My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs by Cierra Rantoul Read Free Book Online Page A

jump onto my back and then lie down like he is on a surfboard. His front paws will wrap around my waist like he is giving me an upside down hug… or getting ready to paddle in on a wave. He is the most talkative of the three cats and whenever I return from a trip away, he will talk non-stop until he is almost hoarse. I’m not sure if I’m catching hell for being gone, or if he is filling me in on all the trouble the other cats got into! He loves to be cradled like a baby, rolling his head back to look at the world upside down. I can just imagine him with a Jeff Spicoli grin saying “All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I’m fine.” (O.k.—I’m dating myself with a quote from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High!”)
    Ebony, my long-hair black cat, was tossed from a car when she was five weeks old and came to me by way of the office secretary where I worked. She is the most social and demanding of my cats. Trying to close her in another room when I have parties proves to be a waste of time because she rabbit-kicks the door so hard she can pop the latch and join in the fun. She will mingle among the guests, demanding adoration and praise from everyone and when she doesn’t get enough satisfactory attention, she will not hesitate to head-butt the offending person or nip their fingers until they continue petting her. Fear is not a word in her vocabulary. One afternoon I was talking to neighbors who were with their bulldog, Pelé. He was about six months old and already almost 20 lbs heavier than Ebony. Apparently, Pelé was standing too close to me because Ebony charged out of the garage to protect me and chased a screaming Pelé down the driveway. It was months before Pelé would walk near my townhouse without cautiously looking for that crazy black torpedo! We still laugh about it!
    Oreo was found in a parking lot when he was just a few days old. He still had a little bit of umbilical cord on him. The girl who found him didn’t have any idea what to do with him, and so he came to me. His name came from the coloring on his head. Black on his eyes and ears with a white stripe 5 down from his forehead to his nose and a white mouth—a typical Tuxedo cat. I would take him to work stuffed into a sock to keep him warm, then put him on a heating pad in a desk drawer so I could feed him every few hours. I slept at night with him held against me—spooning—and he still occasionally loves to sleep with me that way. I’m sure his mother was feral since he still has a bit of a wild streak in him. That boy can cuss worse than anything I’ve ever heard when he has to do something he doesn’t want to—like getting his claws trimmed. He loves to “help” make the bed by tunneling under the blanket and then making vicious wild cat growls and hisses when I try to move the blanket around him. He really is frightening sounding and if you didn’t know that he was really a mama’s boy, you’d think he was rabid and going to rip your eyes out. Oreo is the hunter of all three cats—finding squirrels, birds, snakes and lizards in the house is not uncommon during the summer months—and not always dead either!
    I have to throw Ripkin in here at this point even though he isn’t really my dog, but my neighbor, John’s. Ripkin was a rescue dog; John got him in Texas as a 40+ pound, approximately two years old adult dog, so his history is unknown. He is a yellow lab mix, and somewhere in his DNA is a little Chow that shows as black spots on his tongue. As soon as Trooper and Ripkin met, they were best buds. Ripkin can stand completely under Trooper, and Tink could (and often would) stand under Ripkin, so they looked like one of those stackable children’s puzzles. Since John is active duty military, Ripkin often camps at my house when he is on temporary duty away from home. He now also comes over during the day occasionally for our own “doggy day care” at my house. As a result, Ripkin has learned to tolerate and