 Larry, Frank's son  ne of my co-workers rescued a cat who promptly had a litter of five kittens,
one of whom was black. I'd always loved black cats (and had already had
three of them), and said so. "Good, you can take him," she said. I already
had two cats, and I really wanted him, but I wasn't sure the girls could
handle a rambunctious kitten. (Even if he was the runt of the litter.) So...I
kinda, sorta, suckered my fiancé into taking him. That way, I figured I'd
get to keep the little guy--one way or another.
Larry was so tiny, he fit in my cupped hands, and we set him on Frank's kitchen floor with much trepidation. How would Henry, a 4-year old 17 lb. Gargantuan, react? We needn't have worried. Wee Larry beat the tar out of him! But they became life-long pals who wrestled with and groomed one another. As a kitten, Larry had loads of energy and literally bounced off the walls. He'd run around the house like a rampaging rhino, screech to a halt and fall into a dead sleep. Larry may have been dominant cat, but he was always a gentleman with Katie and Cori. He never once chased them and, a couple of times near the end of her life, he comforted Katie during a thunderstorm (of which she was terrified) by licking her on the head. We called him the benevolent dictator. When the kittens, Betsy and Bonnie, arrived, he took them under his wing and taught them manners. Although Betsy was a much better pupil than Bonnie. She would also look at him like a love-sick teenager. We often thought Larry might have been the reincarnation of a gay gentleman with fine tastes. He loved lobster, shrimp, clams and mussels, and occasionally took a nip of whiskey from a glass. (Although he was also known to eat maples leaves--fresh or dry, he didn't care. Go figure.) And he loved Frank better than anything else on earth. But Larry had a wild side, too. I learned this early in our life together when he kept jumping up on my curio shelves. He waited for me to look up before he deliberately knocked over my glass wedding cake topper, smashing it into a million pieces. He wanted me to know that HE was still first in his Dad's affections. Larry was also known to pick out the most delicate and expensive Christmas ornaments, carefully remove them from the tree, then smash them against the baseboard like a puck past a goalie. We lost Larry to cancer when he was nine years old, and miss him every day.
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1692 Monday March 24 2008 |
