SUSAN LOESCH
CATS IN THE STACKS

Yeah, it is Friday! The kids and teachers are glad because testing is over, and the library cats are glad because next week the elementary students will be back in the library. They have been missed, but there have been extra secondary kids hanging out here and we’ve enjoyed that.

Both Tank and Barney have gotten lots of attention.

“Ms. Loesch, come HERE!” called Mary. She and Tank were in my office and she had a handful of treats. “Tank won’t eat treats. He can’t be a library cat unless he eats treats.” Not to worry. He does like treats; he just wants to pick them up himself rather than having them offered in a hand.

Barney is less of a treat-eater than Tank; he has to work on that. Our speech teacher brings her youngest students in armed with treats and they expect them to be eaten by a library cat!

Of course there are my fourth graders who recently sampled the treats themselves … but that just wouldn’t be the same.

Both Tank and Barney have modeled the Harley-Davidson cap. Their vote seems to be unanimous; it gets a big paws down.

The cap has gotten the kids talking about next Halloween. With the Harley cap and bandana, all we need to do is find a leather jacket and we will have a biker-cat costume.

Trinity, my junior, who has been my student since kindergarten, was petting Tank. “It is just not the same, is it, Ms. Loesch? When Big Footsie died we already had Alex. He was already a library cat, and we loved him. This time we don’t have anybody.”

She is right. And from now on we won’t go without at least one assistant library cat as well as our “head” cat. It seems that for now Barney will have the “head” job with Tank as his assistant. Barney has gotten the hang of the job a little quicker.

He will roam the library looking for people to hang out with, and he stays on the front desk most of the time … except when he is following someone around. Mary says that he likes to play “follow the leader.” He has also mastered the “sleeping on the desk between the keyboard and monitor” job.

This week he gotten to spend a lot of time with Zee, our Turkish exchange student. We took pictures of them for Zee to have when she goes home.

As she stood with her hand on Barney’s side, her interest in becoming a doctor kicked in.

“He is breathing so fast. Do cats breathe faster than people? What is his normal temperature? How do you know if he is sick? If I ever get a cat, now I will know more about how to take care of it.”

These words make me smile, coming from my student who earlier in the year had never petted a cat and was afraid of them. Alex made her love him, and now Barney and Tank are picking up where he left off.

We still have a couple of candidates for library cat who will be auditioning, but it looks like both Team Barney and Team Tank will be happy; both the guys are on the library cat staff for sure!