The Other Light of My Life

No, I don't have another kid.

This is about J.D. My cat.

I've gotten several e-mails and comments asking about J.D. and his lack of eyes, so I thought I'd do a series of posts on him.

For those of you that hate cats or hate reading stories about cats, you may want to come back another time.

If you look at my header up above, you see a cream colored cat “staring” right at you.

That's J.D. It stands for James Dean (although his vet swore it stood for Jack Daniels).

Yes, THAT James Dean.

I’m a HUGE James Dean fan. I think he was probably one of the most brilliantly talented actors to grace the silver screen and it absolutely sucks that he shined so bright yet so brief.

If you look closer at that picture, it looks like he has his eyes closed.

But….if you look even closer, you’ll see that that’s not the case.

He has no eyes.

Nope, not a single one in his furry little head.

Back in 1997, I was living in an apartment with my then best friend, Mimi (of the Mama Dawg was a Drug Mule story).

Wait…..

I need to give you some background info first.

I’m a HUGE animal lover.

When I was about 5 or 6, I caught a tiny minnow in the ditch behind our house. I took him home and put him in a small Tupperware bowl full of water and named him Squirmy.

We lost Squirmy later that night after I decided that he needed a bath since he smelled bad.

Yes, you guessed right. I went and got that little Tupperware bowl that housed the doomed Squirmy and dumped the entire contents, poopy water, fish and all, right into my bathtub that was full of soap, Barbies and me.

Did you know that soapy water will kill a minnow?

Yeah, I found out the hard way.

When I was seven, a tiny black kitten was dropped off in the street in front of my house. My mom found him and convinced my dad to let us have a cat. His name was Pirate and I loved him with all my heart. He was the tiniest little thing ever and I adored him…for all of 3 days. Then he just kind of faded into the background of my ever expanding life. I still loved him and took care of him, but my life didn’t revolve around his every need. He got sick and had to have an expensive operation which my mom paid for (mostly due to the waterworks I shed). My parents separated and my mom, Pirate and I moved to Florida. He lived until the ripe old age of 11. I was 18 when he disappeared from my life. All I can figure out is when I was taking out the trash one night, he slipped out the door behind me and either crawled off to die or got hit by a car or someone catknapped him. Whatever happened, he was out of my life. I was heartbroken. So heartbroken, I went to the shelter EVERY DAY for a month searching for him.

While at the shelter, I found a cat that I just felt had to be rescued. I took him home and called him Boots O’Malley.

I’ll make this one real short. We didn’t mesh. I put an ad in the paper and gave him away to a family that was able to incorporate him into their lives much easier than I did.

Also at this time, I was preparing to move out of my house and into an apartment with Mimi. We had a good friendship and were real tight and things were flowing smoothly. To make a long story short, life happened and the friendship got strained.

I got depressed.

To be continued:

Later,

Mama Dawg