Hobo Joe (Written June 8, 2010)

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— (Isaiah 58:7a)


It has been quite hot lately, high temperatures, too early August like and summer hasn't even officially arrived. Well, remember earlier this year we bemoaning the lack of a little heat as we became buried in several feet of white chill snow.


During this blizzard season there came a wanderer. We have no idea where he came from, he just showed up one day during this fierce winter and found some shelter about our house.


Perhaps he had just strayed from a neighbor's place and by the morrow he would return to his home. But on the morrow he was still there, and the morrow after that and he just stayed. So we put some food out on the back steps and he found his way there each morning and night through the next several months.


When the warmer days of spring came and the snow melted into memory, he would come and sun himself up in the yard near where the old oak had been taken down the other year. In the space where the trunk had been ground away some grass has sprouted and also a new little oak is growing. Generation's past generating generations anew. And this became his spot, just under the new oak.


I guess one assumes it's just another feral stray living  a wild life. We began calling him Hobo Joe. But he didn't act too afraid of us. He knew when the food would arrive by now and he would be there waiting and meow at us. 


On May Twenty I went out to move one car so my son could get out the drive to go to work and we discovered someone had egged our cars. They had hit his side door and on my car, the lower center of the windshield.  A random act of youthful pranksters, perhaps, but  I reported in to the police nonetheless. Better to get it on the record in case it reoccurs. I was also curious if there had been a rash of egg throwing, which apparently there was not.


It did occur again. On May 31 we found another egg had been thrown, but it had hit the drive between cars. All these egg tosses had come from the same general point, up near the corner of my neighbor's house. Again, I called the police.

My wife then told me someone had thrown bottles into the back yard. She offers an opinion that boys are trying to hit Hobo Joe.  (Picture of beer bottle in our yard on right)


My wife went out the other day and sat on the front stoop and Hobo Joe came to her and let her stroke him. Then this weekend, she did the same and my daughter and son arrived at that time. My daughter works for the SPCA as a VetTech and she scruffed the hobo.


Hobo Joe was obviously once someone's pet. He had been neutered and he is affectionate. My other daughter, who is also a VetTech for the Humane Society, says he is five to seven years old. 


We can't know his story, but his ordeal is over. He now has a home again.

 Hobo Joe

 His new bed.