Dougie came to our household nearly 9 years ago along with his brother Ian. I had picked Ian, an orange tabby, from a litter of four, to adopt after I returned from a trip to Scotland. When I went to my friend's house to get him, there were two kittens left. I had been thinking on the flight home, that if there were two kittens left, I'd take both. So Dougie came home with us too. His name is Scottish and is pronounced doogie.

He is a very busy cat and even at 8 can hardly sit still. He loves to root and dig into boxes, stacks of paper, or piles of pens – so much that we have made a word "doogie-ing" to mean rifling through anything – a file box, a stack of papers, a suitcase, or a pocketbook.

He is a constant source of amusement with his antics. He loves to play with any type of ball including round fruits such as oranges and cantaloupes. One of his favorite games is to knock a soft kitty golf ball down the steps and carry it back upstairs in his mouth. He talks to the ball all the way up the stairs. Of course with the ball in his mouth, his little chirps and coos are muffled.

Dougie also loves to be held and carried around. Often he will stand on his back feet and reach up my leg asking to be picked up. In spite of his love to be held, he is not a lap sitter, but he does love to sit close by.
© Sally Knowles

Dougie appears to be a clownish, people-pleasing cat, and it's no wonder he "doogized" his way into Sally's heart.

His photo also appears in the 2009 March Tabby Cats Picture Gallery, as have all of my Cats of the Week this month.