Buddy the cat adopts the people at Glenwood Store

As our Glenwood correspondent, Mary Pierce, reported in late 2020, the folks at Glenwood store mourned the death of General, whose happy presence graced the store for 14 years.

Enter Buddy.

The slender gray tabby fellow now roams the store and has proudly taken up the role.

“Oh, he knows he’s special,” said Barbara Warren, the store manager, who met the charming Buddy quite by chance, and with owner Claude McKenzie’s approval, took him in back in November. They figure Buddy is about 1 year old.

Warren was at her daughter’s near Goldendale when Buddy “just showed up at her doorstep” and they asked around but no one claimed him.

Next time she was there, so was Buddy, this time with one paw that appeared swollen.

“I said, ‘Claude’s looking for another cat, and he was so friendly.’ The third time (Buddy) came back to (her daughter’s) house, he was sitting on the steps. He went following her dog right into the house, so I called Claude said, ‘I’ve got this cat, who’s really friendly and loves dogs — he gets along with her dog, anyway’.”

Warren was heading home and called veterinarian Marianne Randall, DVM, at Goldendale Veterinary Clinic.

“Fortunately the time I was going through Goldendale they had an open appointment. We got his paw fixed, it was a really bad abscess, and Claude kept him at his house until he got healed.”

Buddy’s arrival was “a fluky thing where everything fell right into place when he showed up but he was a stray and nobody claimed him.”

And now he’s right at home, welcoming everyone who comes in, from various perches that are no problem for this long and lithe fellow. He easily jumps straight up onto a four-foot stack of boxes near the door, and his favorite place is a windowsill overlooking the front of the store. “He likes sitting up on that window, looking out,” Warren said. “We let Buddy go anywhere except the counters and tables” of the in-store cafe.

Buddy has indeed made himself at home, and seems to be the perfect personality for “store cat,” Warren noted.

She tells of the time, a few weeks after Buddy settled in, when he encountered a little girl who had been running around the store. “It freaked me out a little, the girl went and stopped and petted Buddy in the back of the store and I heard a little squeal and I thought, ‘I hope he’s not in one of his moods,’ and she came running up here to the front and he was right behind her. She stopped and looked at him and Buddy took off running the other direction and she took off after him. They were playing.”

She also pointed out that with nicer weather Buddy is venturing out more, and crossing the street — all the more reason to drive slowly in the neighborhood.