IL ETAIT UNE FOIS........UN PRINCE MONGOL

Lest you all think that I'm only about high brow travelogues and philosphical ruminations.........I can actually do small furry animal posts as happily as the rest of them!!!!!

Just about ten years ago, this little character came into my life.  His name had been chosen well before his arrival on the scene, but he took to it perfectly.  When I first saw him he was hiding under a towel.  He looked a little bewildered and injured that I felt obliged to subject him to a "viewing".  When my vet had called to tell me that he was available I had to admit to her that I was a terribly shallow person and that he had to be an attractive cat, I wasn't very fond of the ones with smudgy faces and indiscernible features.  And I only really like orange in a cat when it is ALL orange.  (What I really mean is marmalade.)

I fell in love with his head.  It is big and handsome.  When I looked at the right side of his face he looked just like my first cat J.  On the left side of his face he has what I call a yin-yang symbol that gives him both a spiritual allure and a sometimes sulky countenance.  Mostly though, when we brought him home, he was wiry and sleek and moved like greased lightning from having fled too many garbage trucks.  He had been on the streets alone for four months and had turned himself into the ultimate killing machine.   And he was so frightened of people that when you startled him he jumped four feet into the air, STRAIGHT UP.

My friend Michele thought he looked like a Mongol Prince in this pic

The first day I brought him home I went to visit him in the bathroom.  He was so frightened of me, he immediately leapt away and made a circuit of the bathroom wall at four feet above the floor screaming and peeing all the way. (With men, animals, and children there's ALWAYS a little clean-up job isn't there?  Whatever the occasion.)  I managed to grab ahold of him and sat on the floor in my bathrobe with him on my lap and forced a lot of love and kissing on him.  This carried on for about an hour and a half.  HOW PLEASANTLY SURPRISED HE WAS!

And how pleasantly surprised I was.  This guy is our little lovebug.  I'm not saying that he doesn't turn into Mike Tyson when young girl cats challenge his hegemony.  But when he's relaxed and happy and missing me a little he will place paws on either side of my neck and rub his face in mine, lick my cheeks, purr and yes, occasionally drool.

My first cat J. was sent away to the great backyard in the sky on November 3, 1999 two months after he'd stopped eating and was diagnosed with cancer.  He was ten years old and a "very cool cat."  He loved to play hide and seek and chase and was big and handsome and independent.   We buried him in the backyard and planted tulips over him. My husband says it was the hardest thing he's ever had to do in his life.  I was inconsolable so of course hubby had to drop everything and take me to Paris because how else was I ever gonna recover from such a terrible loss?  (No I mean really!)  We traipsed around for ten days in the cold and dark and twinkling lights of Paris and I had a very strange experience with a lady in a cafe on the Boulevard St. Germain.  But that is a story for another time.  Four months later this little angel turned up.  Doing the math, he was born at just about the time that we lost J.  You know where I'm going with this, don't you?

So B.B. is a wonderful companion and inspires ectasies of affection from anyone who's spent any amount of time with him.  And could he be any more photogenic?

He seemed to catch on right away that Mummy's applying a big black silvery thing to her face and cooing and clicking at him was one of those humang-type ways of expressing her great and unending love.   So he duly cooperates!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY B-B!!!!!!!!!!  YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE OF MY LIFE