This is tough for me to write. Laura and I have lost a friend. Marty, our wonderful old Maine Coon cat, was taken by a coyote about two weeks ago.
He’s just a cat, right? Right. But he was much more than that. He was curious, amazingly intelligent, swaggering, big and muscular (at least in his prime – at nearly 18, he’d dropped to about 12 pounds, just a bit more than half his weight in his prime, so he was becoming frail), friendly, social, vocal and full of attitude.
He was a wonderful companion that loved attention, and loved to provide attention. And now he’s gone, and the house and yard are incredibly empty without him strolling around surveying his kingdom.
Marty came to us in 1993 at about six months of age. The vet told us he’d been a very expensive kitten – he’d escaped whomever bought him and turned up in our back yard, half wild. He bit, hard. Even to the end, he’d bite me – he’d take a finger in his teeth and look at me, as if to tell me that he could hurt me, but he wasn’t going to do that. This time.
He pretty much owned the neighborhood in his prime, ranging blocks away. We worried about him, but since he was an outdoor animal, it seemed cruel to lock him inside the house. When we tried to keep him in, he wouldn’t tolerate that.
Occasionally he’d go walkabout. Days would pass and I’d be sure we’d seen the last of him when he’d suddenly show up, hungry and glad to be home, but ready to roam again. I dearly wish that was the case this time, but it isn’t.
He was very careful, we thought, and would refuse to go outside if something worried him. But one morning he did go outside, and now he’s gone.
Replace him? Pretty tough to do that. We’ve always had cats, and so we adopted a trio of them a few days back. They’re fitting in nicely, most especially a tiny thing with just one eye – it’s blue – who has taken over the place.
I’m thinking that eventually, if I can find a Maine Coon kitten that seems to possess the qualities that make this breed so interesting, and which were so evident in Marty, I might acquire that cat. Later.
California Files Goes Dark
I’ve been wondering why I’m maintaining this blog. In truth, I’ve not been maintaining it very well. As some of you know, I started it when I became editor of Toyota’s corporate blog, Open Road. A corporate blogger without a personal blog seemed to me to be an anomaly. As some of you also know, Toyota has fallen on hard times and laid off a whole bunch of people, including me. Open Road is gone, too.
The cost of maintaining The California Files isn’t great, but it does exist. That’s money I think I’d rather spend on books. And frankly, I’ve not been finding much to write about lately. So when it’s time to make next month’s payment, I think I won’t do that.
So, it’s been fun while it lasted. But adios.
-JFT