Introducing Fred

Meet Fred. Fred is a blue armless cat made a long time ago by my older sister as a Girl Scout project. He has become my constant companion and been given quite the personality by both myself and a surprising, possibly alarming, number of people in my life. He has always been important to me, a transitional object in my life, but he has started to travel with me more and more as I have gotten older, as more people have met him, and as his popularity has surpassed mine. Seriously, I think more people know Fred than me. Anyway, he is happy to meet you. I believe it is high time that Fred made an appearance on my blog. (Even though all 3 of you who actually read my blog already know Fred intimately.)

Fred has traveled all over the world with me. He has been to France, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Canada, and all over the US. Fred has even been to a few places I have not, such as Las Vegas. Fred has modeled for his own calendar and poster, and had hundreds of pictures of him taken all over creation. All of this popularity sometimes goes to his head and gives him quite the ego, but we all still love him.

A recent discovery was Fred's birthday. It seemed for years as my birthday rolled around that friends wanted to know when Fred's birthday is. Well, for a very long time I had no clue. I only knew I was about 5 years old when my sister made him. But now, through my Mom's careful research in the attic, we have learned that Fred's birthday is April 24, 1982. So he really is an old cat at the ripe age of 25 and looking forward to celebrating his first, but 26th, birthday in the coming spring.

Fred is beginning to show his age with numerous holes appearing in the fabric and is consequently also beginning to aquire quite the wardrobe. This summer during my time living with Anne in Columbus, she was kind enough to make Fred a clergy shirt and a scrub shirt. She also brought him a cheese head from her trip to Wisconsin. Fred has a bow tie, a purple dress shirt, a Santa hat, another cheese head, and recently received a CTS tshirt. All of his attire and frequent travel necessitated his own suitcase which came from the dollar spot at Target. It's a miniature lunchbox that says SugarDaddy...like the candy. As it should. And speaking of trips, Fred is preparing for a trip to visit Sarah and Adam Walker Cleaveland in Princeton NJ. He's pretty excited to see Sarah who he became very close to in his first two years of seminary.

So there you go. This is Fred. I am crazy. But I'm crazy in the don't let go of the child inside kind of way which I think we all need. May creativity and imagination abound!