Banjo

Meet Banjo, one of three rescue kittens who now call Hill House home. Banjo's my little buddy; the other two—Henry Hawkeye and Lord Spectre of the Dust Bunnies—adopted Felicia and Squish, respectively.

It's been nice having kittens in the house again. Any animals at all, really. When our family moved to Hill House in 2016, we had four pets. Two cats: Oscar, the elder stateskitty of the bunch, had been with me nineteen years, and Gabby was adopted by Felicia way back when we first met. And two dogs: Radar, a twitchy little chihuahua, and Dr. Meatloaf, a stoic Boston terrier. But by early 2024, we'd said goodbye to all four of them, and our home just felt...quiet, and not in the best kind of way.

It took a little while to consider expanding our ranks again, but by the end of summer, we were ready. We visited a feral cat rescue clinic here in Oregon, where Felicia and Squish hoped to find black cats but were instead chosen by decidedly not-black cats. We made it a few weeks before I started to feel a little left-out, the only person whose lap wasn't warmed during family movie nights. Thankfully, I had a birthday coming up (not that I really needed an excuse, I guess), so Felicia and Squish dragged me back to the rescue clinic.

I had just one prerequisite: No orange cats. Orange cats were unsettling in ways I couldn't really explain.

So. Yeah. We came home with Benji, who I named for Simon Pegg's character in the Mission: Impossible movies, but who I've since taken to calling Banjo. (Squish calls him everything from Bongo to Bilbo. Names are flexible in this house.)

Anyway, meet Banjo Benji Bilbo Bingo Bongo, Bodyguard of Books.