I guess that it is time to get back to doing this. I was gone for awhile, a couple of years I guess. But my life has slowed down and I have a little more time to do things like this now.
Today was the passing of a friend. A cat. Some called him Spanky . . . I think. I never was sure whether he was Spanky and his brother was Sanka or if it was the other way around. One was black and the other was white. And the white one died quite some time ago, but I could still never get the names right. So to me they were Great White Brother and Itchy Brother.
When Itchy Brother wanted attention he would snuggle closer and closer and finally drape himself across you, sometimes nudging you just enough to let you know that you were not doing your job of scratching him or petting him or feeding him.
Obviously he did not like to have you taking his picture. That flashy-thing always made him lose his memory and then I would have to make up a new one for him. I would remind him of what a great person I was and that I only seemed like a slacker so I could earn enough money to supply him with cans and bags of cat food, litter and litter boxes, feeders, treats and all of that stuff. Maybe he was mad about not getting little kitty arrow-through-the-head toys like Steve Martin. Or maybe it was that I never dressed him in those stupid cat outfits from Pet Smart. It's hard to tell.
When I would ignore him for long enough he would take matters into his own paws and launch himself at my back and take his rightful place on my shoulder so that he could observe just what was so important that I wouldn't come right now to feed him. And then he would quickly grow bored and look out the window, watching the birds flying about the neighborhood or the old people out walking the neighborhood in the middle of the day while everyone else was working.
My office was not the only place that he carried on this way. On the floor playing with the grandkids, saying prayers cleaning the floor - you name it he claimed the dhoulder as a perch. It was enough to start calling him Polly but I was afraid that he would take to eating crackers and speaking! And if he could not get to my shoulder because of my thoughtless act of sitting on the couch, he would perch himself on the back of the couch just above my head. He is really not as interested as he seems here. He actually thought he saw something on the monitor that looked like an add for kitty toys.
He didn't much care for my kind of music. He wouldn't dance around the house with me when I watched Footloose or sing along with me and the iPod while listening to some rowdy Doors or Books & Dunn song. I guess with me wearing the headphones he probably couldn't hear the music. Sorry cat.
He wasn't much for exercise, just like me. He usually looked about like this except when he wanted food. So, when he passed away I wasn't really sure that he wasn't just lounging around as usual. It was a couple of weeks before I decided that he was being a bit more quiet than usual and when I went to pet him - stiff as a board. I grabbed him by the tail and gave him a couple of big swings but not a meow came from his lips. Well, I didn't have a shovel handy but he was feeling so stiff that I just used his tail as a handle and shoveled a hole out in the garden with him as the shovel then tossed him in. The peas will be growing good this winter.
So he is dead and gone now and it is quieter than usual around the house. But I am keeping a closer eye on Gaye. If she ever gets quiet I won't wait to see if she is a gonner. It is right down to the morgue with her in tow.
But the cat did die today. Just thought he would enjoy the joke. Catch you again on the other side, cat.
