Archie

Archie
Date Submitted: 07/18/2007

Archie followed my sister and I home from the bus stop one day.

We played with him on the porch and scratched him under his chin and begged our parents to keep him provided he didn't already belong to someone. Convincing Mom to keep him was easy, but we thought it would be hard to convince Dad. His mother had just died and we were making preparations to go to the funeral in PA that weekend, so he was distracted and upset. We carefully broached the subject of the handsome stray cat we found. He was a bit mystified because Archie had shown up on what would have been our Grandmother's birthday. She had been an animal lover all her life and growing up my Dad had many stray animals as pets.

Every animal from the dog to multiple cats to the box turtles in the garden were strays and rescues. He agreed to leave food, water, and shelter on the porch for the cat while we were in PA. If he wasn't there when we came back that was that, but if he was we could keep him. To our delight he was sitting on the doormat when we came home. He greeted us with a yowl and rubbed between our legs purring. At the time he looked well fed, but didn't have a collar on, so my parents called the local vet hospitals and asked if anyone was missing a large orange tabby cat.

We were asked to wait for 5 days while the hospitals and animal control made sure he didn't already have a home. No one called to claim him so we brought him in to be vaccinated and neutered and gave him a name. We decided to call him Archie after the red-headed character in the Archie and Veronica comic books. He's about 12 years old now and lives with my parents, another cat named Cayenne, and their dog Tucker.

Lauren
Hebron