PJ -

This beautiful cat was PJ. He died last year (2002), just a few days after Thanksgiving. It was his favorite food holiday and he LOVED turkey, a few olives from the relish tray and a small bite of banana pudding to round out his meal. He liked to watch me get the turkey ready to go in the oven and then as soon as the smell of roasted turkey started wafting through the house, he stayed as close to the oven as possible. He liked to stick his nose up to the oven door and take a whiff of the wonderful aroma. 

He was silver and black with a bulls-eye pattern on his sides, with white feet and a white stomach, chest and chin. His black started to take over the silver as years went by and he had more brown mixed in with his fur too. He had green eyes. 

He came to us when he was about 6 weeks old. My sister found him in a parking lot near a very busy street. Attempts to palm him off on others failed and I then had a cat sleeping on my bed. Not my sister's bed. It was understood that he was *her* cat and *her* responsibility, but apparently, no one explained to the cat that this meant he was supposed to sleep in *her* room. Actually, the fact that she took to sleeping with her door closed while I had to leave mine open because a screeching cat wanted in, may have had a lot to do with it. When PJ was at his adult size, he could stand on his back legs and reach the door handle so efforts to keep him out failed again. He'd just stand there and rattle the doorknob. If that didn't work, he'd lay on the floor on his back, stick his front leg under the door, grab the door with his foot and tug. And tug and tug. So between the rattling door knob and the rattling door, I'd crack. 

He loved to have his ears cleaned and his toenails clipped. But only after you chased him. You *had* to chase him. That's just how it was. He also got treats afterwards. He liked to catch them in the air. Sometimes he caught them in his mouth, sometimes with his feet. He was very talented and athletic. PJ always counted his treats. He liked to save the first one for last. You'd throw them, he'd wait until the second throw to eat one and after he ate all of the others, he'd go back and eat the original treat. Occasionally, Marple would eat it when his back was turned so we had to start over. You couldn't just give him one to make up for the eaten treat because he'd always eat the second treat first and so on. He enjoyed doing somersaults. Those were funny.

He was very dignified and easily embarrassed. He was rarely caught playing with the cat toys that were all over the house. It was just beneath him. If you *did* see him playing with a toy, he'd suddenly walk away looking very casual. That made me laugh.

He was very long and slender so he had a slinky walk. He was a very laid back cat. He liked to be held and have his ears kissed. He had a very long tail. When he died at the vet's office, I turned back for one last look at him on the table and his tail was hanging down and I had to go back and tuck it under his body. I couldn't stand looking at that beautiful long tail that was always in motion with his moods, just hanging there. 

He also had a very loud purr. He liked to sleep near my pillow. Well, he preferred to sleep with his head *on* the pillow, but there wasn't enough room for both of us so he waited until I went to sleep and then he'd tuck his head in near my chin and would put his face next to my nose. I often woke to find an ear in my nose. Or a foot. He liked to use my face as an arm rest too. Once I woke up feeling like I was choking. He had his foot pressing on my jugular vein. He was just laying there looking at me in the dark. That was a disconcerting thing. He'd lay there staring at me and then when I'd tell him to move to his part of the bed, he'd snuggle up to my face and then sneeze on it. He also woke me once when he had laid his leg across my nose and I couldn't breath. 

He hated sick people. If you had a cold or the flu or a cough or a fever, he wouldn't get anywhere near you. He was afraid of mice but he had an unsavory habit of catching crickets and then pulling their legs off. He was always trying to get out of the house.

There was a toddler who lived next door to us. I used to watch him sometimes and he liked to bother PJ quite a bit. I remember once he tried to look into PJ's nose with a flashlight and became upset when PJ wouldn't sit still. The cat used to sit on a bookshelf and when my little buddy walked by, PJ would smack him on the top of the head with his foot. This was a favorite game until the time PJ hit him on the head and he burst into tears and told everyone that PJ tried to break his neck. This sweet boy later grew into the kid who waited with my mother outside the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York City, to get my "Hopper" video cover signed after The Iceman Cometh one night. 

PJ was an only kitty until he was a year old. That's when we got Marple.

Miss Marple, Spacey Cat ~

Marple was a very small cat. Only 7 1/2 lbs at most times. She was born in England and came over to the U.S. by plane, when she was a kitten. She came to live with us as a one year old, after having had an unsuccessful pregnancy with complications which kept her from being used for breeding purposes. She was a British Shorthair/Persian mix. She had short legs and a round body. She was about half the size of our other cats, which were American Shorthairs. Big tabby cats. But what she lacked in stature, she made up for with major attitude. She was THE QUEEN.

She liked to be held up around your shoulder so she could look you in the eye. You just wanted to pick her up and squeeze her like she was a puppy. She liked to have her whisker pads pressed on. If you wouldn't do that, she was happy enough rubbing them on you while you tried to sleep. She liked kisses on her face and especially her cheeks. She was a dumpling when she wasn't doing her General Patton impersonation. She didn't like being awakened to have her picture taken. She was the champion "glarer" of all time.

                        Miss Marple at the end of April 2002, sleeping on her pillow.

Marple loved shoes. She liked to stick her head into them.
She also liked to chew on the laces.

Marple had short little legs and she either wouldn't or couldn't run. So instead she walked very fast if she was trying to get away from you. When she went down the stairs, she'd go down each step with both front feet hitting the step at the same time and then her back feet would step down and then she'd go to the next step so she always made a soft thumpity, thumpity, thumpity sound on the stairs and you knew she was coming. On her more energetic days, she'd go almost to the bottom of the stairs and then LEAP out onto the floor and often would land with a loud thud. She liked to make a dramatic entrance, I guess.

When she was very young she liked to take a running jump from the dining room table onto the top of the china cabinet. Then she'd lay down and peer over the rail at the top of the cabinet. All you'd see was a body-less cat head. Then to get down she'd jump out towards the middle of the table, usually during dinner, landing with a crash in the middle of the dishes, and then she'd jump down to the floor before you could grab her.

She stopped jumping up there the day she mistimed her jump and didn't quite make it and I found her hanging straight down from the top of the cabinet by the toes of her front feet. I told her to hold on. I'd save her!! But by the time I got over to catch her when she fell, she had pulled herself up BY THE TOES of her front feet and was standing on the top of the cabinet looking startled. I had to get her down by climbing on a chair.

She was an expert mouser. No mouse was safe with her around. It's unfortunate that her idea of disposing of mice was to bring them to you, alive, carrying them by the back of their necks like tiny kittens. I guess rodent disposal wasn't her department. When I was first learning how to do this web site stuff, I was sitting at the computer loading the fun themes that I was going to choose the site theme from, when suddenly, she came crashing down the stairs (apparently having leapt from the top, which was 6 steps) behind my chair, landing under the desk behind me, knocking the chair out of the way. I thought she was having a seizure or something.

I jumped up to see if she was OK and as I moved the chair to get to her under the desk, she pops out with the bottoms of two very tiny feet and a tail sticking straight out of her mouth like some cartoon. She had caught the mouse head first. She tried to bring it to me, which resulted in me backing up as quickly as possible while saying "Don't bring that  over here!" after which she took it upstairs and dropped it in the living room. The poor thing was dead. I don't know if it died of fright or had drowned in kitty saliva. Either way, it must not have been a great way to go.

She also loved the chat nights at Spaceyland and later at the room off of this site. Nearly every Tuesday and Saturday night for several years she'd lay on the chair in the bedroom while I was on the chat and as soon as she decided the chat had gone on long enough, she'd glare at me until I put everything away and went to bed. The first chat I attended without her sitting next to me was hard. She'd been at the vet's not expected to live, but she rallied a few days later and lasted another several months. 

On the movie chat nights she'd always be waiting on her chair for me to come into the bedroom and set everything up. A month before she died, we thought she'd reached the end of her life with us. She'd been very sluggish all day and seemed to be near the end and at the time I'd normally set up the laptop for the chat, she managed to get off of the couch and slowly climb her way upstairs and had to be helped on to the chair. She laid there during the whole movie, Consenting Adults, and the next morning, had once again defied the odds and was almost her old self again. This was the reason I had the old Gazette headline about Consenting Adults saving her life. Her last movie with the ladies of the movie chats was LA Confidential, if I remember right. I'm glad she went out on a great Spacey film. She loved her movie chats.

She also loved to stick her foot in water. Since she was very young, she'd been able to turn her right front foot into a small scoop shape and would scoop a foot full of water out of a bowl and then would drink it from her foot. She'd very delicately scoop, sip, scoop, sip. Then if she liked the water, she'd drink from the bowl. As she got older she liked to play with the water. She liked to stick her foot in the water and make the water jiggle.

One favorite game was to have someone put some ice into her water bowl and then she'd scoop it out. This game started when she discovered it was fun to wait until you weren't looking, then she'd put her foot into your soda and slosh it around until she knocked the ice out. Even better was knocking the glass over and watching the ice and the soda run down the table onto the carpet. Having the glass fall onto the floor was an added bonus. This also worked with flowers in vases. She liked to stick her face down into the flowers and try to find the water.

One of her tricks of her later years was slapping the water. She'd discovered that if she spread her toes and tapped the water with her foot, it made a small splat and water would fly up. So she was always scooping and slapping, now with both front feet, leaving a very large puddle of water on the floor. Or on the coffee table. She especially enjoyed splashing in my sister's bowl of floating candles. She wasn't afraid of fire. She'd even try to drink the water with the candles lit.

You always knew she'd left a mess somewhere when you'd pick her up to give her a big squeeze and you'd have soggy cat legs and feet on your chest.

It seems very quiet around the house now. It was very quiet when Marple died and now with PJ gone, it is extremely quiet. KC doesn't make many sounds. This is KC. She's 14 years old. She was found as a very tiny kitten, in a trash dumpster outside of a Montgomery Wards store. KC and one other kitten in the litter survived the dumpster. His name was Spike. He was taken in by another family. KC was about 4 weeks old when my sister brought her home. She seems to be taking over some of Marple's old duties and funny habits. Like guarding the water bowl. More about her later.

    

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