Surprise, after all these years, I just learned what I am.
A cat lover.
When I was a wee lad we had a dog.
A cocker spaniel named Honey, for her coloration.
Dad had to "put her down" when she became old and incontinent.
It was hard for him and the next day when he told me how he had buried her in our back yard the tears came and it was a bleak day for me as well as him.
I recall an orange cat named Pete that was with us, sort of, for awhile.
But "resident cats" began when SWMBO and I were first married in Indianapolis.
We had Primo (a big black cat) and Pax (a gray and white one) that accompanied us to Arizona.
Then there was Shadow, a beautiful but slightly ill-tempered gray one.
I used to say her full name was Velvet Shadow Bitin' Bitch.
In more recent years we adopted Chulapay (that's Spanish for Cutie Pie) in Mexico.
She lasted through moves from Mexico to Austin, Texas, and back to several homes in Arizona.
Then there was Jazz, who never met a box she didn't like.
And another gray one showed up and grew into a gargantuan size.
We called him Smoke.
And then came Muggles.
At one time we had three cats at once, the most we could handle.
I don't remember Muggles ever being this feisty or Smoke this placid but I guess they were, at least for this picture.
Jazz, sensing trouble a-brewing, chose a careful niche to stay out of the way.
And finally my beloved Blackwell.
When he showed up as a needy little kitten, with bloody sores around his neck from a scrap with something, he seemed like such a street tough that I named him Blacky Detroit.
We lost him only a few months ago and so we're down to what we're calling Our Last Cat.
Muggles has come into her own since Blackwell left.
Judy thinks he bullied her, I say he just wanted to play.
At any rate, Muggles now "talks" whenever anyone comes near her, demanding to be petted.
But she still clings to Judy as Blackwell hung around me.
Funny how cats do that, picking one human over another as their favorite.
Kind of like us picking a favorite cat.
Muggles is 14 now and spends most of her elder years doing what she does best.
Sleeping.
