RUSH: Jacksonville, Alabama, next. This is Carol, and welcome to the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you and Allie doing with her newfound freedom?
RUSH: Well, aren’t you sweet to ask that question.
CALLER: Aww.
RUSH: It has been… Let’s see. It has been a week or two weeks since I mentioned that we were gonna do this, and that’s very sweet of you to remember and to care about that. So let me give you the answer. We got a new kitten about, oh, I guess 13 months ago now, an Abyssinian. It’s a tawny. Our previous cat was Punkin, which was a ruddy. She was a ruddy. She passed away with kidney failure and so it’s very, very sad. So we got a new one, and named her Allie, and because this cat is insane —
CALLER: (chuckling)
RUSH: Punkin was an old soul from the get-go. Punkin behaved like an adult very soon after leaving kittenhood. But this cat’s all over everything, jumps to the highest point in a room she can get to, including needing a ladder to go get her, ’cause she can’t jump down. So I have been afraid to let her roam, because I’ve seen her get on a banister on the second floor — a narrow banister of two-or-three inches wide — lose her balance, and fall.
I’ve been scared to death. So we’ve kept her in two rooms, but we finally just decided couple of weeks ago, “We can’t have this poor cat just live in two rooms of the house.” So we just opened the doors and let her out, and I have to tell you something, Karen. She’s a different cat. She’s not nearly as insane. She’s not nearly as lunatic.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: You can tell she’s just having more fun going places, ’cause I would pick her up and carry her through the house to take her from the office to the bedroom, and you could see she was just looking at everything as we’re walking by, because you know the curiosity of cats. But since she’s been let go, she just has the run of the house, except where the dogs are, and she just is having the time of her life.
She spends just as much time with me on her own now as she did when she was forced to. I mean, she sometimes slinks off and finds some sunlight coming through a window and takes a nap in it, but I can count on the fact that late at night when it’s time to go to bed she’s gonna be somewhere where I am and will follow me right up, and it’s been great. It’s entirely good.
It’s been with no fear. I was scared to death to do this because I was afraid she’d fall. That was my only fear. Not that she’d get lost somewhere, but she’d fall. But that hasn’t happened yet, and she’s different. When I say “a different cat,” I mean she’s just no longer worried about being picked up. She didn’t want to be picked up, because she didn’t want to move against her own volition. It’s just it’s been fun.
CALLER: She sounds like a Republican. (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing) Sounds like —
CALLER: They just want to be free and (unintelligible).
RUSH: (chuckles) Well, you know, Kathryn says, “You could learn a lot about women by watching this cat.”
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: “It’s all rooted in freedom and just letting ’em do whatever they want to do. And if you do that, they’ll be there when you need ’em.” I said, “Okay,” and it’s proving out to be that way. This cat, when I say “lunatic” and “is insane,” I just mean this cat is fearless and runs all over the place. She screams and cries when she wants something. I mean, she gets mad. It’s funny. She’s just got oodles and oodles of personality. We just love her.
I appreciate the question.
Thank you very much.
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