Off topic: The strange tale of Mr. Hobbs

Mr. Hobbs

I can't exactly recall just how old Mr. Hobbs is but he's been around the block a few times.

Gayle adopted him when she found him huddled under her car when she was picking up some awards at the Trophy Man. Mr. Hobbs was a little handful and had been abandoned by his mother. As she has been doing all her life - herding stray cats - she scooped him up and brought him home.

She nursed him back to health and by most measures he was a pretty happy cat. But he was the third cat, the only tabby in a herd of black and white cats. A few years later, Gayle found another kitty that had been left by the side of Mayport Road, a heavily traveled highway that leads out to the St. Johns River ferry. Again, it was barely a handful of a kitty. But this kitten was black and white. So we had three black and whites and a tabby.

Mr. Hobbs was outraged. He couldn't deal with an aggressive black and white kitten (who, by the way, is still a major pain) so he started hanging out at the neighbor's house across the street.

One day, a little VW beetle with Alaska license plates showed up at that neighbor's house. After about a month, the VW disappeared and so did Mr. Hobbs. We looked around the neighborhood for weeks but could never find him. We weren't on speaking terms with our neighbors so we never asked them what may have happened.

Fast forward four years.

The VW beetle shows up and so does Mr. Hobbs. Out of the blue, he bolted across the street and back into our yard. He has never left since.

Soooooo. We believe he spent four years in Alaska - he may even have met Sarah Palin. But regardless of the number of black and white cats we have, he is not leaving our yard or the Florida sunshine ever again.