Hi All,

A long time ago DH and I shared a house with our best friend, Joe G.
Joe was an animal person and when we lived together we had cats, fish,
and a snake.  One of the cats was Sam.  He just showed up one day and
announced that from then on he lived there.

We had a relatively small back yard, with six foot high cedar fence
blocking the view from the road.  It was a corner house so a road ran
past our back yard.  Sam's favorite perch as he supervised any back
yard activity was atop a four by four that was the support for the
gate in the fence.  

Sam was an iconoclast, and while he could have easily made it to the
top of the post in one leap, he did not deign to do so.  That stubborn
old cat would walk up to the post, dig his claws in and climb
unhurriedly to the top like a telephone man climbing a pole with his
climbing hooks on.  That was just the way he wanted to do things and
he saw no reason to change.

Once up there, as he sat atop the six foot post, he could look down on
either Joe's or my six foot, two inch frames and he would then allow
us to give him a limited amount of skritches, but no mushy stuff.  Try
to snuggle or pet him too much and you got the old familiar stiff-arm
treatment.  A good boy, as long as you played by his rules.

Regards and Purrs,
O J