They don't live long enough.
Then again It is long enough when your marriage outlasts the kitteh.

I always feel rotten and grieve for a while after losing a catz. The upside is that you get to experience several different kittehs in your lifetime.
Right at the moment, we have a manx calico - she is about 8 pounds and adopted us not to long after our other kitteh passed on. She showed up at just the right time where we were going to look for a catz shortly.

My main gripe with kittehs. Nevertheless, somehow, after kittehs (or woofers) die, we all seem to sign on for another. I still miss cats and dogs that died decades ago.

I'm sure you've seen it, but this conversation reminded me of:



They matter, the animals in our lives. They just do. It's worth it to have the time with them.

Oh, NP, that is sad news. It always hurts.

Mahalo to you all...my baby brother who found this injured stray kitten in a gutter on Sepulveda Blvd in LA 17 years ago, sent us all a little history of his life, that really gave us some happy laughs. Our kitty "hit the lottery" , as my brother said.

Yes, we humans are really blessed, to spend our lives with cats, dogs & other pets.

And a very bright kitteh... obviously reading TFB.

Either that or that kitty pornz...

I have one cat, Miss Lucy, who loves to Skype. She recognizes the sound of an incoming call, whether it's on the computer or the iPad, and comes running to join in. She listens to us converse while making love to my hand and/or the speakers (or the iPad), and is highly offended if another cat is in my lap when a call comes in.

My other full-time-inside cat, Mr Brown, loves podcasts, but male voices only please (except for some reason, he likes Emily Bazelon from Slate, but we haven't listened to her for awhile). He'll sit beside me on the desk, alert and listening, for up to an hour when there's a podcast playing. He likes Radiolab the best. He also will occasionally watch YouTube videos, and has a favorite one of a catnip party which he'll ask for again and again if I play it once (sort of like a 3-year-old watching the same Barney show).

My inside-outside cat, Louis (Louielamour), has his own app folder on the iPad, with 3 fishponds in it. He's fascinated, but will start to nod off, his nose will touch the pad, and the ripple sound will startle him and wake him back up.

But my main squeeze for all those years, whom I miss every day, was Valerie. She was an active participant in a newsgroup, and had her own email address. She would have loved the iPad -- maybe would have had her own!

Aww! She looks a lot like my Bowie kitteh.



The Bowinator usually looks happier, but he was grumpy because I had been using the flash to try to get a picture of him, and he kept turning away at the last second, so I finally got a face picture, as he was turning away, and flashed him in the eyes. He's not as grumpy as he looks in that picture.

I am about 100% certain that Bowie is named after David, because of his previous owner, who left him here in the loft. She didn't abandon Bowie, but just recognized that he loved this location more than any person, so I inherited him. He doesn't have that name because his eyes are different colors, though.

I have yet to be able to name a cat (not that cats care what you name them).

I have always wanted to name a cat Alger Hiss.

Sometimes the universe seems to know how to set things right.

I named a cat Dog Food.

He belonged to an old man who lived a few doors down on our street, two blocks from the beach in San Francisco. The old man died, apparently with no relatives (several neighbors claimed to have seen the police looting his home). We were the only house on the street with two large dogs, both about 100 lbs. Of all the homes he could have chosen, Dog Food chose us to live with. But he never did become dog food, so far as I know. He was a lover and a fighter, and intimidated our dogs somethin' fierce when the need arose.

One time he got an abscess on his cheek. The vet said he got it from fighting other cats. He told me that Dog Food was getting older, and that if I moved away, I should leave him in place, or he'd have to fight all the other cats in the new neighborhood. That, or get him spayed. But he'd lived his whole life as a virile, kickass male, and I was 20 at the time and feelin' my own oats. He's the only cat I ever "owned" that I didn't get spayed. So when I moved, I left him in place.

I just want a big rangy orange kitteh (Like Fat Freddie's Kitteh) named Killer. I have had all kinds of kittehs but just haven't been in the right place at the right time to get one.

I really does seem that way sometimes. It is nice when it does happen regardless of why/who/what/ etc.

When the cat was injured, I took him to the vet. I fed him, I cared for him, I loved him, and I made sure his injury was treated.

Then I followed the vet's advice about what was best for the cat.

I thought I was following the vet's advice and doing what was in the cat's best interests ... 38 years ago, when it happened.

Even though I loved the cat and wanted to take him with me.


Apparently there's some strong disagreement about how to interpret what I did.

Another day, another personal drama, ho hum.

Shit.

Oh, yeah. One more detail to add to the story.

Remember the "we" and "us" in the original?

The "we" was me and my two roommates, a young man and a young lady, who agreed to keep taking care of Dog Food when I left. Please recall, I was 20 years old and working in a waterbed factory. I couldn't afford to rent a home of my own in San Francisco.

They were both working stiffs, too. But honest, good people. They owned one of the dogs; I owned the other. They agreed to keep Dog Food and take care of him, so I left him in their care when I moved back to Maryland.

Heartless cruel bastard that I am, y'know.

No, gimme 6 months or so, I'll get over it eventually ...

Oh noes, have we fallen into a scene from High School Musical?

Foggy, it is hard to move a Cat that belonged to someone that died or deserted it. My daugter loves Cats and would take in everyone she could find. She had some neighbors that had a cat for several years and they moved and left the cat. My daughter took it in and loved and cared for it for 2 years. The cat would roam the Lake area she lived in, which was a very small community and everyone would feed and look out for it. It would go to the house that had been it's home before it was abandoned.

She was leaving Nebraska and moving home to Texas and wanted to bring the Cat with her. The morning they were ready to go she and the boys looked for the cat and they couldn't find it, for it had gone roaming. They looked for over 2 hours and left with all 3 of them bawling their eyes out and friends promising to find the cat and make sure it was ok.

When she got home and settled she called to give friends her new address and phone number and they informed her that they had gone over to her houst several times the day she left and still no cat, but about 9 Pm that night her husband went back over there and the cat was at the patio door scratching to get in. He brought it back home with him and the cat took up residence in their home, still roams, but shows up at night.

As far as I know (haven't though to ask this last year or so) the cat is still with them and doing fine and my daughter nad the boys were happy and releived. She now has her little Pom "Little Bit" and her 2 cats Smokey a beautiful Persian and Patches a beautiful Calico. I can't even remember what the name of the cat was in Nebraska.

I think you did a fine and noble thing Foggy. You didn't desert the cat, you left it with people that knew it and would love and care for it.

I have 2 little Poms which are my Avatar. I am not a cat person, but I love my daughters cats and they get along great with her Pom. They would get along great with mine, except Biddy Bear and Little Man are afraid of them, so when she comes to visit they run and hide and the only time you see thm is when the cats are outside or if the cats are in and they are outside.

It is funny and like a 3 ring circus sometimes.

The Universe works in mysterious ways. Consider my Ellie. I live 500 miles from my parents and visit once a year or so. On one visit, Mom decided Dad needed a cat. (They didn't live together, they lived in the same park in separate trailers. 30 year long story.) We traipsed out to the SPCA. I had no intention of getting a dog. Then Ellie spoke to me...


How could I ignore her? Here's the result, every day. Note the blurred tail:

I've never been cruel to any pet. I've paid more than $1,300 to an animal ophthalmologist to try to save a rabbit's eye after it was clawed by a cat. My bunny lost his eye but he lived another three years. I've nursed a squirrel back to health after he got hit by a car and landed in the gutter in front of my house. I've had dogs, cats and rabbits almost continuously since I was a small boy. I've taken the best care I could of all of them.

I have a cat today, who will be 14 in October. She's still alive, healthy and happy, even after chewing through my CAT-5 network cables twice and cutting my home network off from the Innertubes. Her booking photo remains on file:






Can you see the criminal glint in her eyebones?

She told me, "What part of CAT-5 don't you understand?"



But you're right. I didn't just get in my car and drive away, leaving my cat Dog Food in an empty house. True, I didn't put all the details in the story the first time I told it. Yes, an enemy's job is to assume the worst about you in the absence of details and spread that around, when a friend might ask questions instead. Hell, a friend might even give you the benefit of the doubt.






One of the interesting things about the Home Page Project is that there's an "About" page with a form you can fill out and submit. It sends an email

From: me
To: me

... with no IP address or member name or any other information, unless you choose to identify yourself. It's 100% anonymous, unless you add your name. Even the email headers show that I sent an email to myself, and nothing more.

I got several last night that were waiting for me this morning when I woke up.
One of them just said "What should I wear tomorrow?"

However, to that person, while it's true I'm renowned as a men's fashion expert, you have to give me a little more detail, like for example a brief description of the occasion you're attending. You may want to dress differently, for example, depending on whether you're going to a funeral or to the stadium to watch monster trucks.

Some of the anonymous messages from the "About" page, however, contain a good deal more information, even if they are anonymous ... some of them are a real education, in point of fact.

Dang, W4, ellie should be the SPCA's poster child. That picture of her behind the fence is simply irresistible.

FWIW, Foggy, I decided to wear nothing.