When I was a kid I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the procession of cats around my folks house.  We had a kennel full of German Shepherds  and my parents felt that if any stray cat wanted to hang around they’d feed them and get them their vaccinations.  Needless to say we had a consecutive string of some bad ass kitties. The last twelve of my formative years at my parents’ house were occupied in succession by two orange tabby tomcats weighing about twenty pounds each. I will further flesh this out later.

     I then went petless until I was thirty had a couple of cats which I had to give up when I moved in with an allergic person.  I didn’t have any other pets until about 5 years ago, when a strange noise one morning made me go outside my front window to discover the source.  It was a tiny crying little black and white kitten, apparently just weaned and scared out of his mind.  I don’t know and do not want to know anyone who can resist giving assistance to a poor scared animal, but obviously somebody had just dumped this little bugger outside my place on the sidewalk.

     Without putting too much thought into it, snatched up the kitten, put him in my apartment, and left to get some kitten chow and some litter.  When I got back the kitten had stashed itself under the bed, so rather than force the issue I laid out a large piece of cardboard at the end of the bed .  Upon the erstwhile mat I laid the end of a box cut to a two inch heighth with one inch of litter in it, a small bowl of water, a smaller bowl with a small portion of canned cat food in it, and a small bowl  with about a ¼cup of kitten chow in it.  I then left for work.

    It took several days of anonymous feeding before the kitten came out to find out who the heck I was.  In the meantime I had figured out he was doing well from the quantity of food consumed and quantity of waste left behind in the proper receptacle, I might add.  So I wasn’t dealing with a dumb kitten he knew went to eat, when to poop and didn’t really trust people so much.  An advantageous beginning by my way of thinking, a good start after a bad break, so to say.

   After the proper introduction being the impossibly long stretch just to smell the tip of the index finger and then getting him close enough for the first scatch behind the ear and then the orgy of petting, scratching, and holding that immediately occupied the next hour or so, I found he was a boy.  Now for a name, other than me being a chef there was no reason to name him as I did, but the name fit him.  Spud. 

     Spud and I were best buddies after that and as he grew I got him all the toys he could play with eventhough it seemed he had a better time with a crumpled scap of paper that cost nothing.  Put a carpeted cat perch next to my easy chair and then we had it made.  I was slowly recovering from some chronic health issues and having him and his typical kitten shennanigans around seemed to make it easier to relax.  We slowly developed a great relationship for the next few months with very little in the way of problems.  It was working well, but I couldn’t have fore told how it would end.   To be continued…