Duke's Story

I love animals and grew up with many pets – dogs, guppies, parakeets, tarantulas. Well, you get the picture. Still, I was thirty-two before I ever owned my first cat. Maybe I should say that I was thirty-two when a cat first owned me.

His name was King Tut, and he was a big orange, longhaired, full-blooded something-or-other. Tut was as regal as his name. Other adjectives also well described him – haughty, picky, and possessive, etc. Tut and I were together almost sixteen years and somewhere along the way, he decided that he liked me.

Since Tut, I have had more cats than I can count. You cat people out there know where I’m coming from. You can’t own (there I go again) just one cat. They sense when you like them and start appearing at your doorstep from out of nowhere. Well, all this explanation brings me to my latest cat Duke.

I must digress. Before I inherited Duke, I had a kitty named Bob, a yellow tabby with no tail. Bob was a wonderful cat, but always pitifully skinny. He was that way when Shannon, my stepdaughter, left him with me. I think he may have had cat AIDS.

I was afraid to take him to the vet because I had once had a favorite kitty named Silky with the incurable malady. The vet wanted to put her down because she was so contagious. It broke my heart and I didn’t cotton to repeating the experience with Bob. Yes, I know, you can’t hide your head in the sand. Well, yes you can, at least for a while.

I found Bob stuck in the fence, too weak to pull himself our. He was dead and I cried when I found him. I was writing my New Orleans murder mystery Big Easy at the time of Bob’s demise and I somehow incorporated his story into the plot. This brings me back to Duke.

Duke, like Bob, was skinny when he appeared on my doorstep. He was also a frightened little mass of kitty hood. There was nothing that I could do except feed and pet him. He has now killed and eaten three squirrels and goodness knows how many birds (thanks to Marilyn, my house is a bird sanctuary.)

I’ve never gotten the little fellow fixed because I’m afraid to pick him up. I tried one night after chugging a few brewskis and almost lost an eye during the attempt. Duke has finally quieted down, maybe because he’s gotten a little older, or maybe because he ran into a bigger tomcat. That happens in life sometimes.

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