Feral cats don’t get insurance quotes to guard against life’s ups and downs, they find suckers. I’m a sucker.

Midnight is charming and grateful in her own way. She won’t let me touch her, but she meets my eyes and says “thank you.” Socks is a different matter.

Socks meets my eyes and says, “We do NOT have a relationship.” Or at least that’s what he’s been saying for a couple of years now. Recently we’ve progressed to, “You don’t stink as much as the other humans.”

Yesterday, however, we had a breakthrough. R. has been being a bit . . . difficult . . . this week and declared at breakfast that she could not possibly eat her scrambled eggs. I have instigated a fairly stringent “no wa$te” policy around here when it comes to food. This applies to the cats as well. Since my boys rarely eat everything in their bowls, those left-overs get redistributed to Midnight and Socks.

Well, Socks was still on the back porch and I was holding a perfectly good plate of scrambled eggs in my hand. I redistributed.

When I came back in the house I peeked out to see how Socks was reacting. He sniffed, took a cautionary bite, and had a revelation. Food exists that does not come out of sacks and cans. This stuff was warm and it was really, really good. To describe his subsequent plan of attack, the word “gobble” comes to mind. In fact, he licked the bowl so thoroughly, he knocked the bowl off the table and pushed it all over the patio until he was sure he’d gotten every single morsel.

A few minutes later I walked by the patio to see him sitting in Midnight’s bed feeling the cushion with his paw. When he looked up we had one of those silent conversations.

“Whatcha doing there, Socks?”

“I wanted to sit down here and this thing was in the way.”

“So you weren’t trying out the nice soft cat bed?”

“Is that what this thing is? Certainly not.”

He made a point of getting out of the bed and turning his back to the door. Half an hour later I looked out and he was curled up in “the thing” sound asleep.

We certainly don’t want to suggest that the taint of domestication has touched our independent man of the world, but guess who was sitting on the back step looking in the patio door this morning?

[And for those of you who are wondering, R. looked like she'd been pole-axed when I gave her breakfast to the outside cat. Interestingly, she brought a better attitude to the supper table. snicker ]