The Famous Cat Named Spaulding

If the title puzzles you it is a Groucho Marx reference, if that doesn't help catch the movie Animal Crackers (1930).

In our soon to be 28 years of marriage we have shared our lives with a dozen furry roommates. Only two of them were "only children" and for both of them it only lasted a very short time. Something like twenty years ago we picked up Spaulding at the local animal shelter; he was two days away from termination. Spaulding joined a family of four much older pets and over time he became the last pet. He also developed what our vet referred to as epilepsy (though the vet continued to maintain that cats don't get epilepsy). He went a daily medication to prevent seizures, that medication in turn damaged his liver and the medication to remedy that added to his arthritis. Because of this we could not leave Spaulding alone overnight, the result was that Spaulding would go RVing with us (we have a trailer which is currently parked on a permanent site on Hatteras Island).

While Spaulding was young enough we added a dog and two more cats to our family. He got along with them well enough. The dog and he would join us in the trailer when we went down for weekends. One interesting thing was that Spaulding would not allow the other cats on our bed. We found this odd especially since he had shared the bed with a variety of the older cats. When we came back from the trailer we would know that the newer cats had been on our bed, but they never got on the bed when Spaulding was in the house. Other than that the family seemed to get along pretty well.

About seven years ago Spaulding passed away. For the next two or three years the two remaining cats never got on the bed. From time to time my wife would think we were joined, but there never was a cat. Whether this was her imagination or a manifestation of Spaulding (or one of our other cats) I can not with confidence say. The Cuddlewife was always of the opinion that Spaulding was keeping his sisters off the bed, I have never been able to pin her down on this other than "It's a feeling I have...".

Because of Spaulding we got in the habit of taking a cat with us to our trailer. The bigger more adventurous cat now has this duty. The weekend prior to American Thanksgiving we spent our last weekend of the year at our trailer. Due to some odd logistics we could not take the cat with us. On both Friday and Saturday nights The Cuddlewife believes we were joined by Spaulding in our bed in the trailer. Our dog is just too darn large to be confused with a cat. Had this happened one night I could easily write it off as imagination, but two nights in a row - a tad harder.