You Go Nate!

IN MEMORIAM
WHITNEY "THE MEAN AND BLACK"
1989-2008

Even though Mom & Dad had no intention of letting us kids have a pet, when I was eight-years-old, we persuaded Mom to let us take home one of the kittens from my piano teacher's cat but only for a one week trial. We chose a white and gray tomkitten named Oscar. We had fun with Oscar and after his week was up he had already endeared himself to us and not even mom could give him up. A week after that, he was gone, never to be seen again. So we went back to the piano teacher's for another kitten, this time a shy black kitten by the name of "Whitney."

We took Whitney home and she soon became part of the family. She lived in her nook in the garage and enjoyed being inside the house often during the winter and outside in a big yard during the summer.

Often as I would come home from school she would be sitting in the vacant field next door hunting mice. She would always run up the drive way ahead of the car or the van as we arrived home in the evening, daring us to run her over before racing to her nook in the garage.

She scooted around on the concrete lawn-borders that surrounded sections of the yard as if they were her own personal highway system. She was always nonchalantly hanging around Dad or the kids whenever any of us were out doing yardwork. She clawed the screen door.

We let her roam through our cities of pocket-cars, Legos, or Star Wars guys, and she was always careful to sniff, but not touch.

She was a keen hunter and frequently left prizes on our doorsteps in the summer months. Although I never saw one first hand, I believe she had many a fight with the neighboring cats and won them everytime.

We let her have one litter of kittens before spaying her. She gave birth to four kittens: two white and two black. She was an excellent kitty mother, nurturing them with impeccable care, even hiding them in the woodpile when us little kids got a little too bothersome.

It was fun to watch her march around on her little concrete highway with the four kittens following close behind.

She had a little bit of trouble moving with us to West Valley. She had to live in the unfinished house with us for the first few months so she wouldn't run away. For a short time we had to keep her in a long storage closet at night to keep her out of trouble. The closet is now known as the "Whitney Closet," (which, for guests who don't know that Whitney was a cat, is a little bit creepy.)

She soon adapted to the new house and enjoyed winters indoors and summers outdoors. Her territory was a little bit smaller this time, but she still had her concrete highways.

She didn't meow like other cats. Whereas most cats only manage to learn one consonant and two vowels namely, "M," "E,"O," "W," (ok the W is more of a dipthong,) Whitney somehow managed to learn the letter G. Thus her meows sounded more like "MeGOW"

No matter what the circumstances or time of year, if Whitney was coming into the house (whether uninvited or not) she always ran in. Accompanying this run was always a half-purr, half-meow that always sounded like a mischevious "thank you."


Oh, and she was always nice to have strangers over for dinner...

She was a remarkably healthy cat, though in these later years she spent a great deal of time sleeping. In the evenings, she primarly slept on this plaid recliner (an uncomfortable chair for humans, but a nice bed/scratching post for a cat.) The pink blanket was hers, with cat hair matted and weaved into the fibers inseperable from the original pink.

When I left for Munich, I said my farewells to the cat and knew that I would probably not see her again. It made it no less sad when I was informed that her health had quite suddenly and drastically deteriorated in the last few days and she was clearly at the end of the line.

Today she was put peacefully to rest, her body wrapped in that pink blanket and buried in the back yard across from her summer home in the shed. I'm sure she entered heaven running with her ascending purr-meow; and I think we might find her again someday trotting around on the little concrete highways of heaven.

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