When I moved out of my parents house, my cat Cleo, on request of…the rest of the household, remained at home. While I wasn’t too happy with that idea at the time, I did realize that she was used to the property and had a large yard to explore, so I begrudgingly agreed and Cleo stayed behind. I had adopted Cleo from a coworker in 2005 as a stray kitten. While not being the most personable cat sometimes, Cleo spent many a night with me curled up between the keyboard and my monitor, or parked in my lap while I messed with computers into the late evenings. She enjoyed playing fetch with pistachios of all things, and wrestling with me.
She got her name from Cleo (aka Cleopatra), the cat in the Heathcliff cartoon series. Since this was the first female cat we’ve ever had, and for some reason, despite not having seen that series for a decade or more, that was the first thing that came to mind for “female cat”.
Continue reading “A Letter To Cleo”