My fiancé and I lived on the second floor of an apartment building on Vashon Island, WA. Down below we had two neighbors. In one unit there was an elderly couple in which the female of the pair was as nosy as one of those “busybody” roles that were cast in old sitcoms. Next door to them lived a single, middle aged lady who had an old, white long haired cat.

One day I noticed that the cat had been outside and in usually the same place every time I went out on our deck. This went on for days, so I went downstairs to see about this. Of course, the nosy rosie got to me first. It seemed the lady who had lived there moved without a trace, and it was unknown why she would leave the poor old helpless cat behind. I went back upstairs, onto my deck and played the proverbial “hero fireman” and climbed down to retrieve my new pet. She was skinny and hungry, her fur was dirty and a little matted, and needless to say she was clearly happy I came to her rescue. She was very cooperative as I delivered her onto the deck.

We already had a resident feline who was treated like a queen, so we already had on hand some primo grub to fill her little belly. As her tummy settled, we drew a sink full of warm water. She didn’t put up too much of a fight as we washed her beautiful long white hair, not forgetting to get behind the ears. She had such a soft meow. During the bath we noticed that most of her teeth were gone, and what teeth she did have were rotten through and through. She still had her fangs and her breath was….well, let’s just say it wasn’t her who had been chewing on the roses outside. I named her “Granny” for obvious reasons and it fit her snuggly. “Muffler”, the other cat who was named for both definitions of that word, wasn’t bothered by granny’s presence and respected her elder quite nicely.

A few months later Stacy and I moved into a townhouse just down the dead end street. In the front across the drive was a long row of blackberry bushes, and our back yard was forest. Granny wasn’t too keen on going too far outside, and she didn’t have any claws anyway so we didn’t push it. She loved to lie on our chest as we lay on the couch. We found out something about whistling. If you whistled while Granny was on top of you, she would bite your nose. She either liked it or she didn’t. We never knew. That is, she never was spooked by it, she just would look at you calmly and SNAP! The only problem with that fun game was now you had that funky smell of Granny’s mouth in the worst possible place. Your nose.