I lived in a duplex where the front doors of each apartment faced each other. My neighbors had just bought an adorable little kitten. He had beautiful long hair and was all white except for two black patches on his head and his tail.

Unfortunately my neighbors didn’t treat him very well, and the wife bathed him every single day because she didn’t like his long hair.

Well, my neighbors had told me that they were moving and wouldn’t be able to take the kitten with them. I offered to take him, if they couldn’t find a home for him.

When I came home one day, I found my neighbor shoving this cute little three-month-old kitten out the door with his foot. When I openend my door, the kitten ran into my apartment and made a beeline for my daughter’s bedroom. I have no idea what the husband did to him, but to this day he doesn’t like men too much. He cowers from them until he gets to know them a little better.

My daughter was gone for a few weeks, visiting family. So I decided to close her bedroom door and leave the kitten in there until he got used to the house. Over the next week I tried and tried to make friends with this cat. I can’t remember how many times I went into that room, trying to feed him and to coax him out from under my daughter’s bed.

He would only come out to eat if I was nowhere near his food. And he growled and hissed the entire time. Every time I tried to pet him, he’d swing his claws at me and hiss. Then he’d quickly run and hide under the bed again. I was really getting frustrated.

Five days later I had had enough: When I walked into the room to feed him, I tried to pet him once again, and when he hissed and swung his claw at me again, that was it! I looked him in the eye and told him that there was no way I was going to have a mean unfriendly cat in my house, and that when I got back from grocery shopping he was gone, gone, gone!

Two hours later I came back from shopping. I put the food in the fridge and decided to give the kitten one last good-bye meal. I walked into my daughter’s room with some moist food, a real treat, and called out: "Kitty, kitty, kitty!"

Suddenly he came running out from under the bed and wrapped himself around my ankle like I was his best friend in the whole world. He even let me pet him and purred up a storm. I guess he decided to accept my terms and live with them. He has been my best friend for over nine years now.

Jeana Ridgley
Ridgecrest, CA