He's No Benji, But He'll Do For Now

One of my favorite things to fantasize about is getting a dog. Someday, when I have a house with a yard and enough free time to be a good dog owner, I shall go to a shelter and adopt the most perfect dog in the world. He or she shall be medium-sized: not small enough to be yappy, and not so large that I can't regulate on him/her as needed. My dog will also hopefully have rascally shaggy hair, much like Benji, and I will choose a name for him or her from the growing list of adorable names I have been compiling over the past few years.

With a dog this adorable, wacky hijinks are pretty much guaranteed.

Unfortunately, I can't yet live out my dream because I still don't have the requisite house and the yard and the free time. In the meantime, there's Charlie:

Charlie doesn't actually belong to me and my roommate, he belongs to one of my roommate's classmates, but we're letting him live with us for the next month or so while she travels around Europe with her boyfriend. Charlie isn't his real name, either, it's just what I seem to keep calling him for no reason. What do you think? Does he look like a Charlie to you? I've never had a cat named Charlie, but I'm pretty sure that by the time this one goes home, he's going to think that's his name. I've almost given up correcting myself, since cats never seem to know or care what you call them, anyway.

Charlie has been here for almost a week and, mistaken identities aside, we seem to be getting along really well. He enjoys sitting and sleeping on my bed with me, although he doesn't appear to have any plans to wash all these gray hairs off my sheets, which is disappointing. He's also pretty sociable, which is not something I'm used to in a cat. My parents have two cats, Merle and Ninja (both female). Merle refuses to acknowledge any human's existence, unless she wants one to put food in her bowl or open the door for her. At that point, she communicates her needs by repeatedly meowing, and then eventually just digging her claws into your feet. Ninja, on the other hand, doesn't abhor people so much as she's terrified of them. She (supposedly) only comes out in the open during the early morning hours, when no one is awake but my mom. As a result, I haven't seen her in several months (even though I've visited home plenty of times), and so for all I know she may be dead under a couch somewhere.

Given that these have been my experiences with the cats closest to me, it's a refreshing change of pace to be spending so much time with a cat that actually makes eye contact and appears to want to communicate with me. Unfortunately, I think what he's trying to communicate is that he's bored, because every once in awhile he'll come sauntering into my room, look up at me, and meow plaintively. I'm pretty sure he's saying something along the lines of, "So is that all you're going to do today? Just sort of sit around and play with your computer? Alright then... I'll be under the bed."

Although the last thing I need is another judgmental person (creature, whatever) hanging around questioning my choice of activities, in general i think I like him. Besides, it's not like he's spending all his time trying to work out a solution to the AIDS crisis, either.


Where's YOUR college degree, Charlie? Hmm??