imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Monday, January 23, 2006
OF MICE AND MEN AND KATZ
I don't know which came first, my nickname Kitty or my love of cats. My first cat was Pepper, who lived to be 14. He died right before we moved out of a 13-room Victorian home into an apartment where we couldn't have pets. Four years later I married DogMan who proclaimed, NO CATS! I smiled sweetly and immediately drove out to a farm which had a new litter. I picked out a little black kitten, not caring what its sex was, and took it home. I can't remember their first meeting, but DogMan couldn't resist the little black furball. We named it Petruschka, from an old Spike Jones song "Rhapsody From Hunger(y)." (DogMan had quite a collection of Spike Jones on 78s. They cracked during a move.)
Since Petruschka, there have been Groucho Marx, Mama Cat, DiDi, Princess and Ichabod. There have been others, too. Strays, usually, who never stayed long. Mama Cat was a barn cat who lived in our garage for a few months. During a January thaw, which exposed a vast network of tunnels carved out by moles and field mice, she went on the hunting trip to end all hunting trips. Before mid-morning, she had deposited a mountain of dead critters at our side door. Catching them proved no challenge at all for her. We tried to move her with us, but she refused.
Princess was a barn cat for her first six months. She was originally Nurse G's cat, but we kept her when G went off to Elmira College (for her first degree). Princess was sickly, asthmatic even, and required a lot of doctoring before we could call her healthy. For several years she couldn't go outside as she would get sick. She'll be 16 this year. She's my shadow who sleeps with me.
This is all a segue for this charming piece about a barn cat named Mother, written by a man named Katz :~)
A Dog Man Gets a Cat
I never liked cats much. Then Mother moved into my barn
Sissy is another cat lover. Who else has a cat story?
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