🐈 Milos
The House Tiger
Milos isn’t home yet.
But his house is already being built around him.
There will be walnut pathways along the walls,
high places from which to watch the rooms below,
an aspen trunk to climb,
quiet cubbies for disappearing,
and a way outside into a protected little world of his own.
All for a Siberian Forest cat I haven’t met yet.
Somehow, this seems perfectly reasonable.
🌿 A Life Indoors and Out
While Haldor will watch over the outside life,
Milos will belong to the life within the house.
He will have the freedom to climb above it,
retreat from it,
observe it and
because he is a cat
presumably supervise it.
The Sky Loft will give him high places.
The catio will give him air and sunshine.
The house will give him territory.
And I hope I will give him something better than any of those:
a home in which he gets to be entirely himself.
🐾 The House Tiger
I chose a Siberian Forest cat because I wanted more
than a beautiful animal sharing the house with me.
I wanted a companion.
Someone with presence.
Someone intelligent and curious enough to participate in daily life,
but independent enough to have a life of his own.
Milos will not need to produce anything for the Apothecary.
He doesn’t need a job.
He doesn’t need to earn his place.
His contribution will be considerably more feline:
occupying the chair I intended to sit in,
inspecting whatever I am making,
appearing precisely where I am trying to work,
watching the mountain from somewhere unnecessarily high,
and occasionally reminding me that whatever I thought I was doing can wait.
🤍 Someone to Come Home To
There is something different about the animal who lives inside your everyday life.
The one who hears you moving around in the morning.
Who knows the sounds of the house.
Who finds the patch of afternoon sun.
Who eventually develops favorite windows,
favorite sleeping places and favorite ways of asking for what he wants.
I don’t know those things about Milos yet.
We haven’t lived them.
That’s the lovely part.
His page isn’t the story of a cat I already know.
It’s the beginning of a place being made for
someone I hope to know for a very long time.
Until then, there is a name.
There is a house with some rather elaborate cat architecture.
And there is a place waiting for him.
Milos.
My little House Tiger. 🐈
Return to 🦙 Haldor
Continue to 🐾 Mountain Companions
