Timothy Raisin III is also known as TR3. He was adopted as a kitten from a shelter along with his mother seven years ago. His name comes from two authors: the “Raisin” is from M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series, and if the first Timothy Raisin had been a female, she would have been Agatha. But because the first of this cat dynasty was a male, I had to find a boy’s name, and of course I went to Dickens. I liked the cadence of the five syllables, so the first name had to be three. Nicholas Raisin? Oliver Raisin? They didn’t quite roll off the tongue the way Tiny Tim’s presumed full name, Timothy, did.
I have to say TR3 is the sweetest and most devoted of the TRs, but I suspect a large part of that devotion has to do with the fact that he is not just a professional eater; he’s a professional sleeper. After he’s eaten one of his several meals a day, which inexplicably must always include a dish of diced cantaloupe, he wants to be Velcroed onto my lap, sound asleep, for as long as I will let him (or can stand to have him) stay there. Tim he may be, but Tiny he is not, and at sixteen pounds, he’s difficult to dislodge. Never mind my book or my crochet projects, and why did we have to go to the trouble of finding two recliners so that one could be lugged upstairs? Because more lap space is created that way, of course. At night, he’s Velcroed to my side.
He does have a heating pad and blanket at the side of my desk, with which he must make do while I’m working. And on Pacific Grove’s occasional sunny days, he will take long naps in the garden or at the neighbor’s, and at the end of those afternoons he moseys sleepily but willingly back inside. His long fur necessitates an unpopular combing session before I will let him back in, to get rid of burrs, dried leaves, ants, and whatever else he’s been sleeping in.
One of the only non-sleeping or eating activities that interests TR3 is being up on the dining room table schmoozing into the roses I buy each week at the grocery store (another mystifying cantaloupe-like attraction). I often have to rescue them from being knocked over. And then there are the dogs. He loves dogs. Our yard has a wooden gate and a brick wall that border the sidewalk, and I often find him up on the wall smirking at neighbors’ dogs that are being walked past the house. This is his period of greatest activity, although he doesn’t usually get down from the wall, and most of the regulars ignore him. An exception is that he likes to follow the Aiellos’ German shepherd down to the corner, but this is always at a safe distance, and the dog is unaware of its hanger-on.
TR3 certainly doesn’t take after his racy little Triumph sports car namesake, despite living on the Monterey Peninsula, which has been called the Car Capital of the World because of its annual Car Week events. He knows the sound of my Honda Civic coming home, and he likes to jump into the car while I’m opening the gate and ride into the garage on the dashboard. He’s even been photographed with both a TR3 and a TR2 belonging to friends, although he has never been happy about cameras. But devoted, sleepy, hungry, rose- and dog-loving Timothy Raisin III is hands-down a Dickensian character. Oh, yes—I forgot to mention that his middle name is Charles.