The "Boss"

Herbert is a gentle soul. He came into my life in 2004, when I was overwhelmed with a mouse problem. I'd tried to trap the mice, but still could hear them scrambling in the walls of my very old house. This house had cracks in it's foundation, and we lived near a school field, so naturally the field mice seemed to see the house as an ideal place to inhabit.

Here is a funny little drawing I did for a story, but it shows abit of what this old farmhouse looked like. It was moved to it's lot in the city in the late 1940's, and we bought it in 1997, and it wasn't in the greatest of shape, but somehow we fell in love with it.By 2004, it needed quite abit of TLC, but at the time I wasn't able to do much, although we did patch some of the foundation.

I had been without a cat companion for 2 years, so decided it was time to find a cat who might also be a good mouser.

I found Herbert through the Humane Society. I had thought I might look for a smallish black female cat, but when I saw Herbert he was the one for me. He was a large ginger coloured male cat, who had been waiting for  a long while for a home, and seemed patient and somewhat dignified.

I transported him home in a large closed box, and he was very unhappy about this, crying loudly on the ride back. When we got home, and I opened the box, he leaped out, and sat quietly taking in his surroundings. He seemed unconcerned about the presence of Rocky, my largish Sheltie, and just seemed to take us in his stride.As well, he proved to be very friendly, and jumped right up and perched on my shoulder, which surprised me as he was already quite a big cat at 13 pounds.

That night he killed one mouse, and actually led me to it in the basement, almost as though he was saying, " I know what my job here is." Through that winter he managed to kill around 9 mice. We never really had a mouse problem after that winter - and I give credit to Herbert for that.

I lost my dear Rocky, a few years later, and since then we had a few changes in our family of pets. We had a wonderful sweet dog, for one year, and a stray cat as well joined our home. Herbert has always been accepting and calm with the new animals. Our family now is made up of Herbert and Arthur (the little stray, now a 13 pound beauty of a cat).

I have thought of Herbert as "The Boss", among the family of pets in my household, for some years now, due to his calm, accepting nature. I think he's kind of "cool" too, like Bruce Springsteen who is known as "The Boss" .

Herbert and Arthur spent one day, this week, playing with a large paper bag, but the next day the bag was definitely owned by Herbert, who has been sleeping on it on and off now for two days.There has appeared to be no contest over it - no fighting between the two cats. As usual Arthur, the younger cat by 8 years, seems to just defer to Herb.
I think he shows excellent judgement, and the fact that he defers gracefully to his elder, so often  makes him a good and sensible cat in my estimation.

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