JoJo the Traveling Monkey

B and I are currently the owners of two cats, both of which are spoiled to within an inch of their lives with attention and affection. We were both staunchly anti-cat people when we met, but a year after we started dating we found a stray cat who had given birth to a litter of kittens at the country house where the band used to live.

We kept an eye on the kittens, but one was sick and the mother kept moving the litter and leaving the runt behind. We tried several times to reintroduce the little runt with no luck until one day I walked outside at 7am to check on the little furries and everyone was gone except the tiny little 3 week old white and orange kitten, sitting in the bushes waiting to be rescued. Since she never rescued him, we did.

One of the bandmate's sisters was a veterinarian and told us how to make a mixture that would replicate breast milk and we fed him with an eye dropper for a few weeks and took him to the old country vet who worked out of his house. The vet said he had about a 50/50 chance to live but that he had seen many animals rescued by TLC over the years, so we gave it a shot. 4 1/2 years later, we have a very finicky white and orange cat who strolls around our house.

Right before we rescued Dizzy (named after Dizzy Gillespie since he was rescued at the band house and also because it fit his less-than-bright beginning to life), B bought me a little stuffed monkey. However, since Dizzy had been abandoned by his mom, he used the monkey to suckle on for at least a year or two. After he stopped the suckling, he started secretly carrying the monkey around the house.

No one ever saw the elusive monkey-carrying, but every morning my roommate and I would wake up and the monkey would be in a different location. This went on for a year or so and then B and I moved in together in our current house. After Dizzy lost interest in his monkey, I put it on a shelf with the other stuffed animals and never really thought about it.

Then about nine months ago, I saw JoJo the Monkey and decided to bring him down again to see if Dizzy was interested. Sometimes we would see him curled up with him, and sometimes he would either drag JoJo into or out of the carrier where he usually sleeps. And about twice a week we would wake up and find the monkey clear across the house.

But lately we've noticed a really amusing trend. Well... amusing if you're us. I harbor no illusions that anyone else cares. I find that other people's pets are a lot like other people's kids - you can kind of see the appeal and you get that THEY really love them and care, but your interest is only marginal. But regardless... we've noticed a funny pattern.

In the last few weeks everything around here has been crazy. We've been leaving every weekend, there are boxes everywhere, nothing is where is used to be, and the general feeling of chaos is pretty evident. Now despite being cranky, Dizzy is actually really smart. We can't play the laser pointer game with him because he's smart enough to just look at the laser pen and then look at us like we're nuts. But the chaos and imminent change is clearly affecting him because the amount of JoJo activity around here has really amped up.

Every morning we find him someplace new and almost always it's on the bathroom mat. B specifically moves him off of the mat or out of the bathroom to see what happens and every morning he's back on the bathroom mat. Clearly, that's where he BELONGS. Also, the secretive nature of the whole My Pet Monkey thing has gone out the window and he's taken to just wandering around the house dragging JoJo with him. He reminds me of the little boy in Peter Pan who wouldn't go anywhere without his blanket dragging behind him and it totally cracks me up.

So for those of you who have been wondering how the move is progressing, we seem to be hanging in just fine, but Dizzy is feeling a little stressed out about all the changes. I'm pretty sure that when the baby comes we're going to find a little note on the bathroom mat and both of them will have run away together.