Maine Coons, social and laid back

[underpants]

3. We had one for about 12 years. She was a cat that acted like a dog.

She knew her name and she was definitely Daddy’s cat. Pepper would sneak up on my lap while I was watching TV without me even noticing it. A champion mouser too. We had mice in our apartment building for a while. I think she got 5 of them. One afternoon she just walked up, opened her mouth, and out dropped a mouse. The mice stopped coming around. She’d climb up a bookshelf by pulling one book out per shelf until she got to the top. She used to pull open my sock draw and sleep in it during the day. I thought that I must’ve kept leaving it open until one Sunday when she quietly walked in, latched her claws on to the top of the draw, jumped up to get her feet on the bottom of the dresser, and then lean back pulling the draw open.

She died a few days after the total eclipse in 2017. We were in vacation and got a call from our cat sitter. That was a horrible 6 hour drive home.