The Original Cats

Okay, I started to call Vegas and Laura Ingalls the "original cats" but Shannon (Dee's cat) and Nina (my cat) were the original cats. Maybe I can talk Dee into guest-blogging about Shannon, who really earned the title "original". Nina was just a gray tabby - she was the runt of her litter, a giveaway when Jim and Griselle broke up. She became Thaddaeus (who I was married to) and my cat and she bonded with Thad right away. I'd never had a cat. He had cats - his mom always had a real dumb yellow cat around. Nina held a rat at bay in one low rent apartment and chased a mouse up into our bed which was a futon platform we built ourselves out of 2x4s. Thaddaeus ended up with the unpleasant duty of finishing off the vermin. We played rat hockey with brooms - finally batting the thing out the front door, then the first security door - then he caught its leg in the front door and beat it to death with - yes, a piece of 2x4. The mouse... well the mouse was beaten to death by an Isaac Hayes Groove-A-Thon record album after Nina chased it up onto the futon and ripped through covers and humans trying to capture the rodent. I remember Thaddaeus quickly selecting an album we didn't play. Groove-A-Thon wasn't a bad album really but we picked it up at the thrift store mostly because Mr. Hayes was wearing a very cool 70's look indeed in his turban. It was an unforgettable moment. I couldn't invent something like that.

Our next low rent apartment had waterbugs and roaches. Nina ingested her share of pesticide with those bugs I'm sure. We moved a few more times and then bought a ramshackle house. She gleefully scratched up the corner trim and sat in front of the "box of fire" (old fashioned space heater). Her kidneys began to fail and the vet said we COULD have kitty dialysis done, but we decided a kitty neither understands nor wants dialysis and we let her go.

So that's the story of Nina, one original cat.