Walter
Last evening, there was a plan. And the plan was to go out after dinner and get custard. Jackpot! One of my favorite things to do in the summertime. It was our first custard outing of the season.

We're walking out of the house and Doodle sees his ball. His eyes light up and he runs to our back patio to get it. We follow. As the three of us reach the patio, we hear this high-pitched "meeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeew? meeew? mew?"

My first thought was that Molly had gotten out of the house somehow, because she makes the same kind of pathetic mewing sounds.

But it wasn't. It was Walter.

This little, dark grey tabby kitty was hanging out on our patio. I'm always a little wary of strange animals, especially ones I haven't seen before, because who knows their story -- are they strays? Do they have diseases? Fleas? Are they going to bite my child?

But Walter -- Walter wasn't like that. Walter walked right up to my husband to be petted. When my husband stopped petting him, he walked right up to Doodle. My OWN cats don't even do that! When he realized Doodle was not going to pet him, but rather, doink him repeatedly with a big blue bouncy ball, he came over to me.

He was such a sweetheart -- I immediately looked at my husband with puppy dog eyes. "We already have two cats," he said. I made the pouty face.

We hung around and petted Walter for a little while longer, and then there was this thing we had to do. The CUSTARD! I didn't want to leave Walter there. I wondered if he belonged to a neighbor, or if he was a stray, runaway, whatever. He has no collar, he doesn't look to be spayed (yes, I checked, thank you very much -- well, not so much checked, as noticed, that he still had his testicles). He does have a freshly-scabbed war wound behind one of his ears, and the tip of that ear looks like it got either bitten off or bent. But he didn't appear to be hungry, and he definitely wasn't afraid of people, or children.

As we started to get Doodle into his car seat, Walter stretched himself out in our driveway, rolled onto his back with his legs in the air, and then chilled out. We made our break and went to get custard.

I was hoping that he'd still be there when we got home. Like he had chosen to stay with us. You know how sometimes, kitties pick their owners, not the other way around?

But he wasn't.

Throughout the evening before the sun set, I kept looking out the windows to see if maybe I could see Walter lounging in the bushes, or in the grass, but I saw no further sign of him.

And I had picked a name for him and everything.