Meet Charlie, the youngest of three cats in the dePasquale household. We hold each of our cats in very high regard here, celebrating (and sometimes momentarily denouncing) their quirky behavior. My brothers and I joke that our parents subconsciously replaced us with felines after our respective departures from the nest--Charlie is the baby girl to her two older brothers, Cocoa and Bruno.
Shortly after beginning my freshman year at Colburn, my brother sent me at text informing me that his friend had found a stray cat and that he was planning on bringing her over to the house. I was skeptical that my parents would go for a third cat...
...but she looked like this, so they were pretty smitten. I'm not sure if my mother put up an argument to adding a third, furry friend to the family. If she did, any arguments were surely squashed the minute Charlie climbed into my father's lap and did this:
Not nearly old enough to be separated from her mother, Charlie needed to be bottle-fed and took to sucking on my father's finger as a nursing substitute. Think of it as the cutest, feline equivalent to the toddler's thumb-suck, ever. Charlie instantly bonded with my father, napping on his lap every single day.
I mean, how do you say "no thanks" to that? Charlie isn't all hugs and kisses all the time, though. In fact, when my parents were struggling to come up with a name for her, I suggested the name "Charlie" for its tomboy-ish, mischievous charm.
I mean, "Alice" or "Snowball" or something just doesn't cut it when your girl is this spunky. Since I only saw Charlie during short visits home throughout the last four years, she and I have just only really gotten to know each other well. She loved my father so much and, in the last few weeks, has taken to me seemingly as a surrogate. As our other cat, Bruno (picture above, getting his face clawed off by Charlie), has always been "my" guy, this has spurned a bit of a rivalry between the two of them.
I love how Charlie is the sweetest little girl...who also chomps on her dry cereal so loudly, you can hear it from the other room. Not to mention the fact that she likes to pick up the individual pieces, drop them in her water bowl, and play with them like they're submarine bath-toys. Like I said, these cats are a quirky bunch.
Introductions to the other two coming soon!
Until next time,
Francesca
