First Name Toby, Middle Name Garfield

When Dan and I first got our dear little furry friend, we joked that his middle name should be "Waldo" because every time we turned around, we were asking "Where's Toby?" He was such a curious little character that we were constantly having to track him down and would find him in increasingly odd places... under the couch, in one of the bookshelves, behind the dryer, inching along between the kitchen cabinet tops and the ceiling, in the little hole in the wall (literally) that houses the heat pump. That is, until we installed the sweet little bell on his collar that tinkles all day and all the way through my dreams and drives me crazy and maybe that's the reason my eye is twitching? Ah well, another story for another day...
Anyhow, this morning I realized that Toby should probably, in fact, be named after another of my favorite orange cats... Garfield. This creates a slight problem, because my dad and stepmom actually have a very fat, very lazy, very antisocial cat who I have affectionately referred to as Garfield in the past. They also have a puppy with about the same IQ as Odie. And another cat who is the spitting image of Nermal. Thankfully, my father bears no resemblance to Jon... apparently I got lucky there.
Anywayyyy (off topic much today?) this morning when I got out of the shower, I found Toby running circles around our bathroom, chasing a teeny tiny spider. At first I was really proud of him for stepping up into the role of In-House Spider Killer, since his dad seems to have vacated those duties during the week. I was all set to congratulate him for recognizing the need to take care of his seriously arachnophobic mother, when I looked a little more closely and realized that he wasn't making any attempt to kill the spider... he was playing with it. Pouncing and then letting it go, batting it around, attacking and then retreating, and doing anything but actually rid our home of the intruder. I was a little bit miffed and felt sort of bad for the poor little spider, so I picked up a kleenex, grumbled something about "doing it my damn self," and put him out of his misery. Toby spent the next ten minutes (I kid you not) frantically searching for his playmate, absolutely bewildered by his sudden disappearance.
It figures that I, of all people, would adopt a cat who prefers to play with creatures beneath him on the food chain rather than eat them. It looks like I will need to add spider extermination to my own list of responsibilities from now on. Toby just reminded me so much of Garfield, who befriends mice and torments spiders, that I had to laugh (although Toby has not yet met a mouse... and if he does he'd better have enough sense to kill it quickly because I will have our stuff packed and ready to move out within the hour). So: Toby Waldo Garfield anyone? Sounds distinguished. Or something.
I have to leave you with another wonderful strip I found while browsing today....

{comics via}

   Love,

    Meg