Monday, March 13, 2023

Fernando El Magnifico

My daughter sent me a text today with a picture of a new cat the New Hampshire Humane Society Shelter just got in to put up for adoption. He is a Tuxedo kitty who goes by the name of "Nando". She teared up she said. When I saw the pic, I did also. We once had a tuxedo kitty we had named "Fernando" whom we called "Nando" for short.

Cats have the image of being totally independent creatures who only tolerate their human families when it suits them. We only exist to do their bidding. And I guess there is some truth in that. But anyone who has had many years of sharing their lives with cats knows that is actually bullshit. Cats pick certain humans to be their property. Nando picked me. He was my bud, my pal, my partner in crime.

He's been gone some years now but never far from my heart. I think of him on a regular basis. He was a big goofy tom, as many tuxedo cats are. I could beat him up and he always came back for more. We rough housed quite a bit.

Sadly, he was never very healthy. He went through bouts of congestion and labored breathing. One day I woke up on the couch and he was stretched out on the coffee table. He never hung out on the coffee table. If he was looking for lovin or some fightin, he would crawl on top of me. But there he was, his body laying there peacefully, while his soul had left sometime in the night.

Yeah, that text from Lis opened up a wound. 

Later .................................

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Only one tune would work for this. "Stray Cat Strut", by the Stray Cats, a retro rock band from the 1980s.


1 comment:

The Blog Fodder said...

Now I am teary eyed. It sure hurts to lose a pet.
Our red and white tom, "Kuchma" was my bud. When I would have an afternoon nap, he would crawl up on the couch beside me. He sired my kittens in our neighbourhood at some cost to his physical self as he was a scrapper. He sired our three cats born March 2013. Christmas day that year he died hard of untreated diabetes. I wanted to put him down but Tanya wouldn't hear of it. I buried him deep in the fields he loved to hunt in. He was a good cat.