The Introduction

My sister will be going away this weekend, and she has asked me to stay at her house and look after the cats while she is gone. One of the cats is named George, and the other is Charlie.
I'm using the cat's real names. It's late and it's been a long day and they're cats. I don't think they give a furry fart whether I use their real names in the internet or not.
Now, George I have met before, but I'll be new to Charlie. He's a bit of a scaredy cat (pardon the pun) and Sister wanted him to get to know me before I showed up to care for them for three or four days. I walked through her door, and Charlie was already hunkered down on the floor, his eyes huge, staring at me with the "you make one move toward me and I'm gonna run my #$$ off!" look.
I chose not to make a move toward him. I'm not a crazy cat person but I know enough to be fairly sure you can't force a cat to do anything. It's their way or the highway, and unless you can somehow trick them into thinking something is their idea, then you have to wait for them to come to a new idea on their own. I held quite still and let him sniff me, which he did. Barely. Then he took off. I sat and waited for Sister to give me the Cat Care rundown. Food, litterbox, doos and don'ts, that sort of thing.
It was while I was waiting that she walked up beside me. I looked over to find that she had Charlie held in both hands, and she was holding him out to me.
Charlie did not look happy.
The above is an example of massive understatement.
Charlie looked like he would have cheerfully ripped me to shreds if it would have meant he could just get away from me.
"Go on, sniff him," Sister said to Charlie, but he was having none of it. As she continued to push him nearer to me, Charlie put down all four feet, dug every claw at his command into the cushion, and his skeleton... stopped. Sister continued to push at him, trying to force him closer to me, trying to convince him to sniff me and decide that I was alright. Charlie, however, was not moving. His claws were sunk in and his muscles were all straining to keep his skeleton locked into position. Sister was pushing him, but all that would move was his skin, which slid up his body and bunched up around his neck like some horrible turtleneck sweater gone awry. From the midst of this rumpled, wrinkled and humped-up skin, Charlie's face stared out at me with a clear expression of hate. "This is all your fault," his wide, wild eyes said to me. "I hate you!"
"Uh, I don't think that's such a good idea," I said to Sister.
"Fine," she said, and let him go.
Charlie's body flowed back into shape as he sprang away from me and fled. He paused only once in his flight to look back at me over his shoulder, and now his expression clearly said "You just wait! You have to sleep sometime!"

It's gonna be a long weekend.

Talk to you later! (I hope...)