Chicken’s Corner: A Reluctant Traveller

Chicken occasionally comes into the Main Shop with us, mostly because we only all go in when the staff are all off, and so it’s less of a big deal to have him roaming around, getting in the way, sleeping on top of packing boxes.

We had to bring our car into the garage, which also unfortunately has Chicken’s cat crate in it, so in order to come into the shop, we had to improvise a new carrier. It turns out that I think Chicken may actually prefer the backpack to the cat crate, inside of which he often meows, perhaps because he sort of slides around in there. It might also be because other than the rare visit to the Main Shop, he mostly goes into the cat crate for the vet. Despite this, Jon refuses to make this Chicken’s new way to be transported about, in part due to the fact that there’s now cat hair all over the inside of his backpack but primarily because he’s too embarrassed to look like a crazy cat person. He basically refused to pose for this photo of him in front of the shop claiming I was going to expose him until I threatened him.  

In any case, he (Chicken) was surprisingly calm for the travel, purring and warm, willingly re-entering the backpack for the return leg, and falling asleep inside of it for the car ride home. He was curious about the outside world, but once you started patting the outside of the backpack, he was content enough to curl up inside of it and close his eyes.

Often I get asked how I get Chicken to pose for photos and I have to laugh: it is impossible-zero-chance-completely-unfathomable to get Chicken do anything you want him to do. If there is a photo of him doing something, it is because he arrived at that position on his own, and I was lucky enough to be in his periphery. Following him around for posterity, to record all of the details of his life—this is the gift he has given me, a privilege that will mark this season of my life as a cat owner forever.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Chicken is just a big baby who, deep down inside, wants to be forced to accept love so as to not have to put himself in the embarrassing position of looking like he wants it.