Below is Woody (Woodrow).
Back in the late 1970s, a Scottish singer Marty was working with gave us a call to tell us someone they knew had a couple of 3-day-old kittens on their hands, the mom had given birth and run off promptly so they were looking for someone to take care of the runt kittens that no one would take. The Scottish woman knew we were saps and easy marks. And enthusiastic easy marks at that. We said, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll do it!” And took in Woodie and his calico sister Rosie (Roosevelt) and raised them up from three day old kittens to full-fledged ultrasweet cats. We had a white german shepherd at the time, Bran, who was kinda dumb but a very gentle dog and Bran helped us out with the cleaning end. Genet, another cat we had at the time, also helped as far as setting a superb big brotherly example…
Woodie had a taste for toothpaste. We had to hide it from him.
Ok, I admit it, Woody was kind of an ugly kitten and was always a scruffy, puny cat (he acted the scruffy part too) but I was blind to it. I was blind to anything concerning Woody and Rosie. Though he loved them too, Marty would try to tell me occasionally the truth about what they looked like, that Woody was scruffy and puny and that Rosie was a big meatloaf, but I viewed them through decidedly vaseline-lensed eyes, real soft-focus.
Woodie wasn’t as puny as another cat that attached itself to us at the time. We had Genet, Woodie and Rosie. Then a next door neighbor, a girl we didn’t know, went into the hospital, left behind her cat, and after she got out she didn’t return to her apartment. Only we didn’t know that yet. We knew someone else was going over and feeding the cat because we’d seen them there. Then one day the cat literally attached itself to our screen and screamed to be let in. We were sitting there, our door open, and this cat came up and hooked itself to our closed door screen and started banging the screen door and demanding in, yelling at us. What? We let it in. We thought it wanted food and set out some food and water. Instead it came and sat in our laps and purred louder than I’ve ever heard a cat purr. We took in the cat, which we thought was a very young cat, and called it Paloma. Paloma never grew any larger and had the oddest coat of fur. Solid white underneath and dark gray on top. Was a great cat as well.
I don’t know what happened to the Scottish singer. Her American husband was in the service and when he returned to the states they moved down to Fort Hood and that’s the last we heard of them. She joyfully introduced us to Scottish comic books and her collection of early UK releases of the Beatles and Plastic Bertrand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi” which I accepted and enjoyed as pleasant punk-lite.
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