O.J. - 1993-2009

In the spring of 1994 Leslie befriended a young orange tabby cat living in the parking lot of her museum. When she heard rumors that animal control had been called Leslie used her Volvo "spaceship" to abduct the cat and transport him to an alien laboratory where he underwent orchidectomy. She then brought him home and he ended his space journey on our bed, something we were pretty sure he had never seen before.


He settled down on the bed and made himself quite comfortable. "I like this bed thing." he seemed to say. From then until yesterday he lived with us, sleeping with us in that same bed every night. A good cat.


Last month OJ stopped coming upstairs and climbing into bed. That change marked te beginning of the end. The process had its ups and downs and we tried to give him as much dignity as we could. We buried him where flowers will fall on his grave. We will miss him.


I've finally updated the Animals We Live With page at my pre-Mixed Meters website, A Complete Waste of Time. It shows pictures of all our living pets and all our departed ones plus as many neighborhood wild species as I've been able to photograph. I will try to add even more cat pictures there in the near future, including some which show a much younger David and Leslie.

To read all previous Mixed Meters cat entries click here. In one entry, The Good Cat which is about the death of our black cat Batty two and half years ago, a process I called "euphemizing" a pet, I said that because of her passing:

A great void has been created, filled only by a vacuum of sadness.

OJ's death feels exactly the same. Here's the last good picture of OJ before he became sick.


The pictures enlarge if you click them.