to have Older Daughter back that we haven’t heard a peep from her suite. I guess all is right with the world once more.
Source: http://www.rural-revolution.com/2025/03/a-cat-in-house.html
