Yes, I'm a Pussy Man

This post is a test to see whether I can post a photo to my blog. If you see a photo of a black cat, click on it and take a good look at the most handsome famous cat on Solares Hill, Key West: Sluggo.

Sluggo is my cat. Let me correct that. I am Sluggo's human. Correction again. I am one of two handpersons who waits on the Almighty Jag-goo-wah (as Cartman called his cat on "South Park").

He is a ratter, constantly prowling my neighborhood at night, killing rats, and bringing them back home and laying his gift of honor at my door.

I think Sluggo is pushing 11 years of age, although, I'm not really sure.

I will say this. Sluggo loves female homo-sapiens.

My ex-wife, Anna, saved Sluggo's life probably the day or day after he was born.

She heard mewing under our old rental house. She crawled under that house (she was afraid of harmless Grandaddy Long Leg spiders, yet she'd crawl under a tight, claustrophobic space were rats and scorpions would venture . . . go figure) and discovered Sluggo was the last of a new born litter. The mother had eaten its young.

I remember coming home from work and seeing Sluggo for the first time. He was a tiny little turd. His eyes were slits and not open. We had to feed him with an eye dropper filled with some kind of formula Anna procured or figured out with a call to the vet.

For days, you could put this little bugger in your hand, slowly flip him onto his back, and he'd mew this very tiny voiced "Meeeeeeel, meeeeeel," while four paws cut the air.

It sounded to me like he was crying Anna's sister's name, Millie, in short form. "Meeeeeel, meeeeel, meeeeel."

Sluggo's first weeks were spent in a box layered with newspaper and towels. I remember we kept that box on an ironing board in this tiny room which served as junk/storage/ironing room.

Before meeting Anna in Richmond, VA way back in 1987, I never really liked cats. And then she introduced me to this cat of hers, "Taz", who was very cool to me, but who got my sympathy when I found out Anna's old roomate did not care for him.

I started talking to Taz when Anna and her roomate weren't listening. And Taz would allow me to scratch his head for a short bit.

I can't remember Anna's old roomate's name, but I remember her shutting Taz out in the cold several times by shutting this window that Taz would use to enter their rental house.

One time, I went over to Anna's house. She was not home. Nor was her roomate. Taz was locked out in the cold. And there was snow on the ground. I remember it was below freezing and although Taz had a nice thick coat of fur, he was shivering when I picked him up. I could see that Anna's roomate had locked him out in the cold as some kind of punishment.

I had this old beater of a car, a ragtop whose ragtop was mostly duct tape and which ran like crap . . . but it had a fabulous heater. So, I put Taz on the front seat next to me. And off we drove to the convenience store nearest Anna's house.

When I got to the Convenience Store, I ran in and bought Taz some cat food. Taz lay perfectly still on the seat with the heater blowing on him, last I saw. I left the car running to keep him warm. There was a slow moving line in the store. I probably looked at a magazine or something and didn't pay attention to my car in the parking lot. When I came out with the bag of Meow Mix, I opened the creaky door and realized Taz was gone!

Oh shit. My hair follicles filled with ice. This was Anna's "Baby". I looked about the car, under the seat, behind the seat, no Taz. And then I looked at one of the sides of this old decrepit ragtop which had been taped with duct tape and I see Taz's most probable exit of the car: duct tape had dropped from one of the holes which was big enough for my head to fit through.

This Convenience Store was on a very busy thoroughfare called Staples Mills Road in Richmond's (Virginia) West End. And as I was running around like a crazy man behind the store and on its sides, I began to feel panic. I remember thinking, "If Taz runs out into the street and is run over, I am dead too."

I run back around to the front of the store. No Taz. And this is before cellphones so I can call my dad and mom to come help me look immediately. Both payphones at the store were out of order. I remember that. And I'm thinking "Time is of the essence."

So I do one more run around the store. No Taz. Then I hear a voice coming from this garage/empty lot. A guy is yelling at me, "Hey, are you looking for a cat?"

"Yes, is he over there?"

"Nope, he's in that field, I saw him run from a guy in that parking lot who was trying to pick him up," and he points back at the Convenience Store parking lot.

So, I missed all that. Possibly a Good Samaritan, possibly a catnapper! But Taz had run away.

Now I had the right field, which was overgrown with bramble and was filled with trash, snow, slush, and odd hunks of big machinery. I see some tracks and try to follow them, but there is so much junk, abandoned cars, etc., that he could be anywhere hiding, thinking I'm the bad man in the lot trying to pick him up or something.

So I ran back to the car and got that box of Meow Mix. Then I ran back to the field and started shaking the box. "Here, Taz, here, here . . . " shake, shake, shake.

Within a few seconds I see this flying furball coming at me like a sidewinder missile through the tall dead weeds. He was shivering and breathing steam.

I picked him up, kissed his face, and said, "Ole Buddy, you almost ended it all for both of us."

When I got back to Anna's house, her dumpy roomate's vehicle was out front..

I knock politely on the door, I cradle Taz in my arms, and when she opens the door, I said, "I just saved our lives . . . I need to get Taz into the house."

So I told this woman, who did not care for Taz, what had transpired. I told her how cold Taz was and how he almost got away. She looked at me. She knew by closing the window for Taz to come in to the house, she had basically left him alone to the elements and started this whole chain of events.

Now this gal had my ex-wife, Anna, by at least 50 pounds. And most of it was in her butt. Her butt was so big it eclipsed the sunlight coming through a window if she stood in front of it.

Anyway, what I'm saying is it would take a lot to kick her ass because there was so much ass to kick.

But if anybody could kick this woman's ass, it would be Anna, all 105 pounds of her soaking wet. No questions about it. Las Vegas bookies who knew what Anna was like when face to face with a person who committed Animal cruelty would have given 1000 to 1 odds on Anna versus the girl with two 25 pound Smithfield Smoked Hams for an ass.

So, this woman did the math real quick like. And her conclusion was the same as mine: "I will never, ever close the window on Taz again, and you cannot ever mention this to Anna, or she will kill us both."

I laughed and said, "I can live with that."

And after that, Taz and I really hit it off. When Anna was in the other room doing her hair or dressing or whatever, ole Taz would come sit in my lap and look at me and say, "Dude, I had to do what I had to do. You see, everything has worked out for you, me, Anna and Ms. Thunder Pants."

Taz broke me in to loving cats.

And there were many others who stole my heart, Sparky the Great White Cat who beat every badass cat who ever came near his weaker brothers and sisters, Cassidy Cat who still lives with Anna up in Virginia, Possum who died, and the last of the crew who used to live with us on Catherine Street, Sluggo, Slugmeister, Meister, the Boy, the Man, Cranky Cat, man, I've got dozen of names for the coolest of the cool who still puts up with me in Key West.

Getting back to Sluggo's early days: he finally opened his eyes after a nights of his mewing. His paws were tinier than No. 2 pencil erasers. But the microscopic slivers on the ends of those tiny paws were sharper than X-acto knife blades.

He loved "kneading" the towels inside his box. He would "nurse" on the flesh between my thumb and forefinger, which meant, "Feed me, human."

So, I'd take out the tiny eyedropper (which may have graduated to a tiny baby doll bottle filled with milk or formula . . . I don't know) and I'd feed the cute little bugger.

Sluggo, as you can see by the photo in this blog, grew into possibly the most handsome cat I've ever known. And as our cat menagerie grew, I saw less of him. He really didn't care to be around the other cats. And he absolutely didn't care for my hyperkinetic Dalmatian, Tara.

Sluggo is a Bombay Cat. Bombay Cat's don't get along well with other cats as they want to be the dominant cat in all households. They also are finicky eaters.

Now when you open that link and look at the Bombay's, you will see the dudes who didn't make the cut at Pethouse Magazine. Sluggo is the first Bombay Centerfold in Pethouse. And if you ask me, Sluggo probably isn't purebred Bombay. Like his father, he's a Mongrel American. Unlike his father, he actually turned out handsome as all. Slug is Tiger Woods. Is he black? Is he Asian? Women don't care. He's handsome and rich and talented and focused. Women like those traits in any man, screw the racial makeup.

So, I think of Sluggo as the Tiger Woods of Bombay Cats. Some Bombays might sniff that he isn't 100% "pure", but I can assure you, not a damn one of them are going to come up to my boy's face and say he's inferior because of his breeding.

Enough about my son's looks, let's talk about his eating habits which the Bombay FAQs do not detail enough:

God help us, I'm telling you true: we bought one can of every freaking kind of Fancy Feast canned catfood and tested them on Sluggo. Only one, a very specific mix, passed Cranky Cat's muster: Fancy Feast's "Ocean Whitefish and Tuna Feast In Gravy."

Oh, and you must also make verrrrrry sure the word "Grilled" is on the label in a yellow highlight box.

For if you come home and serve Fancy Feast "Ocean Whitefish and Tuna Feast in Gravy" and it's not grilled, Sluggo will look up at your eyes which are 5 and 1/2 feet above his and meow disgustingly, "Get this inedible crap out of here. It isn't grilled. Can't you read a frotting label?"

When Anna and I used to be servants to four cats (during Hurricane Georges I watched two cats belonging to a friend, so, I had six cats and a frightened dog all living in peace, shivering, next to me as the winds tried to rip the roof off the house in total darkness. Really, that's one of the most pleasant memories I have of "All My Animal Family" getting along like brothers and sisters.) Sluggo would not eat out of the same dish those guys ate out of. He was like a gourmand in a fancy black tuxedo. "Don't serve me in the presence of lesser mortals."

In fact, Sluggo used to feed on the washing machine outside. That's where we kept his bowl of food and water. The other cats would eat indoors. Sluggo stayed outside for the most part.

Later in life, after Anna and I divorced, we divided the cats among us. It broke my heart Sparky and Cassidy went to Virginia with her, but I was gladdened so much to keep Sluggo with me on Big Coppitt Key.

The day Anna came to Big Coppitt and picked up Sparky, I put him in his carrier cage. Anna placed the carrier in the rear of her vehicle and she and her friend drove off. Man, I was inconsolable. There goes the bravest cat I evern knew. I went inside and lay down on the bed and tears welled up in my eyes and spilled slowly down my cheeks. Some of it was because a chapter in Anna's and my life was now final. But most of it was Sparky, the Great White Cat who shared so many hardships with me, who was always there, was gone out of my life.

I muttered, "Sparky you were the bravest, you were always there, man, you were the best." And I thought back to an event which was still fresh in my mind.

One day, this Big Coppitt Key neigborhood bully cat, a giant Maine Cooncat twice the size of Sparky, came into my yard. This giant cat chased Sparky's black brother, Sluggo, onto the top of a shed where Sluggo shivered in fear and outrage and hissed. (Had this happened today, Sluggo would have fileted the Cooncat. He's now a Ninja Warrior with 20 razor sharp blades on four shuriken paws. But I digress. On with the story of Sparky coming to Sluggo's aide and giving him a lessson in cat fighting to study.)

I almost ran out the backdoor, but I watched Sparky run like John Riggins of the old Redskins straight up the middle of the back of the yard as fast as he could and jump this huge Maine Coon Cat who was fixated on Sluggo.

Hey, you're not supposed to enjoy sporting events where animals fight, but this fight was sweet. You had my gutsiest cat taking on a guy who was easily twice his size and who chased his brother Sluggo. Could Sparky become the new Topcat of Big Coppitt Key?

As the fight started, I began to screw the nozzle on the hose and hook the hose to the spicket. I watched the fight caroom all over the yard.

The fur, flew. Tufts ballooned upward in the small breeze. The free for all banged into the laundry shed, under the porch, under the metal tool shed. The cats howled with rage, like wild mountain lions or cougars. The racket was as loud as the jets flying overhead into the Naval Air Station.

The Maine Coon Cat kept running from Sparky, and Sparky would tackle him again and again and would not let him leave the premises without a proper ass kicking.

Sparky attacked, attacked, attacked.

They did barrel rolls over one another, this Maine Coon Cat several times covering all of Sparky with his massive body, but Sparky, even on his back, was shredding this guy like Stevie Wonder as a guest Ginsu Chef while on speed. Sparky sliced and diced at everything this bigger cat had. And he beat the big cat in the first few seconds by mentally getting into his head. Sparky was so much smaller than he. This was not supposed to be happening.

I've never seen a more vicious cat fight in my life, and I could see the Maine Coon Cat was not going to make the fence line before Sparky killed him.

I had to end it quickly. Sparky was bleeding . . . and the Maine Coon Cat was bleeding more . . . and Sparky really was out of his mind wildcat. He reverted back to the jungle or plains. He was not domestic.

I finally ran outdoors, used the hose and a high powered jet of water to separate the two combatants. It took a good soaking too. Sparky, who hated water, at first did not take his mouth away from the Maine Coon Cat's throat.

That Maine Coon Cat got the worst of this. I saved his life by using that hose. And he never, ever, showed his face anywhere on the block after ole Sparcitus clawed him to hell and back.

When Sparky finally came out from his hiding (the good soaking finally broke through his reptilean brain in the heat of battle and he ran like lighting) he looked like he'd been to a fashion show picketed by Peta crazies who plucked at a model's real fur. He had blood all over him . . . much of it belonging to that other cat. His fur was also matted with cat saliva, water, feces, you name it. But I took a clean damp towel and ever so gently rubbed him clean while applying Neo-sporin to his cuts. He stood there and took it like a man, wincing when I rubbed a raw wound.

After doctoring him, I fed him well and let him fall asleep on a towel on my bed while cooing to him.

Later that night, after Linda came home form nightschool, he moved out to the deck under the cool night breeze. Sparky plopped down, curled up, bone tired, and basically passed out on the grounds where he had had his greatest battle.

Later that night, Sluggo, slinked over to where Sparky passed out. He gently lay down beside him. The great black cat and the great white cat, side by side. It was one of those Kodak moments that got away on camera, but which was burned into my memory.Sparky opened an eye, looked at Slug, and gave his head a few licks as though to say, "I got your back, brother."

Sluggo, without any hesitation, licked Sparky's wounds on his head and neck. It was one of the most pure moments of gracious thanks I've ever seen. A few weeks later, I saw that Maine Coon Cat resting on the front porch of a trailer a few blocks over from us. I looked at him closely. He was okay.

I felt a twinge of regret and guilt for having let this fight go for as long as it did. I could have run and gotten a rake or broom to beat these guys apart. But the fight did a lot of good for Sparky and Sluggo's growth as brothers.

Today, Sluggo is like Sparky was.

No cat can take on Sluggo. He learned from Sparky to stand his ground.

Sluggo weighs less than Sparky. But he's much faster and much quicker too.

My girlfriend, Linda, and Sluggo are inseperable. When she is a block away, his ears pop up. When she enters the gate to our compound, he jumps out of whatever box we leave around the place as "Sanctuaries" (places he cannot be bothered) and runs for the door to sit and greet her.

Sluggo jumps in her lap and sleeps. He follows her everywhere like a little puppy dog. It's so funny and ridiculous that I kid Sluggo by whistling for him as he follows Linda around the house and I say, "Come here, boy, be a good dog." But he looks at me like, "What do I want with a big stupid hairy gorilla like you who doesn't know who the real Master is in this house?"

Yes, Sluggo gives his love freely to Linda. And I must say, she dotes on the little bugger. She also, like Anna, plays rough with him. And that's why his relfexes are the best on Solares Hill.

Linda and Sluggo go at it for 10 or 15 minutes non-stop with all kinds of cat toys, his favorite being these tiny feather boas stuck on the end of a stick like balloons were once tied to at State Fairs. Sluggo also likes to shred newspaper, follow the feathers under the paper, up in the air, or go crazy crazy when the feathers are tickling his tummy, doing circles on the floor.

Sometimes, Slug will stand on two paws like a Grizzly Bear and bat up in the air at the feathers taunting him just out of reach. He moves his paws quicker than a lightweight hitting a speedbag. I can see how any rat which saunters within 10 feet of him is dead meat.

Slug amazes me. At his age, he should be slowing down, but I swear, he's the most in shape and toughest cat on Solares Hill when it comes to fighting and hunting.

And before I leave this post, I will end with this vignette.

When we moved into this house, there were two or three other cats using the grounds as a flophouse. Once Sluggo entered the compound, all that nonsense stopped. I remember we had only one cut on his head from a fight during his first week or so here. But soon, all it took was one of his menancing looks of "You want a piece of this, come on, I'm game," and bigger cats around here run like scaredy cats.

After chasing off the neighborhood bums, Sluggo then went ratting and showed us what the other cats were too scared or too lazy to go after. If our neighbors knew how rat free we are now because Sluggo is on patrol, I think they'd award Sluggo with free meals all the time.

Sluggo likes to announce a kill with a horrific meow which is never perfectly spoken because his teeth are holding the neck of a rate.

When Meister makes this one weird "Eeeerrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooowwwww!" we know it's time for another rat offering. That high pitched sound sends the hairs up on our necks, and it comes from immediately thinking back to our old apartment which had a cat trap door allowing Sluggo to enter and leave without asking.

He brought home so many fresh kills of rats, we lost count. And then there were the "almost kills" that more than once, he'd drop on our bed.

Have you ever woke up to bloody rat scurrying across your body? I'd put that up there with waterboarding as a form of torture which would make anyone go crazy.

And having a bloody rat run across the sheets next to the Little Linda's head is like having a firehouse klaxon go off next your ear. Linda would scream Holy Hell. She'd jump on a table, a dresser, a chair, anything, while I'm stumbling in the dark, finding lights, the broom, the dustpan, and Linda's last addition to the weapons, a pair of red oven mitts specifically bought to pick up Sluggo's "love offerings".

That's all I needed in the old days to wake my ass up good and proper: an almost dead bloody rat making his last escape attempt, scurrying about the bedroom, a crazy woman yelling instructions to me, me naked, a broom in one hand, a dustpan in the other, and a pair of red oven mitts on the hands while I worried about bites to my pecker from a rabid, cornered rat.

"Sir, you are dying from rabies in the Penis. That is why it has swollen to the size of an oozing breadbox . . . and that is also why we must amputate it to save the rest of you."

Trust me, that's the kind of thing you think about when you are wearing red oven mitts and nothing else while chasing a rat at 3 AM.

This one time, Sluggo brings home a rat as big as he is, drops it on the bed, the rat scurries off below the bed, and then Linda and I have to take the whole bed apart at 3 AM looking for a rat which may have burrowed into the bedsprings, or any number of boxes filled with our junk.

(We never found that dirty rat. I think he got away and ran out Sluggo's cat door.)

Meanwhile, Sluggo sits on a chair looking us over. He's the overseer of the tossing of the bedroom and he gives us a bored look which says,"I've done my part. When you gonna feed me?"

That time, I lost it. "Come here you black bastard and get that fucking rat."

Sluggo looks, "Are you talking to me?" and notices a piece of hair, hair No. 1426 below in the white tuft of fur on his chest is out of place. Lick, lick, lick while I am rip, rip, ripping the whole bedroom to pieces to find the rat.

In the middle of absolute chaos, Sluggo, as is usual, forgets all for an emergency cleaning. "Must primp before the next episode of cat madness, doncha know?"

Yes, I love my cat. Men are not normally cat persons.

And to be quite honest, Linda was never a cat person until she met Sparky and Sluggo, the ivory and ebony cats who played her like yin and yang. She has the worst allergies of anyone I know to cats. Yet she suffers with her sinus problems still because she loves Sluggo so damn much.

We joke sometimes about what would happen if she had to choose between me or him. I know she would choose him. It would actually let me down if she said she'd choose me over him, as Sluggo absolutely adores his new mom. They are closer than any human/cat on this island, I'll bet money on that.

And I'll tell you this too: I'd give my life for that cat. I would. If it meant he and Linda could live, I'd jump into a torrential flood to save him, or go back into a burning house to find him. That guy means that much to me, and it means much more to me that he means so much to Linda.

One day Sluggo shall die. I've thought about it more than once. When I had to put down my old Dalmation, Tara, I wept like a baby at the vets as I stroked her head after her very last breath. Linda had to drive me home as I blubbered and cried and cried. The female vets looked at me before I left with such compassion and maybe a dose of, "Jesus Christ, get a hold of yourself, man." I don't know. Probably imagined that after it was all over. But I know, I have to have been one of their Top 3 Weeping Men of all time at that vet's office.

Sluggo's death will fill Linda and me with so much sorrow that I will have to take off a week or more from work. And if I die before Sluggo, he'll sit, look over my corpse and meow, "Hey, mom, how about a new bowl of cat food? I don't think Dad is up to it today."

Thanks, Sluggo, for opening this flood of thoughts. You are one of the reasons I love coming home. I promise to take more photos of you and place them on this blog.

I think you should become a spokesperson around here because you always cut through the shit and enjoy life. Let's post this and see if your photo comes out. If it prints on my blog, know that I am honored your photo is number one.

p.s. This will not be spell checked as I am too tired. I really wanted to test the way to post photos. I am hoping this works. Fingers crossed.