Update for Buddy

Update for Buddy

July greetings to you, and to all Buddy’s buddies.

It’s summertime in greater metropolitan Ringoes, NJ.

A visitor to Tabby’s Place, seated comfortably on the floor of a solarium with his ol’ pal Charlie on his lap, can see a full clothesline in the near distance, drying in the fresh air and sunshine. Closer, just outside the chain-link fence of the solarium, sprouts are emerging in the grass beneath the bird feeder, volunteers produced from seeds that went uneaten during the cold, snowy months.

These days in the solarium, cats aren’t napping on a heated bed. Now that the warmth isn’t limited to a fleece pad plugged into a wall socket, they’re napping all around the room. Most of them, although not all of them.

Our Buddy scrambles down the incline to the floor, and canters and dances toward me until his front paws land on a scratching pad just to my left. His momentum causes it to skid a few inches and puts him off-balance, but only briefly. Buddy twists athletically in mid-air, lands on all four paws, then collects himself and takes off in the opposite direction, on the move once more. If cats could play with fidget spinners, Buddy would have to have one.

In a few minutes, Charlie gets up and walks away a few feet, re-settling on his side next to a water dish, and I take the opportunity to go across the hall to the FIV-positive suite for some cooler, conditioned air. Inside, I can see the lobby, where several people are involved in a Cat Yoga class. The cats aren’t taking part, preferring to observe the humans as they pose and stretch. At times it appears to me as though the humans’ efforts are intended to emulate a cat just awakened from a nap.

The best I can tell, Buddy is more concerned with his own movements from a vantage point atop a piece of cat furniture. When I approach him, he responds immediately, and we enjoy several minutes of Quality Time, a little of which is pictured here.

Before I sign off this month, just a quick note about the Linda Fund, going on now. All the cats at Tabby’s Place have been rescued from hopeless situations, but some situations are more hopeless than others, and these most desperate cases are the specialty of this fund-raising effort. For example, read what lead blogger (and now young married) Angela wrote last year about the fund’s beneficiaries.

All your generous donations are greatly appreciated, as they make it possible for an FIV-positive cat like Buddy to live happily. Here’s hoping you have plenty of good Quality Time with a purring cat on your lap. (And if you want the purring without the cat, there’s an app for that.) Until next month…