Friday cat blogging (2): The real thing

Bless his heart, Dave Walker has put up two more photos of the adorable creatures. Thanks to the blogosphere, they are circling the globe, while playing happily at home oblivious to our human nonsense. Have a look.

And to honor the one who didn't get its own portrait here on Tuesday, here it is. A graceful creature, that.

My Alyosha (well, it was more like the reverse, I was Alyosha's Jane) looked like this, but he was bigger. Same color pattern though. He wasn't fat, just older and thus with a bit more heft; these two over in London are still touching kittenhood. Alyosha came to live with me around the age of 11 when his humans moved from Boston to Jerusalem and couldn't take him along. At first he was my foster cat and then, as the humans stayed longer and longer and finally settled over there, he became my common-law cat. He moved with me from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area at the ripe old age of 17 and I thought he might not live much longer, since 17 is already quite an age especially for a boycat, but Berkeley (and a brief stint in Oakland) agreed with him and he lasted till 21. He died half a dozen years ago but I still think of him. He used to meditate with his face to the wall like a little Zen monk (the monk part was appropriate since previous humans had named him Alyosha after the youngest of the Brothers Karamazov, the monk with the pure heart) and I came to calling him the Bodhicat because of this Zen practice and of his general wisdom. He would meditate at the wall for hours, but he also followed me around the house at other times, carrying on long conversations with me in various tones of meow. He ate cat food, but he liked roast chicken and fresh goat cheese (not together) when he could get a hold of them. Also avocado; hey, he was a California cat in the end, so why not.

******************

Thanks for the pictures, Dave.