I would have posted this sooner, but unfortunately, on the even of 3 Boukatios, my humanoid meat-based housemate’s cat, Fat Bob, aged 19 years, passed away. (Not the cat I was raising money for, another cat in the house.)
Fat Bob was… He was something else. This cat seemed to have an uncanny grasp of English, and between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, often boxed with the vacuum cleaner. My housemate is picking up Bob’s ashes some time next week, and arrangements for a Viking funeral will be made for some time in 2013CE; nobody in this house is a practising Heathen, but that really does seem appropriate for a cat willing to take on the vacuum.
When my cat, Vermin, first arrived in March 2002, Fat Bob made a rape threat but staring at her while humping one of my cuddly toys. It was only fair, when we first let her out of the bathroom, she licked his forehead.
He’d had arthritis in his hips since about the age of two. At about sixcteen years, he started letting his personal hygeine go, and I gave him baths regularly. Once, I had to give him two baths in as many weeks, because we were due some company the next day. In a clear effort to show his disapproval of this bath, he followed me into the kitchen, passing a litter box on the way, mind, and waited to make eye-contact before taking a dump on the floor.
More than anything, Bob loved my housemate, but a close second was catnip. He once destroyed two terracotta pots, holding houseplants, and broke half the stalks off an aloe vera, climbing my various plant stands to get to the high shelf that I put the catnip on. When I heard things come crashing down from the next room, I got up and went to see, only to see Bob high-stepping out of the room, a branch of catnip in his mouth, and an array of destruction behind him.
He was a good cat, but only when he felt like it, and he never let you forget it.
All apologies to Bagpuus and his creators
Of Thespiae 