Cats

So I used to. So when I came over from Saigon, I was one of the sickest orphans so I got stopped over in California. And then I ended up in a town a little town called Canfield, Pennsylvania near this, this Pennsylvania state capitol of Harrisburg. And I lived in this little home. I believe it’s 1901 Dartmouth Street and Camp Hill. That was home. We had a basement and bedrooms like anything else kind of like a ranch home, I guess with a carport, everything. And that’s where I spent where my memory starts up to kindergarten.

And then at one point in kindergarten, my mother came and said we were going to move and I was so upset. I cried. I don’t even know why. I took it that hard and moving. I had always like cats like Garfield, for instance. But we couldn’t have cats. And I was crying so much, but then my mom told me that we could have cats. And I was really excited after that.

So we packed up and moved to a place called Dillsburg where we lived on six acres. It was a rural community. Probably about I think now that o’clock at about 15 to 20 minutes out from the main town. We were rural route or rd one. So we didn’t have house numbers for the longest time. And I remember there was a gray cat that wandered back and forth and neighbors to my house. And then we went over to the neighbor across the street the earrings and they had had a mother cat had kittens so my sister got to pick one and I got to pick one so I had my cat named Sylvester and she had her cat name socks, and living rural as we did we attracted cats.

So eventually, we had 13 of them, I think altogether something close to that. So they were indoor outdoor. And we would call them in each night and most of them would come back and they would live in our basement and then in the morning we left them out. The vast majority of them my cat stayed with me in my bedroom always slept under my covers every night with me. When I got scared I carried the cat up headfirst at first sort of and then not headfirst but hunched over my shoulder but I felt reasonably safe that nothing was gonna get me as long as that my cat when I walked up the stairs.

So we had Sylvester, Socks, Spunkey, Gray, Sydney, Junior, Feisty, Sleepy Mittens. I’m going orange cat I would just call orange. So that’s about 10 of them. I think there were three more somewhere along the line. But those are the 10 I can name and recall. Oh we have pester that was 11 Nobody liked that cat but I did. She was just kind of annoying I guess. The cats would climb the screen this screen to the sliding glass door when they wanted in they would come in drenched and things like that.

We had this I guess I know it to be now a Russian blue cat named Sidney with course for that we got from one of my cousins. He was great. He used to sleep on on a date bed that we had and unfortunately my mom got upset and kicked him out one night. thought he would come back and he never did. He’s kind of like my cat I have now Mr Siamese my Siamese cat has recourse for reminds me of Sydney.

But yeah you know Jr. Jr. came around and Jr. was female black cat and had kittens feisty sleeping and mittens. So we got to do kittens and that was that was a lot of fun to slowly but surely a lot of them disappeared or died or something like that. My sister’s cat passed away during her graduation. My cat passed away after I moved out. I’ve wanted to take my cat with me but my mom was in let me in she had my cat put to sleep because she had an abscess that couldn’t be healed.

I always fought for my cats. When we were down to an orange cat after we have moved away from that rural home, my mother wanted to have it put to sleep because it kept throwing up and I said why don’t you just change the food. You know, take the cat to the vet change the food and my mom did change the food I told her to and the cat had another three or four or five years. So I always always defended defended the cats I know there was never a big fan of putting a lot of vet care into them. Whereas I’m pretty much the opposite. I spent 1300 to try and save a rabbit that my daughter had with a blood transfusion and we still didn’t do it.

So the that’s that’s just me and cats and I think moving moving was traumatic, initially out to the rural but I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I live rural now. And I definitely definitely see the value and I used to mow my lawn for comic book money got six bucks for mowing the whole Well technically the sides were worth about $4 And then if I moved another big area of lawn It was another $6 That was $10 back then 60 cents of comic book that was at least 10 to 15 comics.

Obviously when I started subscribing to Doctor Who Magazine the the money didn’t stretch as far because that was about $7 back then. And then there were Star Trek The Next Generation magazine and that was three or $4 back then so obviously the money didn’t stretch when discovered that you could buy magazines at the comic book store so yeah, so wonderful times there, started with my cats and ended up end up somewhere else with this story.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai