Cats

When I was nine or thereabouts, my parents got my brother and I a pair of sister and brother kittens. One was spotted black and white and the other solid gray, and I named them Inky and Pinky. I don't remember Inky being that memorable, but Pinky was eyed by a neighbor hanging from a tree by one paw "... just like a monkey."

I don't remember offhand just how Inky met her demise, but poor Pinky showed up one morning on our back porch with his head halfway caved in. My mom blamed it on one of the Roop boys who lived down the street. She said they hated cats, but I don't know. It was sad about Pinky, though. He had to be put to sleep.

Now that I think of it, it may have been Inky that was messing all over the place, and that my parents took her out to the country and dropped her off. Looking back on it, Pinky may have ended up the luckier of the two. God knows how a house cat could survive in the wild. She probably met some horribly bad fate. But I try not to think about it.

After that, my sister had any number (and still counting) of cats. I remember Shnookums best of all. She was always pregnant except for when she was nursing her young. It was a constant cycle. It was around about that time that I had turned my parents basement into my own private hippie pad, and as we used to sit around listening to music and smoking ganja, a pregnant Shnookums would jump in one of our laps and purr for about 10 or 15 minutes until moving onto the next.

One morning I was walking out the basement door, and there was a bag full of trash and on top was a baby kitten. Oh, how cute, I thought, and I reached out to pet it, but it was cold, and I suddenly realized it was dead. It was my first close-up look at something deceased, and it chilled my bones.

After Shnookums, there was Spot, an all gray cat like Pinky, who I remember best coming home after work to my mom's place and playing with him as he sat on top of a window-mounted air conditioner. He would hide behind the curtain, and I would smack at him and he would swat back. After a few minutes, I would sneak around to the other side and surprise him, which is slightly indicative of my devilish nature, but he didn't seemed to mind.

Then I would chase him up the stairs but stop short at the head. We would smack at each other back and forth, and then I would wait for a few minutes letting him think I was gone. And when he would poke his head around to look for me I would surprise me him

He had been declawed, so he never scratched me, but over the months he worked up a hell of a right hook and left jab. I moved out and then sometime later my sister moved out along with Spot, and then her boyfriend and future husband, Bob, took over my job as boxing coach.

I moved in with my long-time friend, Sid, who had recently rented an apartment. And now I'm remembering that maybe it was one of Shnookums's litters from which I picked my next cat, Blue. (I'll have to check with my sister on that. I'm probably getting my timeline wrong.) But anyway, Blue, whom I named after my father whose nickname was "Chantilly Willie Blue" for his blue eyes (coined by Julian Himmelfarb, a family friend), grew up from a kitten in an apartment that had any number of guys and girls in and out all hours of the day. It was the 70s, and we were pretty liberal in our lifestyle.

My girlfriend moved in at some point, and Sid moved out, and we finished raising Blue, Mary and I, and I remember he would play with the couple's puppy from next-door. We eventually had to get another apartment as the one we were in went condo, and the one we moved into had a no-pets policy, and as best as we did to hide him, management found out, and I had to find him another home.

I ended up giving Blue to one of my cousins, and he went wild after that never to be the same. Rather he roamed the neighborhood, which was back where my mother lived, and every so often he would come around, and we would coax him indoors, but he never did recognize me after that.

He was the coolest cat I ever did have. Mary and I took him driving with us when he was still small, and he would get underneath the brake pedal, and I was always afraid that I was going to have to stop suddenly and end up crushing him, but we always were able to get him out in time. Later on, after he got older, he used to get up in the back window and cruise along with us, but I might be mixing him up with Spot. As I get older my memories tend to fade into one another.

I do remember vividly one day Mary and I were visiting some neighbors who lived in a second-floor apartment, and we had Blue out on the balcony, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest when he jumped up on the railing, which couldn't have been much more than a half an inch wide. It didn't seem to perturb him that he was 20 feet off the ground, but I was having a nervous breakdown. I dared not try to grab him for fear that he fall. I could only wait till he jumped down on his own accord, which he did after a few minutes.

I now have a big black cat named Baby who has to be 10 years old at least. I got him as a kitten from the Arlington Animal Shelter not long after I moved in to this condo, which was in October of 1997. He may even be 11. Time does fly. He's got a streak of wildness in him as he probably didn't get as much human interaction as a normal kitten might do to my inability to pick him up and pet him. His moments of affection seemed to come and go. And of course he is most affectionate to those who feed them.

I still feel guilty about having to give Blue up and his subsequent lapse into rebellion against human-kind. I take it personally that he was angry at being abandoned. Maybe he was happier living in the wild. I hope so. He chose it over living with my cousin. Maybe that was a statement in itself. Who knows what goes on in the minds of our pets, especially cats. I certainly like the little critters, though.