Snowy showed up at our house as a tiny kitten when I was 10 years old. I had been downstairs in our "game room" playing all morning and had heard what sounded like a meowing noise, but it was so high pitched it sounded like a bird. "Oh boy, the birds are meowing now," I thought to myself. When we (my mother, my sister, and me) left the house later to head to Toys'R'Us, my mother realized that there was a kitten under the hood of the car.
We spent the next several hours trying to coax him out using milk, bologna, and even a scare tactic of spraying water under the hood. We were pretty much stuck since my mom couldn't start the car with the cat up in there.
Finally, he came down, but was skittish and terrified of us. My mom finally got ahold of him and we took him in to our screened-in porch and gave him some food and water. We asked around the neighborhood to people who had cats to see if anyone was missing a kitten, but no one was. We put an ad in the paper -- "FOUND: BLACK AND WHITE CAT" -- but no one answered.
So, Snowy became ours. My sister and I were thrilled, since we'd been asking my parents for a while if we could get a cat, but they'd said no because it would be too expensive to have a pet. They couldn't turn Snowy away once he arrived, though!
For years, my mother was convinced that Pop, my paternal grandfather, had brought the kitten over and left him for us since he knew we (the kids) wanted to have a pet. He always swore that he did no such thing. We never did find out where Snowy came from; his origins remain a mystery.
We thought "he" was a "she" at first, so I wanted to call "her" "Snow White," because of the black spots on his head that looked like Snow White's perfect little "bob" haircut. We were going to call "her" "Snowy" for short. When we took him to the vet, we discovered that "she" was actually a he, and "Snowy" became his official name.
Snowy was a good cat. He was originally intended to be an outdoor cat, but eventually wormed his way into the house, partly because my sister, then 7 years old, kept bringing him inside and holding him in the living room (just off the deck), even when she wasn't supposed to.
Snowy put up with a lot throughout the years: my sister and I dressing him in doll clothes and pushing him around in a baby stroller and other such things. He never once reached out and swatted us or hissed at us due to this behavior, but would simply resign himself to his fate, sitting there looking peeved while we made him a part of our latest make-believe story. He was never a "lap kitty," but loved to sleep at the foot of the bed. (This was pre-allergies for me, so I could actually stand to have the cat in my bedroom.)
Snowy was the subject of my project for the school "invention" fair in 6th grade or so: the cat doorbell. My dad helped me wire up a box with a piece of plexiglass on it and a doormat on top of it, so that whenever Snowy came and sat on the doormat, it would ring a bell inside the house and we'd know he wanted to come in. We used that invention for many years and people who came over to our house were always amazed that our cat knew how to use the doorbell. We also taught Snowy to "sit" and "lay down" on command, although he always did it somewhat begrudgingly.
My sister, who was absolutely in love with that cat, gave Snowy an assortment of nick-names over the years, most of them having absolutely nothing to do with his real name: Meekus, Meekums, Meow Meow, Malch Palch, Mooch Pooch, and most notably, Mr. Moo Moo. This one actually stuck, and even my father started calling him "Mr. Moo Moo" after hearing Ashley do it often enough. Ashley used to bury her head in Snowy's fur and kiss him and say, "Mr. Moo Moo!!!" in a really high-pitched voice. (And this was at age 15 or so, not the 7-year-old Ashley previously mentioned.)
Although I have not lived with Snowy in over 10 years now (so for more than half his life I was not a regular part of his daily life), he will always hold a special place in my heart as my very first pet and as a member of my family.
Goodbye, Mr. Moo Moo. I'll miss you. Rest in peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment