Picture a penguin, or a dignified man wearing tails. Add a generous white mustache, slightly askew, as if he’s had tee much martooni. That’s our cat Sylvester.
I first saw him 19+ years ago, lying hopeless and sad in a tiny pet-shelter cage, so his official Valentine’s Day birthday is a fiction. He was so timid that, when he came home with us, he hid behind the refrigerator for hours. Now he is confident of welcome in any lap of any guest. Unfortunately, he most loves those laps that belong to allergic guests.
Sylvester was born to live in Cambridge, Mass. He is more “entitled” than the most brazen Harvard Square pedestrian.
One night we had guests for dinner, with the most distinguished of lady guests in my usual chair, right next to my husband. Sylvester, displeased, pronged his claws up through the chair into her dignified bottom. “Oh my!” she said. We shooed Sylvester off, saying “Bad cat, bad cat,” but he was still smirking under his lopsided mustache.
Happy birthday, Sylvester dear. I look forward to combing your now-motheaten fur coat for many more years.
1 response so far ↓
1 Betsy Devine // May 23, 2003 at 7:00 pm
Dear old Sylvester fell asleep on his favorite couch, about a month after his birthday, and didn’t wake up. We knew this was coming–he had hardly eaten for more than a week, even when fish or liver was under his nose. I sat beside him a lot the last week or so, reading detective novels (with one hand left free to give him pats), cleaning him up when he needed it (he had stopped getting up at all), giving him sips of water with an old medicine syringe. He accepted it all but he was very sleepy. I now have a small tin box full of Sylvester’s ashes to sprinkle around the roots of his favorite tree. We will miss him.