pippy, the one-eyed cat.

At the Watauga County Humane Society Thrift Store, they have a resident cat. It's a very sweet cat, one who will nuzzle up to shoppers as they peruse the selection of other people's trash for their own new treasures. The first time I met the cat, I bent down to pet it a little, and it looked up at me, yellow eye shining up at me in adoration. Yeah, that's right. Yellow EYE. Just one. Where the right yellow eye should have been was a slightly concave, matted, black eyelid sewed shut. I stood up quickly and gave a little gasp. It really freaked me out, so much that I stayed away from the cat for the rest of that day. I don't think it would have bothered me had the eyelid not been curved in, making it painfully obvious that there was just some hollow space where the eye should have been.

After the initial shock wore off, I pet the cat on subsequent visits to the store, though I tried not to look at it very closely. Apparently, this cat is rather popular at the store, perhaps with customers less skittish than I. Frequent shoppers have even been known to get upset if they don't get a chance to pet the cat. I think maybe those kind of shoppers don't have a lot going for them.

And so, inspired by the cat's popularity, the store had shirts made. They read "Official Member of the Pippy Fan Club" and had a cartoon drawing of the cat, one eye and all. The shop was selling them for $10.

I would not say that I am a fan of the one-eyed cat, who is evidently named Pippy. Like I said, she kinda creeps me out. But I am definitely a fan of t-shirts with one-eyed cats on them, though I didn't even know it until I saw a whole display of them and decided I needed one.

The woman working was very excited to sell me the shirt, convinced that I must be a cat-lover to the core, and a Pippy-lover to the extreme. I did nothing to make her think otherwise, as I'm beginning to suspect that not everyone has the same view as I do about unusual t-shirts. I'm sure that it is a very nice cat, but I would be much more excited if they had a resident llama or something, particularly if they had the wit to name it Lloyd.

Then I'd buy a Lloyd t-shirt, too.