Fang, R.I.P.

So, anyway, when Yours Truly separated from her Starter Husband, she left the cats Gloria and Spot in his custody...

There We sat, alone in our new apartment, no husband (yay) and no cats (bad).

Yours Truly worked at the federal courthouse in Miami at the time and there was a judge's secretary who rescued stray cats. A couple of weeks after I moved out on the S.H., secretary called and asked if I was still interested in a new cat...I said yes.

I went to the judge's chambers and there was this......microball....of black fluff. Baleful
green eyes surveying the domain with pure feline contempt.

This little baby, aged about 5 weeks, was the sole survivor of Miami traffic that had taken her mom and litter mates. She fit in the palm of my hand with room left over. If she had been bald, she would havev been mistaken for a mouse. NOT a rat, a MOUSE. We are talking TINY.

By the time I arrived upstairs, this microkitten had:

1) Bitten the judge;

2) scratched the Courtroom Deputy;

3) Peed in the xerox machine; and

4) hissed and bristled if anyone THOUGHT about approaching her.

I was told all this AFTER the following ensued:


Then she saw me.....focused right in on that large, goldplated "SUCKER" insignia on my forehead....they handed her to me....gingerly.


I sat down on the comfy couch (all judge's chambers have comfy couches), and she promptly kneaded herself a bed in the top folds of my blouse and fell asleep.


Purring.

I was SO played....took her home, and named her FANG, because...well....she was SO TINY and CUTE....

She also rarely ever again PURRED. In fact, her purring was So rare that instances of it were legitimate excuses to hang up the phone on anyone.

Fang hated everybody and everything - my subsequent cats, neighbor's dogs, air, me, the Spouse....the sons, tile, rugs, sunlight, darkness and the occasional lizard.

The groomers had standing orders to sedate her before grooming. We know she never had rabies because she alone would have been responsible for an outbreak across three counties.

She DID have an express fondness for spaghetti, though....

She would rub up on visitors, give them the Face and the Silent Meow and then, when they reached down to pet the Dear Little Thing....she would BITE them.

She never got very big and really did love me, honestly. She would spend her evenings, after a hard day of separating out the SPouse's clothes from the hamper so she could pee SPECIFICALLY on the SPOUSe'S clothes, curled up on my head, licking my eyebrows.

I chose to see this as a sign of affection. Darling Man maintained she was taste testing me.

Anyway, she was Quite the Character and people did indeed stop by the house to see HER, NOT Us.

She saw us through: moves to Cocoa Beach, Greensboro, Orlando, Casselberry - four apartments, one house, one husband, 2 boyfriends, 2 sons, 2 pet rats, 5 jobs, a handful of death threats and countless bad fashion choices. She was uncuddly and indifferent to human suffering.

When we came home from the Occasion of Our Elevation to the Order of the Pelican, she waited for me to put the medallion on the dresser. When I was in the bathroom, she dragged it into the litter box.

After a long and fruitful life of commenting on the inferiority of the rest of us, the Girl developed a very rare blood infection that caused her body to turn its own fat into soap.

Go ahead and laugh, all who knew her thought it should have been a Pillar of Salt.

We spent weeks carrying her from her food to the litter box, as she quickly became unable to walk herself into it. But, being held by Yours Truly did give her comfort, and she continued to sleep well with her soft scrawny back pressed into Our belly.

Then, on October 8, 2003, when We picked her up for the night, she screamed in pain. I knew it was time and on October 9, 2003, We put her down. Yours Truly does occasionally feel as theough she murdered Fang, but logically, we knew that when even the possibility of scratching Us in her sleep could not ease her pain, she needed to go....

I have not stopped missing her and she has been especially in my heart today - I dreamt of her last night and she did, indeed, groom my right eyebrow (which apparently tastes better than the left), and BIT it...We were quiet surprised to find no scar this morning...except the one on Our heart.


Fang died on John Lennon's birthday. Bit the vet tech as he prepped her for the Shot :))

Miami, June, 1991 - Casselberry, October 9, 2003.

Furrily bereft,
Alysoun