Although I had dogs in pre-pataphysical days when the world seemed real, I switched to cats, fish, rabbits, and birds, finally settling on cats in Arkansas during the reign of Richard M. Dickhead when Wes Zeigler gave Mrs. Faustroll and I a paranoid drug-abusing kitten named Morbius. She begat Mosby the Grey Ghost, Alexander the Gimp, Wyatt Winghead, and Buster Ver Jahn. I have pictures somewhere I'll scan someday.
Over the years, we had Black Jackrack, Beardsley, Studebaker, and Lucy Juice who escaped from the 67 Mustang towed behind the U-Haul in Laramie, Wyoming as I drove from Pittsboro, N.C. to Portland, OR in 1981.
That same year I was clearing debris from the back yard of a rental house when I heard a faint meowing coming from under a dense laurel thicket. I poked around until I found a soft mound of five dead kittens with a single emaciated black tortoise shell that hissed at me when I reached in to bring her inside.
That was Crescent B. DeNulle who lived with us for nearly two decades. She had two litters of Jerry's kittens before we had her spayed. Only one of her offspring survived, Peabody D. Bones. Peabody was probably killed by a coyote, the four legged kind, not a Republican.
We spent a couple of years without a cat, until one day we drove to several shelters in Oregon and Washington, and at the last one, after 120 miles or so, Ocean Booger chose us at the Multnomah County Animal Shelter.
She was sick for a year or two with infections after we brought her to a vet for shots and treatment when she attempted to parasail from an 80 foot tall Douglas Fir without only her fur onto the carport one day, and she started acting like a meth addict, tearing at her fur and opening wounds on her head and front legs until we had to put her in a floppy Easter Bonnet.
She finally settled down into a routine at age seven or so, although she continues to suffer from Bill the Cat syndrome on occasion and has developed an insatiable appetite for freshly grates Parmesan Asiago or Parano followed by some malt-flavored hair-ball medicine.
Why the ropes of crap cats hack up in the middle of the night in frequently traveled human paths are called hair balls is a mystery worthy of someone like Edgar Allen Poe, but he's dead, so I leave it to you to solve that mystery. My only advice is wear slippers to bed, particularly if you sleepwalk.
Here is Ocean doing drugs last year at ten years old and counting in the back garden after a hard day of killing bugs, snakes, rodents, and time. She won't scarf down on the plants herself. She demands the dealer provide the love weed to make her a stone cold pussy.
Awww.