started to just lie around the apartment and sleep all the time so I thought it might be a good idea to get him a little playmate to get him interested in life again. The "normal" cat, have YOU ever known one, sleeps approximately eighteen hours a day, off and on. Jones was sleeping more than that. I have always been an afternoon napper and strongly believe that the world would be a much better place if more people took more naps. Less stress, less grouchiness from being tired, not to mention less time awake for getting into trouble.
We had a cat sister (Katy) living with us for most of Jones' life but she was a more normal cat (aware of cat actuarial tables and such) and passed away at a normal age for cats. I'm not sure of her exact age because she came to me as a stray, fully grown. Jones is trying for the Guinness Book. To be 100% truthful, I was also thinking of myself being without Jones one of these days and of having another cat to ease that bump in the road when it arrives, as surely it must. I wanted a kitten that would grow up to be a smart cat because Jones has always impressed me with his intelligence. Jones and I used to spend hours playing hide and seek around the apartment taking turns hiding from one another and then scaring the other when found. I would stand up and flail my arms wildly when he would find me and he would act crazy and run off and hide. Then it would be my turn to find him and he would stand up on his back legs and flail his front paws at me and I would run off and hide. Part of the rules to this game is that the human must search for the cat while walking on all fours. That way the cat can "bop" the human on the head from hiding when found. I'm not sure what this says about me but Jones would always tire of the game before I did.
Chapter 3
How I Got Spock
Beth has a cat book, “The Book of the Cat”, which describes the various breeds of cats along with lovely pictures and lengthy explanations of genetics and other breeding factors. I looked at the pictures. I should mention here that, in what now seems like a former life it was so long ago, I was married and my wife and I had two Siamese cats. It was so long ago and the Siamese breed looked quite different from the way they do today. Their heads were not so exaggeratedly elongated, more apple shaped. I believe that one reason for the Siamese falling from popularity is that breeders have gone too far with the way the cat looks. I will always love the intelligence and devotion of the Siamese but I just don't like the way they look today. There's another thing I don't think I could stand anymore about the breed and that's the almost constant talking. At this stage of my life I enjoy a little quiet and that's NOT what people get Siamese cats for! I don't even listen to Pink Floyd all that loud any more.
I found a beautiful fairly new breed called the Tonkinese which is a cross between the Siamese and the quieter Burmese. The cat is a beauty with less exaggerated features than the Siamese but lovely blue eyes. Supposed to be an intelligent, inquisitive, and loyal cat too. I confess to liking inquisitive cats. If I want a meatloaf, I'll make one and stare at it. Sure, an inquisitive cat will drive you bonkers sometimes and will always be getting into everything but what a joy to be around! I still might have a Tonk someday but in Beth's cat book I fell in love with a cat so smart, so beautiful, so catlike that I had to have one. I fell in love with the Abyssinian. Here was a cat that was intelligent, loyal, and sometimes utterly crazy the way Jones was when he was younger.
To all those out there saying to themselves, he should have gone to the shelter and saved a cat from you know what, I can only justify my actions by the following. Mr. Jones came from the Deerpark Shelter in Port Jervis, N.Y. If any cat I ever have can be anywhere near the friend and companion to me that he has, that cat will be a wonder. I do not know Jones' mixture but I strongly believe that one of his parents was Siamese because he is all black (if a Siamese mates with a nonSiamese, the kittens are invariably black but not all black cats are part Siamese that's the fallacy of the contra-positive), because of his elongated head shape, and because he has a Siamese voice. He also has bald spots from his eyes to his ears where the Siamese "points" would develop. Katy, Jones' cat sister mentioned earlier, was a stray who came to me at college one winter; cold, hungry, and pregnant. I found homes for Katy's kittens, she had them on my couch, and had Katy spayed. Katy lived with us for the next fifteen years. I never got really close to Katy and to this day prefer male cats.
Before moving to North Carolina last July, I had lived in Albany, N.Y. for 17 years. My last apartment there was in the city, a basement apt. A woman who loves cats lived in an apartment, one street over, in back of mine. One evening in late Fall her house burned and although she saved many of her cats, I believe some escaped to become homeless. I don't know how many cats she had but it was enough that everything she owned smelled like a litter pan: her car, her clothes, her money. This can happen if one crosses that invisible line between having the proper number of cats for the size of the dwelling and having just one more. I'm sure there is a mathematical formula somewhere for calculating this. Something like X = L.S./CAT # where X would represent the ratio of the number of square feet of living space divided by the number of cats. What you want is a fairly large value for X. I may be wrong but I think it's one of the things Einstein was working on along with his unified field theory near the end of his life but the important point here is that there is a line I would not recommend crossing. Days after the fire there were several strays outside my small apartment. What do you do with stray cats? You feed them and put water out for them. If you've never had the pleasure of living through an Albany winter let me just say it’s COLD out there. I let the strays into my apartment, at least the ones that weren't too wild to even entertain the idea and fed them all. Some of the females were pregnant, so I found, with the help of Whisker's (a nokill shelter), homes for all the kittens and mothers and had the boys and the girls put out of the future kitten business. (It helps to have a good paying job if you're going to go soft on animals just like it helps NOT to have one when your cat disappears but that’s for later. I had both at the right times.) From what I can only estimate at 20 to 30 strays, Whiskers and I got the number down to just two. One, an orange tabby, Sam, came with me (as did Jones and Spock) to North Carolina and the other, a beautiful, proud, and wild gray cat who I called Grayman stayed behind. He would not let himself be caught. I left cat food and a note for the new tenant asking that Grayman be fed and watered. I hope she followed through. (I spoke with my old landlord after I moved to NC and found that Grayman was being fed by that gracious tenant.) I guess there is no justification for getting a purebred cat when so many wonderful cats are killed for want of a home. I can't justify it to myself nor to you except that I wanted an Abyssinian and I was going to have one. In the meantime, I did some good for the stray cats of Albany and perhaps atoned slightly for my previous cruelty with firearms.
Beth went along with my excitement for an Aby cat. We bought issues of “Cat Fancy” and “Cats” magazines. In the back of these magazines are listings of breeders by breed of every cat. We found some Aby breeders in the city (NYC) but I hate to drive down there so we also saw a listing for an Aby breeder in Vermont. From Albany, some parts of Vermont can be close and some far away. We called the folks in Vermont and they were from the far away part and didn't have any kittens right then but they were very nice and we talked for a while. The man told us about Jim and John in Schenectady, N.Y. who had recently bred their female to the male in Vermont. The man in Vermont said Jim and John didn't have a phone but gave us their address and told us something about Jim and John. He said, in a heavy New England accent, that John was quite a talker and that Jim "never said a word". He also added that Jim and John were very nice people but were a couple of them "funny fellers". I guessed what he meant. Beth and I drove to Schenectady, a distance of about 15 miles west on the New York State Thruway to where Jim and John lived. Some people drive hundreds of miles to see Aby kittens while others have their kitten flown to them sight unseen because of the often great distances separating breeders from prospective owners and here I had found a breeder with kittens in the next town. Were the cat gods smiling on me?
Jim and John weren't home so we left a note for them to call us when they got in. That night, Saturday, John called us and we set up a time to see the kittens on Sunday. Beth was flying back to North Carolina Sunday so we had to fit the kitten visit in. Beth and I were together every other weekend; either she in Albany or me in
