dedicated to my lovely cat and soulmate, ralf ♡

Ralf, my soulmate, is a lovely cat of seven years. I don't know when he was born, because we adopted him from the cat shelter. However, he doesn't have a tragic story like most cats who turn up at the cat shelter; he had a loving family who moved into an apartment, and because he was so used to being outside most of the time, he didn't feel too well being inside all the time, so instead, he was put in the cat shelter to come to a new home who could give him love and let him be outside.
Moving here was not only very great for me and my family who just adore him, but it's also great for him since we live a little outside of the centre of our town, and we also have the woods pretty close to us, and therefore he has a lot of outside to be in.

Ralf wasn't very happy about being in a cage when we took him home, he was complaining the whole time, which just broke my heart. It was a good thing that we didn't live very far away, in fact, we are able to walk to the shelter in around five minutes from where we live; but driving was probably better than walking with a cage.
When we got home, and we opened the cage door, Ralf went right out. He didn't seem scared at all, he just walked around, taking it all in. That felt very good, since we wouldn't have to worry about him hiding under our beds or things alike.

One day, Ralf had been locked (not literally locked, the door was just closed) inside my dad's workroom, and when dad opened the door again, he opened it right in Ralf's face. Most likely. We are still not 100% sure, but it's the most likely since I later saw how one of his eyes were a bit more closed than the other, probably from a bruise he had above it. He didn't seem too bothered about it though, more than that his eye watered a bit, so we just waited for it to get better, which it did.

Letting him out on his own felt great, and I could see how much better he felt about it. We had been walking him around our backyard with a harness and a leash before, but this was so different. I was afraid he wouldn't come back home, but that's normal I guess when letting your cat out for the first time. But he did come back, and that made me so happy.

The other day, when my mom and I were going to a place to get some elderflowers so mom could make elderflower juice, he came with us. We had walked a few meters, and then we could hear his bell jingle as he came running toward us. Then he followed us all the way there - although we had to pick him up at times so he wouldn't walk into other people's backyards - and all the way back too.

Ralf is a very loving cat, he loves cuddles and sleeps in my bed every night - or, at least when I go to bed and a while after I've fallen asleep, because later on I think he thinks I move around too much, and so he jumps down from my bed and lies on the sofa outside my room instead. Hah.

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Thank you for reading and looking! ♡
~alwin