Mr. Bojangles

I knew a man, Bojangles, and he'd dance for you...
--Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

I always wanted a cat growing up and for the longest time we didn't have one. My dad said he was allergic to them. Then, somewhere along the line he figured out it was mostly Siamese cats he was allergic to. We got a small, grey, long hair cat we named Pepper. I was so thrilled to finally have a cat! She had a really sweet temperament. I remember one summer day bringing her in from outside and she was staggering around the house in kind of an odd way. I picked her up, wondering why, only to see that she was missing an eye. It wasn't really bleeding, but the socket was empty. Gross! My dad figured she'd probably run into a stick somewhere and put her eye out. He took her to the vet and had her put to sleep. I was really bummed.

We always had a dog growing up. My mom hated having animals in the house and barely tolerated them. I remember a big black dog we had when I was really young. I think think the dog's name was Max, but I'm not sure. I do remember it would nip at our heels when we were on the swing set and I didn't like that. Then we had a Brittney Spaniel named Penny. We had her for a long time. She was a great dog...protected us, played with us, and had more than one litter of puppies. I remember my dad letting my sister and I stay up late one summer night when she was having her puppies. She was in the garage and he'd made a bed for her in the kids' swimming pool. After Penny, came Nicky--another spaniel. I didn't like him much because he chewed everything, including a quilt I'd made for my folks. Then we took in a puppy that looked to be a collie-shepard mix. She was gorgeous and extremely loving. She ran away once and we got her back about 6 weeks later. The family that found her and took care of her realized she must have been hit by a car. She had a broken leg that never healed quite right and she always had a limp after that. Then came Waldo--another spaniel. My dad liked hunting dogs. My mom lived for the day she wouldn't have dogs in the house.

Once I was out on my own, I got a cat. I love cats. This was an orange tabby I named Beast. He was a great cat that traveled in the car with us all the way to Georgia and back. He had to be put to sleep when he was about six years old because of kidney problems. Then came Grue. Grue was an all-black cat. His eyes and nose and pads were black. There was no part of him that wasn't black. There was a great video game we were absorbed in at the time that used the phrase "It's pitch black, you're about to be eaten by a grue." That's how he got his name. We mated Grue with the cat of a friend of ours. Not too long after that, he got hit by a car and killed. We were so bummed. He was really a sweet, sweet cat.

So we took two of Grue's kittens. Brother and sister. We named them Spooky and PC. Spooky was all black and long-haired and silky soft. She was really gentle. PC, short for popcorn (he growled in a really odd way every time he got near popcorn) was a nut case. He'd yowl all the time over nothing. Really, all the time. He came home with notes stuck on him from the neighbors who were exasperated with his yowling. We finally had to give him up. But we had Spooky for a long time. She got sick once though, very sick. She'd gotten dehydrated and a neighbor found her under a pine tree so sick she was near death. We rushed her to the vet and it was obvious after talking to the vet she needed to be put to sleep--her kidneys were shutting down and her heart was failing. There was organ damage and she wasn't going to make it. I called Greg to tell him I was going to have her put to sleep and he told me no. "It's Theresa's birthday today. You can't have her associate her birthday with the day you put the cat down. Keep her alive for 24 hours and we'll put her to sleep tomorrow." The vet thought I was nuts, but that's what we did. Then the next day Greg said, "You can't put her to sleep now. Not if she made it through the night. See what they can do." It was several hundred dollars we didn't have, but she was with us for another six years. One day she just disappeared. To this day we don't know what happened to her.

We also had a grey and white tabby named Puffer. She got the name because she was an air-head as a kitten. Really ditzy. But loving towards the kids. When she was a couple years old, I was driving my daughter to an overnight birthday party and I saw Puffer laying dead in the street. My daughter hadn't seen the cat and I turned the car around, went home long enough to tell my husband to go retrieve the cat. This daughter was particularly close to Puffer and we debated on what to do. We knew we had to bury her...it was August and she'd already been laying in the hot sun for hours. But we knew my daughter would want to say goodbye. We ended up bagging the cat (double bagging, actually) and putting her in the freezer overnight. The next afternoon we had to thaw her before my daughter got home. It was all rather macabre.

Then came Ruthie. In looking for Spooky when she disappeared, the folks at the county animal shelter were so good to us, we decided to adopt from them. We picked out a brown and black striped tabby and named her Ruth. I'd always wanted to name one of my daughters Ruth but my husband wouldn't go for it. Ruth means "companion"... a good name for a pet. Ruthie was with us a long time. She was a pretty stereo-typical cat. Liked to catch critters outside. Liked to sleep when she was inside. Not real people friendly, but she'd curl up with the kids. We had Ruthie for about 10 years and she started getting sick. Her kidneys were failing. The vet was concerned that it may have been due to some sort of poison. We had the choice of putting her down, or helping her out with IV fluids. Since my daughter was away at college, we went the route of fluids until she could come home and say goodbye to the cat. She actually got to see her twice. We finally put Ruthie down on St. Patrick's day a few years ago and buried her by the bird feeder in the back yard.

I feel like we haven't had the best of luck with our cats. And I think part of it is that they're outdoor cats where they can get into poison or hit by cars. So I promised to make my next cat an indoor cat. For my birthday a year ago, my daughter went with me to pick out a kitten. We ended up taking the runt of the litter. I already had a name picked out for him -- Mr. Bojangles. We call him Mr. Bo for short. I've never seen a cat with such personality. He follows us everywhere we go in the house. He meows to be picked up. He comes when we call him. He jumps up to be picked up when we say "up". He will play with his toys for hours. He loves playing with wadded up balls of paper -- crumble balls we call them. He's got a goofy pom-pom spider toy with pipe cleaner legs he absolutely loves and carries all over the house like a mouse. If he hears you go in the bathroom, he'll race you in there because he likes to drink water out of the faucet. And I love holding his toys up in the air to make Mr. Bojangles "dance". He is a happy kitty and he makes me smile....