3. DIGORY and CASPIAN: The Good Buddies
Digory, cat number 5, is a "Canadian." We got him one December -- a few months after our enforced farewell to Marple -- from a humane society
in St. Catharines, Ontario, a city where I worked at the time and
where I had also lived for 15 years. He's a lovely brown tabb
y with striking black spots and stripes and ticked fur that seems to glisten when the sun hits it.
Caspian, or Prince Caspian, formally, arrived a month after Digory, from the same shelter from which we got Dancer, on our own American side of the Canada/U.S. border.
As some of you will recognize, both names come from C.S. Lewis's
Chronicles of Narnia.
Digory, now 14, is a feisty, sometimes demanding cat. He craves attention, which is perhaps why he's a lap-sitter
par excellence. None of the other nine have ever or so frequently sought out my lap like Digory does, whether I'm sitting in my recliner in the living room, in my desk chair at my computer, or wherever. He wants to be where I am, and preferably with benefit of the warmth of my lap.
Caspian, now 14 1/2 is a handsome cat, white with a tabby blanket thrown over his head and back. He's just as affectionate as Digory
, but he's more reticent. He generally waits to be invited into a lap. And he waits for the food to come to him -- as he knows it always does sooner or later -- instead of begging (dare I say "whining") for it, as Digory dies, Caspian has the sweetest, loveliest personality of all the cats we've had. He's mild-mannered, even polite. As I recount in more detail in the book, his personality is not unlike my husband Ed's. If Ed were a cat, he'd be just like Caspian. Or if Caspian were a person, he'd be like Ed!
Digory and Caspian get along beautifully together and have since they first met.