The day we got the kittens, I was so excited. We were going to get two, one for Jesse and one for me. James wanted a dog, so he wasn't getting a cat. We piled into the Duke-mobile and drove out of town on a perfect summer day, the red paint and flames shining in the sun. We drove out into the country, to someone my dad knew from somewhere. I think it was one of his students, or something like that. We got there, and picked out our kittens, one called Mittens, a tortoiseshell colored girl, and a black boy kitten, who's original name I can't remember. We were so excited. The first day, we walked around with the kittens in pouches in our shirts, and all of the neighborhood kids came running to see the new pets. They climbed up onto our shoulders and fell off, delightful little bundles of fur.
Within a year, their personalities had developed. While they were siblings, the black one was far more adventurous and daring, while the tortoiseshell was cautious and timid. After waffling between several names for each of them, we began calling them the names my father called them, Fraidycat and Stuporman. They had some adventures the first year or so we owned them. Outdoor cats, they would get into tussles with other cats, and once they both went missing. Turned out they had been brought home by one of the neighborhood boys who was worried when he saw them playing by themselves in our yard, none of us in sight. Another time Stuporman went missing for several days, and we eventually found him eight blocks from the house. While they were very different, they loved each other and always ate together.
So when Fraidycat was killed by a speeding car, Stuporman mourned her for several days, always looking around for her when he started eating. But then he adjusted to being our only cat, and life went on. Over the next eight years, he had a variety of adventures and mannerisms. When he was a kitten and then when he was a mature cat, he hated being cuddled, but Fraidycat didn't mind it. So when Fraidycat died, I had no cuddly cat. Stuporman liked eating blueberry pie; I was shocked when I gave him a little bit and he lapped it up, asked for more. He liked to lie in the middle of the street, staring at nothing. This habit gave him his name, in fact; acting like he was in a stupor. This habit also ensured that he would get hit several times, but he always survived it, once even piercing his tongue with his own tooth.
As he got older and began to be an old cat, he got thinner and more ragged, but also happier to be around people. He would play with a bit of string, or a piece of a plant, and he was continually trying to sneak inside, in the hope of a nice nap in a comfy spot (once we even found him inside James's big bass drum) or a treat from the fridge - a bit of meat or cheese or a bowl of milk. He had the loudest purr when he was happily drinking milk, or when he was sleeping up in the garage attic and you came searching for a book and stayed to pet him. You were in his home then, the place where he could relax and be cuddly.
He liked to sleep all the time, like most cats. He had different spots around the yard that were his. Several places under the bushes, in the garage attic, in dad's Model A, next to the side door, and his newest spot by the stairs under all of the day lilies. He had the loudest meow, a croak that brought up thoughts of crows. He always made sure you knew that he was hungry.
He never wore a collar, always managing to maneuver out of it until we gave up putting it on him. He got stuck up in the trees a couple of times, chased up there by dogs, and would sit there, glowering down at the dog and everyone else with his baleful stare.
And as I became allergic to cats, he, in the way that cats have, decided he really like being near me, and would rub himself up against my leg. When I went off to school, he would sometimes lie in front of my door until someone noticed him and put him outside. And yet, when I came home for the weekend, he always acted like "You're home? So what? Feed me."
Occasionally when he was younger he would get stuck in the garage. When this happened, he would jump out the window into the dog's area and then get out that way. But sometimes the dog would get him. One time, my mom, responding to a ruckus in the night, found Buddy cornering the cat in the doghouse. They were sworn enemies, and Buddy would always go after the cat, continually forgetting that he always got hurt. Another time, mom found the cat in Buddy's mouth. Stuporman was hissing and scratching and Buddy had this confused look on his face. He didn't know what to do next. But as they both got older, began to get some white hairs they both mellowed. Stuporman began to go inside Buddy's gate when we went in to feed the dog before feeding him. He would watch my dad put water in the goldfish ponds, twenty feet from any exit. The dog and cat would occasionally be only two feet from each other and ignore each other. Other times when Buddy was feeling feisty, he would lunge toward the cat, who would leap up, howling and meowing. But they were friends.
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