After Sandy died, my family went looking for a kitten. We heard of a cat at someone’s house who had kittens a month or two before. A guy rode on his motorbike with one of them over to our house. We brought the kitten inside (he was actually almost as big as a cat, so don’t imagine a tiny kitten) and then we looked over our new pet. He was petrified of us. I said before that he was brought to our house on a motorbike, but I didn’t say that he was taken over in a sack. Yes. In a sack. Since he had technically been a birthday present for me, I was the one to sit in the bathroom with him for hours, hoping he would warm up. He eventually did, but it took awhile.

You probably have guessed what I named him, (after all, the title kind of gave it away), but I almost named him Patches, not Skipper. He was a white cat with a grayish- black back and face.

He held himself with a regal air, and always seemed to act above everything else. That’s why I gave him the nickname, “Prince of the Outdoors”. It was also because he was an outdoor cat, not an indoor one.

To get Stormy and Skipper to be friends, we had to let Skipper inside some. We would feed Stormy on the porch right outside our door, while we fed Skipper tuna on the other side. Eventually they got used to each other, and in fact became great friends. They would be together all the time, and sometimes sleep together.

Then Stormy died. Skipper was okay with being the only pet, but our family wanted more dogs. So got two puppies. Skipper was not happy. He stopped coming in our yard, and ended up spending his time on our neighbor’s roof. He would leave and come back for meals, and leave and come back. Eventually, he gave up and left all together. We haven’t seen him since. I like to think that he is Prince over all of the other stray cats now, just like he always was in my imagination.