One of Life's Blessings...named Charlie

This is Charlie, my holstein cat. He follows me these days in spirit form. He's a quilt shop cat, with the best place to sleep being on a laid out quilt, or the fabric piles.
Charlie came into our world at Bubbling Springs Farm, an alternative life style community. He was known as Charles Atlas. I had stopped there one day to drop something off for my friend, Dottie.
As we talked, Charles A. positioned himself on my foot, and looked like he was there it stay. I had recently been tested and found to be "massive allergic" to cats..LOL. Dottie encourged me to take him home, but I declined and removed him from my foot..ya right! He walked over and as I opened my car door to leave he jumped in and laid down on the floorboards. Removing him, not once but twice and then having Dottie hold him so I could drive away seemed to be the only way to avoid taking him home with me.
But he had worked his magic on me, and I tentatively asked the hubby what he thought about a new kitten. Of course, the answer was "YES, I was crazy, but if it was what I wanted to go ahead.
And so began my love affair with Charlie. He was a charmer. My foot was always his favorite place to sit. If I was sitting down he simply laid across both feet.

I opened a small quilt shop in 1989, in the house next door to ours. Every morning as I got ready to walk across the yard to Quilts on Main, Charlie accompanied me. Every one in town knew Charlie. He befriended the elderly on their porches, visited the school where my hubby worked, would have gone in, if they had let him. He even visited the neighborhood cats, who were tied outside.
He was found of bringing us presents, often a tiny baby rabbit, held gently in his mouth, and actually managing not to put teethmarks in it's skin. More than once I returned the wild baby to it's woodpile home across the street, only to have Charlie bring me another.

One afternoon he came across the street with something white dangling from his mouth. I was in the porch having afternoon coffee with the hubby, and we figured it was another bunny. So we got up to see what he had this time, rather than just letting him into the porch with his "offering". Lucky we did that. His offering was a live white mink !! There is a mink farm up river from our small village and occasionally they escape. This one got caught..LOL. But with the possibility of rabies hanging over our heads, the mink needed to be terminated. Their bite is terrible, and how Charlie ever managed to catch it, much less not get bitten is a miracle.
Charlie would drop his catch if you told him "let me see it Charlie", and that day was no exception. The DH stepped on it's head, and that was the end of the mink. The only good to come out of this is that the 2nd son, just a so-so student, took the mink to school for science and got extra credit. Apparently it's very unusual for a cat to be able to catch a mink.

There are many, many Charlie stories, most quite as remarkable as he proved to be. He left us in his 4th year, having contracted feline luekemia from one of the tied up cats he paid social visits to. That Siamese had been infected by a passing outside-only cat, and both Charlie and Sparky died that spring. It was a crushing blow, my beautiful holstein Charlie. But he had lessons to teach me, and he did. His spirit is still with me and the lessons I learned from him have made my journey easier. I've had several cats over the years since Charlie, but only he remains my Charlie.