The Creek Brothers

 

 After our favorite cat Tiger had died, we didn’t want another cat.  But a telephone call from East Tennessee changed all that.

            “Mom, would you like another cat?” asked my daughter.

            I quickly replied, “No!”  I didn’t even have to think about it.

            “But wait, mom,” she insisted.  “May I tell you about the cat?”

            “Okay, go ahead.”

            “Steve and Andrew went fishing at Buffalo Creek.  Andrew saw a kitten in the water.  He yelled to his Dad and from the water they pulled a long haired yellow tabby.  They brought him home.”  She continued, “We can’t keep him.  We have too many cats already.  I was wondering since we are coming this weekend anyway, “Would you like us to bring you this cat?”

            “No, I don’t think so!”

            “But, Mom, Andrew wants you to have him.  He even named him for you.  He named him from the creek they pulled him from.  Andrew named him Buffalo Creek.  Can you refuse your 4 year old grandson?”  She snickered.  “He really wants you to have him.”

            I thought to myself, “What loving grandmother could refuse her little grandson?”

            That is how we got Buffalo Creek.  But the story hardly had its ending there.

            My son was at work when a co-worker asked, “Would anyone here like a cat?”  It seemed according to her story that a short haired grey tabby had wondered into her yard.  She tried to get her indoor cats to accept him.  They would not and so she was trying to find him a home.  Without much effort, she talked my son into taking him.

            The first night the two cats were together was awful.  I had one neutered cat verses the one that was not.  There was constant fighting.  They kept us up all night.  I couldn’t call a vet fast enough the next morning to get our latest cat neutered.  But after doing so, there came harmony.  They did their usual smelling as cats do, but acceptance came.

            We had taken our time naming our new member.  We had come up with some name for neutering him at the vet’s.  But it did not fit.  We had cats about to spend a lot of time together.  The companionship was now obvious.  But we still had no name.

            As we rode in the car in an area not far from our home, the perfect name came.  At a four way stop section, the sign above the road read Pebble Creek.  And so; that’s how the grey short haired tabby got his name.  And though miles had separated the two cats, they had found each other and became brothers.