The recent flooding in Fargo, N.D., got us to thinking about Cookie, a cat we met at Crane Johnson Lumber Co. This 7-year-old female first arrived at Crane Johnson’s Fargo headquarters when she was a few months old and was named for a former window shop employee. She’s such a part of the company that she has her own timecard and her own workplace–an inbox in the office for dispatcher/foreman Jeffrey Jevne. Cookie is pretty adventurous, Jevne says; last June, she climbed aboard a lumber load being shipped to a resort area 85 miles from Fargo, jumped off when the truck arrived, and ran away. Employees were so disconsolate they held a wake for her. But a month and a day later, she was found. She hasn’t roamed too far since and has returned to a contented, plump shape, thanks to a diet of cat food supplemented by the mice and birds she catches, kills, and leaves at Jovne’s door. “She’s probably used up a couple of lives now,” Jovne says.
