And he would TALK TO HIMSELF

I see that in the very art post that I sold his portrait, I mentioned his odd habit of talking to himself and biting his feet.....

He would mutter a bit. He was not the Siamese that The Kid was, he had a regular cat voice. The original (when I first brought him home, all oozy and tiny, had a set of lungs that sounded like a siren all the way home!) was of serious Thai origin. Big "MEOWOW" in an oddly baritone. But the Dude, had his bird yammer, and a round mournful call when a cat would jump BACK over the wall.

I was used to cats talking... but his night antics were a bit distracting. Everyone used to laugh when I would tell them but he bit his feet, yelling at them all the time. Stood up, decided his tail was acting out of line, and fall on it an on the ground and wage war on himself.

Summers seemed worse but finally one 5 am, when he CHARGED into my bed, landed on my chest and HISSED right into my face, I decided when the vet opened, he was a-goin'!

Of COURSE he was the picture of health. Fat and sassy, the vet said it was "behavioral" . NO DUH!

For years I tried to figure what triggered it. He let up when the weather was cool enough to open a door and look into the night, but come the 100 degrees he would begin with long low rumbles and it would not let up.

He never actually injured himself, but he was hugely irritating to me and would look grumpily at me as if to say "YOU DID IT! NOW YOU STOP IT!" or something like that. He would telepathically yell at me. Like he thought I should speak cat!!!

A couple years later I tried again. I did figure his butt had something to do with it.

I have long hair. Longer than a woman my age really should (but I am an artist and I get special treatment :-)) OCCASIONALLY I could only describe them as streamers.....

The Old Kid made us give up icicles on Christmas because he would sparkle out both ends!

The dude liked to chew my hairbrush when I was gone.... you figure it out!

But that was not all. We thought it might be constipation.

So there was a year of Pumpkin. He really liked it for a while. Apparently (you cat fanciers should know this) a good source of roughage is pie stuff without the spices. It was going in and going out smooth as spit... but he kept yelling.

I finally got a good video of him. Two years ago, this was the ONE thing that helped the vet see he was in trouble. (My mom cried when she saw it.) Nobody believed it was all that bad. By the time I had this, I was not sleeping but one or two whole nights a week if I was lucky. This was taken at 2 AM:

Yeah, they call it Feline Hyperesthesia. Over sensitive and ..... well "Heebie Jeebies" says it all.

He Got Wide and Wonderful

This was one of the few from the best photo session. It was this day that the background image was referenced. He posed as a young man for the very first painting which SOLD to a friend on an internet art site THAT DAY....

Finally I had mastered that look of my impending demise!

This series even got me an article in Pastel Journal about my pet paintings. What didn't get published was a diagram of how the reflections in the room showed in his eyes.

My previous cats had been lucky to top out at 8 pounds. This guy was as big as a dog. I had a brief roommate with two miniature pups. He could not fit their harnesses. He was a great meatloaf of a cat.

A candid from those days:

I would use him as a model but he was never able to sit still. This is another view of his wonderful round jowls.

and the ever so flattering pose we ended up with from the session for the "Holiday Number"

You could fantasize he was a "Sumo" cat, but really, he was just wide.

And grumpy.

I do believe his demanding attitude was part of his charm in those days.

The Dude...Not Dude, or Mr. Dude..

Of course his teeth eventually grew in and I will say he was a bit calmer. JUST a bit.

It was not much of a joke, but I used to tell people his job was sitting around and plotting my demise. I have a clear glass topped table that used to be in front of a window. He would sit and stare at me . . . . resting . . . plotting . . . . .

And would be still and nearly statue-like until I pulled out the camera. Very few of my photos are in focus! He also messed with my mind a lot. If he could not come up with some sinister plot, he would MESS with me . . .

But that was perfect!

I am a bit of a hermit these days. I work hard as an artist, talk to myself and am up odd hours. The Dude gives me a reason to sleep through noises at night and hear the sound of my voice when I am tired of listening to the tv.

And this is the kind of cat that loves to sit in his bathrobe all day. When he was a teen ager, he would sit at the screen door and talk to his day (Oreo) out on the porch. He was a real shadow/mini me. I felt sorry that he had no friends. Lots of feline transients would hop over the fence. Including some siblings that his mom had behind our palm tree! We got them to rescue and while waiting to see if they were healthy and adoptable, the little wild kitty that I was sure was his mom, just died . . . . I have always wondered if her little high strung wildness was a heart defect. I am still afraid it may be a little of his issue. That is why I want to be sure he has all the tests before (IF) he gets his procedure!

. . . but I digress. . . .

By the time he was about two, he was as tall as his dad and had a lovely wobbly tummy that swung side to side when he ran. He hit 18 pounds and one of his favorite things was to jump on my tummy as I slept. . . . . .OOOOOPPPHHHH! He still loves to wake me up. Always JUST when I fall asleep.

His life was one of thinking too much and enjoying the time in between.

He IS The Dude.

The New Kid becomes The Dude

It was immediately apparent this little life force either 1) had nothing whatsoever to do with the first Kid or 2) he had paid his karmic sweetie points and was entitled to become a normal persnickety full blown feline, because in that black coat was a green eyed hyper cat.

Again, I fear my pictures may be stored on floppy disks, but his first amazing stunt was sitting here by me at the computer and picking up dimes ... or pushing them on to the floor, whichever seemed to suit him more at the time.

There is another little black and white movie doing flips across the rungs of chairs. He also played CATCH for a while. And I do mean a little while.

I would throw his favorite squeeky toy which was a purple nobby thing and he chased it and brought it back - for about two hours. He would finally run after it and sit and look at me, as if it was my turn to "have some fun". When it was apparent it was not my idea of a good time, he decided he was not going to spend all that time chasing either! And he would pant. Never met a cat before or since that overworked so hard. Little pink tongue going like mad. I wonder if his heart is good. I have more suspicions later.

He also used to be fond of girls undies. He would perpetually pull my panties out of open drawers. As he got older, he went exclusively for socks. I believe his stubby little teeth grew in whiter than expected and tended to astonish the vet because as I slept I would hear squeak/crunching noises as he chewed on his little napkin after eating.

He grew long and lanky and FAST! By the time he had used up his first big bag of kitty food, he was putting on a paunch. He ate kitty low carb for most of his life.

Kid Junior

What else would I call him?

I thought "KJ" would be cool. I knew Kevin Johnson, the present mayor of Sacramento and former Phoenix Sun and that seemed cool. He was so small, I could hide him in my hair! He was a tough cookie. We got him rice baby cereal and kitten bottles and he immediately chewed the nipples off.

When I took him in again for his baby shots, the vet laughed... well not laughed, sort of did an odd half smile that cracked me up! Like "what a guy." We had him on solid food immediately.

Because it had been a while since I was a mother, I was sort of lucky that I had the flu for a few days. I put him on my bed with me and he slept in a little box with a shoebox of litter and explored while I was awake. He also bit the HECK out of me! It must have been separation anxiety or something, he was a nasty little thing and I was a chomped up mess.

I have been told to always play with toys, not hands, but he would bite in my sleep! I took him to the vet and when we fixed him, the vet suggested filing back his baby teeth! They would fall out eventually and perhaps if I didn't scream all the time, he would not get such joy!

So for a few months I healed and I had a very funny looking kitten. (The days before digital and nobody had film! We are still scouring the closets for baby pix!) When I left the house for work in the first weeks I would put him in the tub. He had a little basket and there IS a photo somewhere of the cat in the basket I will find. He was no doubt severely traumatized by it all, but seemed to deal with it.

The first Christmas I sent out cards with this photo and the caption:

WHY WE ARE NOT HAVING A TREE THIS YEAR!

SO... What is all this talk about a DUDE?

Well, I have to explain a few things before I introduce the leading player!

This is really my history with cats! Yes, I lost my allergies to everything it seems. Stink used to make me sneeze so I am pretty sure it is the great outdoors that triggers things.

She survived The Kid by quite a few years. I fed her outside, said "Hi" when she was around, kept water in her bowl and we co-existed. She had a bit of history with urinary problems and one Friday she looked slow and listless. I had determined to take her to the vet on Monday but woke up to see her sleeping in her shelter. But she wasn't asleep.

It was on the morning of my birthday.

I had a sudden sense of escape! I was going to be without a pet or an obligation for the first time in my life! We buried her in my condo and I gave away her cat food and threw out the scratching post and bowls. I was still waking up in the night hallucinating The Kid bouncing in the tub, but was sort of used to a pet free environment.

Now I was thinking of TRAVEL and freedom and it was sort of heady!!!

So..... there was this neighborhood Casanova named Oreo....

You might call him the "father of the complex". He was owned once by an neighbor and when he was no longer a kitten, he was sort of everybody's cat. I know personally of five people who had thought they had adopted him. He was big and husky and really a sweetie, but nobody really had "taken care of him" if you know what I mean. As he grew, even though the markings were not the same, the profile was unmistakable.

There was also a small scared little black pair of cats whom I had seen on occasion. One was pregnant a while back and the other, I think it had died some time ago... well there was a group of cats in the neighborhood.

So. It was the day after my birthday and my neighbor, a very nice retiree named Dorothy (who often pushed home a shopping cart with a half gallon of Jim Beam on top) knocked on my door and said "I have a problem. Maybe you do too? I think I have a cat in my wall."

Good old Dorothy!

She went on to say that she was hearing mewing noises while doing her laundry. We had attached storage in our patios and both had our own washer and dryers. It was apparent that one of the neighborhood mom's had thought a small opening in Dorothy's laundry room drywall might make a new home for her brood, but Dorothy must have shut the door on her plans!

Now, here I was... a free woman! Unencumbered by anyone but myself. A boyfriend who traveled and NOW I could hit the road too!

I thought.

"Well, it can't get out on its own, so we could leave it and it would die and smell." I said.

"Or I could go get a drill and see if I can drill a little hole and try to pull it out from below."

WHAT WAS I SAYING!?

I was all set to take it to a rescue. I was sure they would help out.

So as I drilled and heard the rather robust mews... I heard a voice in my head say "Now that Stinkerbell is gone, Kiddie is coming back!"

!!!!

When I made the fourth cut I bargained, that if it were a black cat, it was The Kid again and I would have to keep him.

So, the TINIEST little thing I had ever seen came out. I immediately called the vet and we assessed him to be about 8 weeks old. Out I ran to get the bottle for nursing and by golly I was a mother AGAIN!

So The Kid and Feather Grew Old...

They were such good buds. But Feather had lived a bit of hard life and after lying on the sofa for a couple of years she finally was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I still cry thinking of my boyfriend (OH! I forgot to mention that after the break up, I got custody of the furry children and moved from Colorado to Arizona....but this is history so the details are brief) asking the vet to "Save her!" and the look on poor Feather's face as she went off to the cold cages in the vet's office where she died that night.

Now I had The Kid (or Kiddie as we called him) and he seemed very lost. Not the best of cat parents we got another rescue.

Her name was Mollie but she was really a feral cat with a mellow attitude. When we brought her home, The Kid made a low growlish noise and backed away to hide. Because he was an old man at the time, we tended to favor him and ignore her. She also had a rather nasty smell about her.

When I had a yard she stayed there a lot. I didn't want The Kid getting any diseases so she had a little cool house and when I moved into my apartment she was out and The Kid was in. Although we have since learned, we had her declawed. We didn't want her in trouble, but seriously, she was catching birds right and left! So we got her a bell and a tag. She morphed first into Stink. Then when she was all outdoors to Stinkerbell!

She was way too normal for me. All appendages were there. All mental function was proper. It was kind of hard.

Kiddie was about 18 when the lump on his head (I knew it was a tumor. He had one on his lip a year or so earlier and it was very hard for him to recover. I swore he would never suffer like Feather had) caused him to start backing up. Just standing still, he would back up and act like something was on his face.

I had a new boyfriend and Kid had a bad habit of missing the tub when he jumped in for a lick of a leaking tap! My beau thought it may have been one of the midnight KERLUNKS that did it, but I knew.

The vet tried to remove it but confirmed it was cancer and would be back.

Before I left on a trip, I was freaking out that he would suffer and I didn't know when to intervene. My vet was so wise: "Why should he HAVE to suffer? It is going to be time, let it be."

I held his paw and stroked and loved him listening to his loud half fear, half trusting purr go silent.

I miss him and his yellow eyes that never knew what to look at, his somber teddy bear features and the way he would sleep on my face. But I remind myself that if he had been smart enough to make it through kindergarten, he would have lived long enough to graduate HIGH SCHOOL!!!