A Cat Called ChuChu

I was never a "cat person" but during the COVID epidemic, when I would spend much of my time in my back garden, a beautiful calico cat would often jump over my wall and spend time with me. She was clearly a cat who was used to being around people and would enjoy sitting next to me and being patted and gradually she worked her way into my heart. After a while it occurred to me that she might be hungry and I started putting out a bowl of cat food for her. Of course that clinched it, and inevitably I came to regard her as "my" cat. I called her ChuChu and at first I wouldn't let her in the house, but she was determined and I was won over, and not only did she come in, but she decided where she would spend her many daylight sleeping hours in my house. I stood firm on only one barrier, and much to her chagrin at bedtime I would put her out. I had set up a padded comfortable cat bed for her in my storeroom where she could come and go as she pleased.

And so we lived happily together for about three years until one day, when I came home and was received as usual by my beautiful ChuChu who was waiting for me on the garden wall, a woman walking by my house suddenly stopped, looked at the cat and said "ChuCha, what are you doing here?" I was astonished, and made it clear to her that this was MY cat. "No", she said, "she's MY cat." After some confusion, it became clear that she and her husband had adopted two cats four years earlier and after a while one of them, a beautiful calico cat they called ChuCha, started disappearing for long stretches at a time. They live diagonally behind my house, and very conveniently have a cat door, so the cat could come and go as she pleased and would often appear there at night, sleep in their house, and disappear in the morning appearing in my kitchen just in time for her morning snack.

So this is a story of a cat with two homes and to the total amazement of both her "mothers" we had given her almost the same name!

The mystery of ChuChu's origins had been solved but I worried that she would come to realize her loyalty lay with her true family. However, cats are not known for their loyalty to their owners, and happily for me she seems to prefer my home. And why not? With me she has no competition and enjoys the peace and quiet and of course all the attention she gets from me. And so our life together goes on happily as usual. What ChuChu does at night I have no idea - she has not yet found a way of telling me!