I'm a cat person. My life resembles the life of a cat. I love to lay in the sun, snuggle on soft beds and cushions and I am a creature of habit who resists change with a vengeance. It actually makes me sick to my stomach. I'm not sure if cats get sick to their stomachs when change is in the air, but I have a feeling that their caterwauling is probably a good example of what I feel inside. My first cat's name was Pywacket (I have no idea how to spell it). Since my mother was deathly allergic to cat dander, Pywacket was an outdoor cat who lived to mew and drool over my mother's cooking. He'd sit on the fence outside of our kitchen window and watch my mother cook; walking the fence from the window to the back door following my mother's every move. She loved that cat and would suffer dearly if she were to pet him. Her eyes would puff and tear and she'd wheeze for days. I, on the other hand would spend my days with him on our porch. I'd color and paint-by-number on my belly and Pywacket would purr by my side. He was jet-black with a splash of white down his front. One day, he disappeared and we all missed his big black eyes and long whiskers peering through the kitchen window.
We picked up a tiger stray one year, but he tore across my father's massive bare belly one day while my father was snoring on the lounge chair on the porch. He left behind a race-track of bloody scars in his path and soon went missing. I think my father, who said he had to "go see a man about a chicken", took him to a farm and left him there to race around the barn.
We were cat-less for years until right before my mother's death. She found India, a pure black long-haired kitten. For some reason, she was not allergic to this petite Persian. India kept my mother company until the day my mother went into the hospital. She was so worried about India, that she had a friend in Ocean City take her in. India, being an indoor cat, snuck out one afternoon and got hit by a car. No one had the heart to tell my mother. Instead, her friend brought her a plush-stuffed black kitty and put it by my mother's bedside. Eventually, my mother went into a coma and died with the kitty by her side. She was buried with India, and together, they rest in peace.
In graduate school, I had a room-mate, Bob, who had a Japanese mother and a Jewish father. To top it off, he was gay. We lived together for several years with his cat, Nunchan (meaning "naughty one", in Japanese). Nunchan was a beautiful calico with a ravenous appetite. She was skinny, vocal and constantly on the go. Sometimes, she'd whip out the front door of our apartment and go downstairs to flirt with Andrea Dworkin's (the famous Lesbian feminist author) cat George. George was a girl cat. Go figure. My room-mate eventually went off to med-school and left me with Nunchan..she was 18 when I had to put her down.
Right before Nunchan was put down, a friend of mine gave me a kitten for my birthday. I named her Seja after an island in the classic feminist novel,
The Wanderground. She was soft, tortoiseshell and a total snob to strangers, but she loved me. The first night I had her, she fell asleep in tight little fur-ball on my chest. In the middle of the night, she peed all over me. I guess she was comfortable.
When Seja was about 6 months old, I found my second Pywacket in the wheel-well of a taxi cab on 5th Ave. during a horrible snow storm. For a kitten, the cat was gigantic. I called him Rocket. When I took him home to Seja, she cleaned him up like a mother-cat would her kitten, and they were soul-mates.
When I moved from New York to Florida, I had to make a decision. I took Seja and left Rocket with friend. I threw-up from New York to Florida because of the decision. Rocket had grown to be a 25 lb baby puma. He was long and lean. I was moving into a home with another cat and dog. Rocket would have a good home with another male cat whom he adored. About 6 months after moving to Florida, my friend in NY decided to move to London. No cats allowed. She shipped me Rocket and when he arrived at the airport in a huge crate, the baggage handlers thought he was going to the Zoo, he was so big. Rocket and Seja were reunited and lived into their teens. Seja became ill at 13 with a huge obstruction in her intestine. She never made it out of surgery. Rocket sat by the front door and literally waited for Seja to come home for months. He lost a substantial amount of weight and started to wither away.
I adopted 2 kittens, Felix and Oscar (brothers), in hopes of lifting Rocket's spirits, but to no avail. Rocket died 8 months after Seja at 7 lbs. I kept Felix and Oscar locked up in the bathroom the first two weeks after bring them home because I was afraid of how Rocket would react to them. By the time my friends intervened, we let them out and Rocket just sniffed at them and returned to the front door. Eventually, all three became friends, but before long, Rocket just gave up all hope for Seja and died of a broken heart.
I know, as responsible pet-owners, that we shouldn't have "favorites", but Oscar was my favorite cat ever. His personality was so soothing and he was funny. He could catch and fetch and he was such an affectionate cat. I think there's something special about orange kitties. My friend Carol's cat, Marles, was the same way. He unfortunately had an untimely death as well, at the hands of a ill-tempered dog. As for Oscar, he'd gallop through the house, pounce on ghostly toys and shadows and look at you with those butterscotch eyes enough to make you melt. He was my bedtime buddy. As soon as my head hit the pillow he was there and would look into my eyes until one of us feel asleep and would stay next to me the entire night with deep-rumble of a purr. Oscar's fur was like cotton and I could pet him endlessly. Felix was destined to sleep by my hip because Oscar had the primo spot on the bed. Now, Felix has Oscar's spot.
Felix seems to like being "top-dog" since Oscar's sudden death. He follows me around the house and is constantly by my side when I'm home. At bedtime, he snuggles close by attaching himself to my arm like a koala bear. The only sign of mourning I see is when he goes and sleeps on Oscar's urn at night while I'm at the computer.
I am a cat person. This, I know for sure..but now there's a puppy in my life and that's another story I'll tell later.
..and this is what I would look like at my goal weight of 155lbs.