When I was growing up my best friend and I always entertained the idea of travelling together.
Unfortunately, we never achieved that dream, he got a gig working in the local ‘Spoons and I got sidetracked by the glitz and glamour of watching Netflix in my pants for a living.
I won’t lie though, the idea of travelling has still always held a certain appeal to me, and I have a begrudging admiration for those who’ve gone out and seen the world.
People like Henry and Baloo who, as I hope you’ve guessed after reading the headline, aren’t actually people. Baloo’s a cat and Henry’s a dog, which makes their journey even more impressive, for two reasons.
The first being, as anyone who’s watched Tom and Jerry can tell you, cats and dogs don’t traditionally get on. Secondly, because of the language barrier, cats and dogs have always struggled to hold down paying work which makes buying flights a nightmare.
Thankfully though, Henry and Baloo have got their owner Cynthia Bennett, and her boyfriend to look after them, and take them on all sorts of wonderful walks around their home state of Colorado.
Check out some of Cynthia’s amazing photos of Henry and Baloo:
In a recent interview with The Dodo Cynthia took the time to explain how her little family of furry friends came together. It was Henry who came first.
She explained how she had her eyes on a little golden retriever but when she first saw Henry, who she describes as being ‘five times bigger’ than his brothers and sisters, she fell in love.
Henry immediately fell in love with Cynthia and her boyfriend’s fondness for hiking, and loved going on long walks with them.
Cynthia continued:
I think we only had him for three days when we took him on our first hike, which was to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. He found the steepest, tallest rock around, and he ran up to the top of it to look over the edge.
We call him our little mountain goat. He scares us to death because he goes up to the highest cliff or the highest rock to climb up and look over it.
A few months ago though, Cynthia decided her little family needed a new member and they adopted Baloo – a Siamese kitten from a local shelter.
Cynthia states she chose Baloo because of his rowdy personality, knowing he’d be the perfect fit for the Bennet family.
It was Henry however who Baloo bonded with the most, wanting to play and snuggle constantly with his new canine chum, even refusing to be left at home when they went for a hike.
Overtime Cynthia trained Baloo to use a harness and eventually he was going along with the gang on their walks through the rugged Colorado mountains.
Baloo likes it because it means he gets to spend time with Henry, who Cynthia believes the little kitten sees as an adoptive mother.
She explained:
I call them brothers, but I think Baloo thinks that Henry’s his mom because he constantly looks for a teet.
So he’ll go in, and you can tell he’s looking, because he’s nuzzling under Henry’s armpit.
In a recent Instagram post shortly after she’d adopted Baloo, Bennet wrote how the little kitten couldn’t be fitting into her little family any better, and they love him to the moon and back.
Adorable!
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More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.