Can Theo be the new Chuck?

     At first I'm not sure if I should take the idea seriously--that Theo is  the new Chuck.

    I mean, my first thought is to stop writing the blog. Chuck is gone. I feel like I have lost my inspiration. For me, every adventure has centered on the things that Chuck did, the dreams he had, the ideas that popped into his furry little head. 

    But then I admit to myself that I do have memories of the two of them doing a lot of meowing together in those final days. Chuck is outside, as usual, and Theo is standing by the patio door. They are deep in cat conversation.

    Or Chuck is lounging on the sofa and Theo comes up. Their two cat heads are pressed together, whispering for what seems like a long time. Is Chuck trying to convince him to step up to the plate or is it the other way around?

    "You can do it, Theo," I imagine Chuck saying. Or "Somebody has to go with mom and dad when they're traveling to all these places. You don't think those two kittens they're going to adopt are going to be ready? Michelangelo? He's just a kid. Sienna? She's a girl. This is a man's job."

    Or, is it Theo who is trying to prove himself to Chuck? "I spent two years in a cage. They stuck all kinds of needles in me," I can hear him saying. "If I can survive that, I can survive anything."

    Now that part is true. Theo, who is named after Theodore Roosevelt, was imprisoned in a testing lab for two years before he was rescued. He swears--meow, meow--he has little memory of his time there, but I wonder. 

    He puffs out his chest whenever I bring it up. He has a number tattooed into his inner ear which is now blacked out as proof of his rough upbringing.

    All I know is that the knapsack we were going to throw out after Chuck passed over mysteriously re-appears on the chair where it always sits. Waiting for a new adventure?

    That's when I say to Dan, "I put that knapsack in the garage. Now it's back on the chair. I think Theo wants to be the new star of Hot Blogging with Chuck. I think Chuck somehow made that knapsack . . ." I know I sound a bit crazy.

    We consider. Theo's only three, but Chuck was even younger when he started traveling. He's rascally like Chuck. Amazingly curious. 

    But is he cute enough? We rifle through some of the photos we've taken. 

    Does he have star appeal? (Yes, that's Theo posing, half on half off the hibiscus plant he sits on in the sun.) 

    Before we can make up our mind, decide if we should take Theo with us on our next adventure, we get a sign. And that's the crazy part. We can't tell if it means what we think it means.

  

    What if Chuck is still with us, guiding us somehow? 

    Before I tell you what happened, let me be perfectly clear. Theo is his own cat. He has his own personality. Chuck had a very quiet voice. Theo makes himself heard. Chucky always slept upstairs at night. Theo likes to sleep on the downstairs sofa. And during the day Chucky had a favorite fluffy cat bed that he loved to snooze in. 

    Suddenly, Theo's meows have grown softer. Suddenly Theo has taken to sleeping upstairs, not down. And now he's snoozing his afternoons in Chucky's fluffy cat bed. 

    Dan and I both say it together--Is Theo becoming Chucky? Or has Chucky come back . . . and somehow . . . found a way . . . to 

                                  TO BE CONTINUED

Rascal Chuck's Destiny

  We go to the shoemaker because we believe he will have all the answers.  Is this place only a restored village? Why did Chuck suddenly disappear and then reappear in the post office of the Country Store? 

    In other words, what the heck is going on?

    "You can't just barge in there and start asking him all these questions," Dan says. 

    "Why do we even think he has all the answers, anyway?"

    "Because he's been here from the beginning."

    "The beginning?"    

     Now even Chucky is intrigued. He's been plodding along beside us as we walk down the main road of Landis Valley, headed toward the shoe maker. I glance over. Chuck looks different somehow. As if he's fading in and out. More ethereal. As if he's not really there. Even though I know he is.

    "Are you feeling okay, Chuck?" I ask.

    "I'm ready," he meows.

    What the heck does he mean by that? 

  

      Dan is ahead of us, already walking into the shoemaker's house. I scoop Chucky up and give him a big hug. "You know I love you to bits," I say. 

    "Another adventure always awaits," Chucky meows back as he leans his head into mine. 

    I get the sneaky feeling that Chuck already knows what's about to happen. That somehow he has already figured all of this out.  Why he suddenly disappeared and then reappeared.

    "Can you tell me," I ask my super wise cat.

    "It's destiny, mom," he whispers.

    I get a lump in my throat, guessing I must cherish these next few moments. 

    The shoemaker looks exactly the way I expect him to look. He's making a pair of shoes from real leather, of course, that he has cut and shaped. He has already begun to explain the process to Dan. 

    I stand in the background and listen. Chucky, of course, is sniffing his heart out. The smell of leather and sawdust is everywhere. It is a good solid smell that for some reason makes me think of my childhood. And Chucky looks happy, happier than I have ever seen him.

    I learn something from the shoemaker that I didn't know. Back in the day, before people bought ill fitting shoes from the shoe store, they had their shoes made from a shoe maker. But going to the shoe maker was step two in the process. Step one was having a carpenter make a last for you--a wooden form in the shape of your foot. You paid for and owned the last and then gave it to the shoemaker who used the form to make your shoe. 

    Shoes back then fit very well. They conformed to all the quirks and inconsistencies of your foot. 

    Finally, the shoemaker looks at us, I mean really looks at us, looks at Chuck and asks us why we are really here. "You are not here for the shoes," he says.

    "No." We tell him what has happened as we have walked around the village, and ask him if he can explain. 

    "I am not surprised. You are not the first. Yes, this village is special because we are unchanged from the past. We are half in and half out of where we used to be. The cloakroom in the school. The post office in the Country Store. And, even here."

    I look around and notice that Chucky has stopped sniffing. 

    Suddenly I understand what the shoe maker is trying to say. "Doorways to the past?"

    "Yes."

    "But where is this doorway?"

    The shoemaker points to just beyond where the half made shoes are on the table. There is a corner in his shop. "He knows. He will find his way if he is meant to go."

    "But he'll come back?" I ask.

    "Not this time," he says. 

    "But why must he go?"

    It is the hardest thing to let destiny take its course. You want to make time stand still. You want to stop the future from happening. 

    I cannot describe how we love and hold and hug our Chucky at the end. But then we must let him go. We are so grateful to have shared his journey for 14 years. 

    We watch him march toward that doorway with confidence and curiosity, the way he has always faced life. And then he is gone.

     

  What really happened . . .

    

  I have had the great honor of living with 13 cats so far in my life. They've all been special in their own way. Chuck, the rascal cat, was one of a kind. He literally bounced into my life as a kitten, inspired me to begin Hot Blogging with Chuck with his always curious and adventurous personality, and gave me oodles of love over the years. 

    It is with great sadness that we recently discovered Chucky had an inoperable tumor in his stomach/pancreas. We made the very hard decision to let him go and send him over the Rainbow Bridge to join his sisters Ella and Molly and his brother Jack. 

    We miss him each and everyday. He had a strong personality, loved to go outside and raid the neighbor's catnip garden when he was home and truly was an ambassador, eager to make friends with the neighbor cats. 

    I have to admit I feel Chucky's presence around me even now. 

    When I wanted to give up the blog and retire, he meowed--No, Mom. Let Theo take over. He can do it. I know he can. 

    When I wanted to hide away in my sorrow, he reminded me that I've always adopted cats who needs homes. It's the cycle of life. He led me to our newest two kittens--9 month old brother and sister, Michelangelo (Mico for short) and Sienna. They were rescued as feral cats from a farm, so I guess they're a bit rascally too. 

   

    Theo looks forward to introducing himself and taking you on the next adventure, but one thing we've decided--we're holding fast to our blog name: Hot Blogging with Chuck. Because you never know with Chucky, he may be back!

    

     

    

Rascal Chuck Vanishes in the Country Store

      I'm going to call this Part II. If you remember from last week, Dan, Chucky and I left the supposedly deserted school, crossed the street, and now face the prospect of exploring The Country Store.

      We hesitate before even going in. The Country Store looks innocent enough. The store owner stands on the doorstep and waves us inside. Still, we're suspicious. We're supposed to be in a restored village from the late 1800's.  

    Dan, the voice of reason, tries to make light of it. "Maybe you just imagined what you heard." 

    Chucky looks at me and I look at him. 

    "We didn't imagine it." 

    We now think the school is haunted, but, we see two people coming out of the Country Store--unharmed and laughing. 

    "We'll only stay for a minute," I whisper to Chuck. "Stay close by." But who am I fooling? Chuck, otherwise known as Inspector Chuck Clouseau, now has his mojo back. He marches up to that store, determined to sniff his way through.

    "Welcome to the Landis Valley Country Store," the volunteer interpreter says, who's playing the role of store owner. He's dressed like he would from the turn of the century. Dan immediately engages him in conversation, and this guy is good. He never breaks out of his role. It's almost as if he believes he really is the owner. 

    "I see you brought the missus," he says. "Go on. Look around. But stay out of the post office," he warns, his tone darkening.  No explanation. Just--stay out.

    Chucky has, of course, begun sniffing. Dan continues to talk. I feel as if I've been dropped into some kind of time portal wonderland. I want to stop and pick up everything. Imagine what it would have been like to live back then, before electricity, tv, internet. This is a world that still revers George Washington as a hero.

   Most of the people who lived in this village grew their own food. This country store, for them, was like amazon is for us today. 

 

     

 

    

    I spot the old-fashioned operator phone in the corner and step over to have a closer look. I imagine this would have been the only phone available in the village. You came to the country store to make a call. You came to collect your mail. 

    Stay out of the post office. I turn to my right, remembering the volunteer/owner's warning. Chucky has sniffed his way through the store and is now feet away from the post office. I imagined an actual office, but it's only a section of the store with a sign and three walls with cubbies to put the mail. 

   "Chuck," I call out, trying to avoid the inevitable. 

   For years Chuck has suffered from selective hearing. He can hear his snack bag rattling from two floors away, but to hear his name being called out a few feet from him--for some unexplained reason, a sound barrier goes up. 

    "Chuck, stop."

    He doesn't. He sniffs his way into the Post Office. 

     I turn toward the front of the store. Dan is still talking, talking with the volunteer/store owner/and I can also assume postmaster about 1860 politics of all things. I have a few moments, I think, to make this situation right. I will run in, scoop Chuck up, before the postmaster realizes that Chuck is in the post office. 

    But Chuck has vanished. Totally. Desk, stool, cubbies. All there. No Chuck. What? I look around. Did he run past me? No. There is absolutely nowhere he can be hiding in this post office space. 

    

    Now I'm worried. Maybe there is a good reason why this guy wants us to stay out of the post office. 

    I have no choice now. Just confess everything. Get Dan. Then tell the volunteer/owner/postmaster what has happened. 

    I purse my lips and get Dan. He follows me to the back of the store. He reads my body language. He knows something is wrong. 

    "Where's Chuck?" he asks.

    I grab his arm, speechless, and point to the post office. 

    "Hey," Dan says in his calm, reasonable voice, "you're not supposed to be in there."

    Chuck is not a big talker, and for a rascal cat, he has a small voice, but I can hear him clear as day. Meow.

    "Chucky." There he is as if he were there the entire time. But he wasn't there. 

    I tell Dan the horrid truth. "There's something fishy about this place. I can feel it."

     "I don't know what to say." Dan picks Chuck up, and we say goodbye. 

    "Can we just go? Now?" I ask. Beg.

    "But what about the shoemaker?" Dan asks. "What can possibly go wrong at the shoemaker?"

                              TO BE CONTINUED - PART III

    
 

Rascal Chuck Is Haunted At School

    Even now it's difficult to explain how the haunting happened. We're traveling in Pennsylvania when Chuck insists on seeing a one room school house nearby. A very special place. Circa 1890. Called the Maple Grove School. 

        I know all about it. Thousands of school houses just like this one existed in Pennsylvania after free public education was established in the state in 1834. All across rural Pennsylvania, they were built to provide schooling from first through eighth grade. These are known facts. No dispute.

      Chuck wants to see the school. Go inside. See what it was like over one hundred years ago.

          What can go wrong?

      Dan parks the car, and we head across the beautiful grass field. I see the school in the distance, and it's just like the school on Little House on the Prairie or When Calls the Heart. There's even a school bell on top to call the kids to school.

         One teacher and a bunch of kids of varied grade levels all in the same room. Chuck's grandfather (my dad) went to a school like that in Minnesota. He was a second grader who skipped a grade because he did the third grade work when he finished his work. So, the next year he jumped to fourth grade. 

        There's no one around because the school hasn't been officially used since the 1960's. Is that an important fact to consider? We spot the outhouses to our right. 

        There is also a place to tie your horse if you were lucky enough to have one to ride. 

        We open the front door and peek in. Eerily deserted. I don't use that word eerily lightly. I can feel something in the air. I shrug it off. The place is old. Sometimes I have a too active imagination.

         I am immediately mesmerized, staring at the rows of desks, old-fashioned desks, and the black wood stove that sits prominently in the middle of the room. I imagine all the kids who sat there, farm kids, most likely.

    The blackboard proudly displays the Pledge of Allegiance for the children to recite. 

        Chuck scampers in beside me. 

        "This is the way it used to be," I explain to my rascal cat. "No computers, no WIFI, no TV's in the classroom. Just books and a chalkboard. Kids brought their lunch with them or they went back home for lunch. There was no cafeteria with hot lunch being served." I'm pulling from memory here because I used to be an elementary school principal, and I know all about lunch periods and recess.

        Chuck doesn't react. I gaze down and he's not there. Has he even heard a word I've said? Where the heck is he?

        Suddenly, I hear a crash. What?

        Behind me, to the left, is the cloakroom where the kids would have put their coats and hats. When we walked in, we saw only the coat hooks hanging from the walls. 

        The tell-tale signs of an orange and white tail disappears out the front door. Chuck is running as fast as Chuck can run out of the school. The bang was the front door slamming, then swinging open again after Chucky ran through it. Something scared him. This doesn't make sense. He's the one who wanted to see the school.

        I go to investigate. Now I hear it--a kind of stomping of boots. The sound that kids would make if they just came in from a snow storm and were trying to get their boots clean. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. 

        I hesitate. One side of my brain is saying there must be a reasonable explanation. Just go look. The other side is screaming--this is too weird because I know there's nothing there. No snow outside, no kids. No boots. 

        I round the corner. Sure enough, only a deserted cloakroom.  Again it's eerily quiet. 

            

        Chuck is outside. He's found Dan, standing where they would hitch the horses. 

        "What's going on?"

         A haunting? I can't even begin to explain it. "We heard something. Let's just get out of here."

        "Chuck said . . ." 

        There's more to see in this preserved village that dates back hundreds of years. But now I'm beginning to wonder. Is the General Store haunted too? That's where we're headed to next.

                                                        TO BE CONTINUED 

Rascal Chuck Climbs a Mountain

        I suspect the idea started when Chuck and Theo, his brother in crime, conferred that morning on the sofa.  I think Theo put the idea in Chuck's head that climbing a mountain was a good idea. Imagine the view, he probably meowed. The fresh scents you can sniff.

          "Do you want to come with us?" Chuck probably asked.

          "Me?" Theo probably let out a slight cough. "Not today, bro. Feeling a little under the weather. But you go ahead."

            So Dan, Chucky, and I find ourselves signed up for a two hour hike, following our trusted guide, destined to climb a mountain. But, first we have to get to the mountain, which means hiking through a forest. We are in northern New Jersey in Ringwood State Park, light jacket weather, the day after too much rain so it's a bit soggy but glorious.

            We follow a secret path through some fields and woods to reach the trail that will eventually lead upwards.  

          The path seems somewhat magical, especially when we pass some ancient statues, each one representing one of the major continents--Europe, America, Asia and Africa:

       We pass a lovely wooden bench, but there is no time to rest. 

           We now begin to enter the forest. Chuck is with Dan, snuggled securely in his backpack, but when we reach a stream, he meows to be let out. Looking for frogs and fish is one of the things Chuck likes to do best, so while I distract our guide, Chucky does his thing with Dan.

        Soon we're hiking into the inner part of the forest. The trail inclines nice and slow. There is a slight breeze. The sun is out. 

        

        We are almost there. The incline steepens. The trail narrows. At the highest point, we must climb a few steps onto a giant rock that is flat on top, but the sides extend down, down, and if you are afraid of heights, it is best not to look down. If you think you might slide down the sides, it is best not even to climb on top of this rock. 

        But, of course, we do. The view is magnificent. Chuck is out of the backpack, and he has scampered up the rocks. He wants to see the view.

      

        "Keep an eye on him." 

        I have no idea how well cats can navigate on slippery rocks. I have no idea how well I can navigate on slippery rocks. I already know how Dan is feeling. He is staying exactly in the middle of the large rock and not looking down.

        The view is of the Ramapo Mountains. 

        I make the biggest mistake while I am up there. I look DOWN

          

and realize at once that we are at tree top level and if we slide down and fall, we will be in BAD SHAPE. It is a long way down. 

        I make an executive decision. "We should grab Chuck."

        He is on the edge of the edge, sniffing. Of course he is. Half his body is off the rock, half is on. I don't think he even realizes where he is. Some plants are growing in between the crevices, and he is exploring. He has absolutely no interest in the view. 

        I very carefully move closer to where he is.  If he looks up and sees there's nothing in front of him, will he panic? 

        

        "Chucky, Chucky."

        He turns and looks at me.  And then without a second thought he moonwalks from the edge and returns to where I am standing, paralyzed with fear. They say that cats need to be rescued from trees because they can't backtrack once they run up. But I've just seen for myself that a cat can save himself, if he's a rascal!

        Later, safely back at home, I see Chuck with Theo. I hear a lot of meowing, and I imagine that Chuck is telling Theo what happened on top of the mountain--how mom freaked out once again. But I'm wrong. He seems to be telling Theo how he made it to the top of the mountain!

        Theo, lazing in the later afternoon sun, doesn't seem to care. He's all stretched out and mighty glad he decided to stay home. He's no rascal cat!