Why we called him Hobo

What with one thing and another it's been well over a year since I posted a cat update. The last time a photo of our lad appeared on here, we didn't even have him yet.

When he arrived we decided to call him Harley, but even as we were making that decision my little voice was insisting it would be better to wait awhile and let his name suggest itself to us without our help. And, as always with messages from the little voice, it was bang on. It turned out he wasn't a Harley at all.

Not half an hour after he arrived, he'd chewed through the telephone cable. Luckily it was the power supply rather than the signal cable, so easily mended (and subsequently wound around the base of a table lamp to keep it out of temptation's way). We had to keep him away from any similar damage - under desks where PC cables abound, and behind the TV being the main sources of "fun" - for at least six months before he was old enough to get bored with cables and seek out other entertainment.

But right from the off, he showed a definite preference for sitting in bins (when he wasn't pulling their contents out), and for sleeping in cardboard boxes, plastic carrier bags, or rolled up newspapers. So we had to call him Hobo.

Here he is in a favourite sleeping place - the cardboard box under my desk where we dump old envelopes, junk mail and other papers on their way to the recycling. Whenever it's less than half full he likes to curl up in there where it's safe, warm and fairly quiet. He's never far away from people and follows us from room to room even though he's not all that keen on being cuddled or stroked. Maybe he'll grow into that, but he's very sociable even so.

In the year we've had him he's learned to stop jumping on the fish, walking on my keyboard (he had a knack of hitting EXACTLY the right key combination to shut down my PC), or parading across the table while we're eating, but he'll still chance a quick strop on the bedhead if he thinks we're asleep, and since we moved into the new lounge he's been very keen to try and find a way up onto the mantelpiece. And he's grown too big to sleep comfortably on my lap :0(

He's still generally as cute as a cute thing though, so just this morning we've been talking about the possibility of getting him a companion. Watch this space.