Harvey — a Source of Peace

Meet Bubba cat

*Stick around after the story for a delightful array of pictures of my darling cat.

Harvey joined our family in a roundabout way.

My husband owned a construction company in 2016, and Harvey was just a wee mite at the time. He would visit the jobsite where my husband was working.

My brother, Jason, and his daughter were living in my basement at the time. He, my brother-in-law, and my father-in-law also worked on the site. All of them fell in love with this little lonely kitten, and they would give him bites of their lunches.

At the time, I was taking care of my girls (12 and 5), my brother’s daughter (6), and our cat, Fuzzy, and Sadie, who any of you who often read my stories have met. (For those of you who don’t know, Sadie is my Jack Russel.) She still wasn’t fully potty trained at that point, so it was a lot to juggle.

My husband and my brother worked from sunup till long past sundown, and I was the one holding down the fort while they did it.

I was also overrun with work, having successfully amassed such a plentiful level of clients for my editing business that I couldn’t even keep up with them all.

This was only a portion of my life, of the things I was trying to balance, but these details will do well enough to serve this story.

So, I was exhausted. At the end of my rope, so to speak.

The last thing I needed was one more thing added to my plate.

So, when my husband called me and told me he wanted to bring home this kitten, I begged him not to. No matter how bad I felt for the wee kitty, I could not handle it.

It was just one more thing, and my plate was overflowing, cascading onto my toes with every step I tried to take.

I was already close to my breaking point.

He agreed that we didn’t have time for him after hearing the desperation in my tone, and we got off the phone.

Well, then I got a second phone call. It was Jason. “I’ll take care of him, Sissy! I’ll keep him in the basement, and I’ll do everything for him. You won’t even have to see him.”

So . . . in Harvey moved.

And Jason did take care of him. He did keep him in the basement.

Until a few weeks later, when Jason moved out due to personal reasons.

His daughter stayed with me for a while longer.

As did the cat.

I was not amused to have inherited said cat, but he couldn’t take him to the place he was going, so Harvey became our cat, in a roundabout way.

And we love him so much.

Even before we lost Jason to suicide last year, Harvey was a huge part of our family, and he fits in just right.

He is now six years old, and I can’t imagine life without him.

He is mean to Fuzzy, and I have to work hard to keep them separated since he will beat the crap out of her most of the time if I turn my back, but I love him.

He tears all of my furniture to shreds, no matter how many cat trees, scratching posts, or double-sided tape I get involved in the situation, but I love him.

And after losing Jason, I am eternally grateful that we still have “Bubba Cat.” It’s like looking at a little piece of the huge heart my brother had.

And I love him.

I love them both, Bubba and our Bubba Cat.

I am so glad he found my family all those years ago.

And, without further ado . . . more pictures of HARVEY!

Harvey is still only about twelve weeks old in the above picture. He was ornery and a pot-stirring troublemaker a lot of the time, but soooooo sweet!

Ignore my dirty windows. I had better things to do with my time. Here, Harvey is choosing a morsel of bird meat to indulge in during his imagined future excursion outside. My birdfeeder was right outside this window.

He also never went outside. We lived on the main road at the time, and any outside animal inevitably ended up squished, which was not in the life goals I had for this boy.

Harvey liked to take advantage of the times when I was fighting a tight deadline and raid the bathrooms. The doors were supposed to stay closed, but someone usually forgot.

My sweet boy is growing! He would never even fit on that bed these days. He’s a big boy! But we left this behind when we moved out of this house anyway.

Watching Harvey “kill” his favorite fishy is a very good time. I wish I had a video of it that I could share, but he somehow always knows and stops being cute when I try to video him.

My youngest kindly tucked him in for his nap. He actually stayed this way for about thirty minutes too.

I am one hundred percent sure this cat knows he isn’t allowed in the bathroom, but . . . the rules don’t apply to him unless he wants them to. Good thing he’s at least keeping his hands to himself, right?

This is how I found him this morning when I got home from taking his furless sister to school. This is what inspired me to write about him this morning. He does this very frequently, despite the encouragement I give him to cease and desist. He isn’t even sorry that he’s trashing my drapes.

See? My boy has zero remorseful thoughts.

(He’s actually officially my oldest daughter’s cat at this point, but he’ll always be my boy, just like my furless baby girls will still be “my girls,” even when they move on to build a life with their husbands.)

But the level of cuteness is high. What can I possibly do about it? He’s just so dang cute!

And so ends my segment on Bubba Cat.

Tell me about your furry kids in the comments! :)

*For those of you who don’t understand why I refer to my brother as Bubba, it is just a term of endearment. I think it is more common in Southern states in the US, but we called him that long before we left California and came to Kentucky, so I guess it’s just an “us” thing too? I may have called him Jason in direct address a handful of times my entire life. When I was talking to him, and even about him to my sister or parents, he was Bubba, my big brother. A keeper of my heart and an owner of huge parts of it.