Tomorrow has come and gone, but I've been busy, so posting about Charley the cat has taken a back seat.  Charley himself never took a back seat. There were things he needed in his world, and he persevered until he got it.  First and foremost was love.  My daughter, Dusty's mom, couldn't resist stopping by the pound on her way home from school one day.  She looked at every cat and dog, but poor, pitiful Charley was the one who reached out of his cage to paw at her and give a rich, deep wail that plainly said, "Please take me home witchya, babe.  I don't wanna die here in da slammer."

She did, and the first thing we discovered about Charley was that he had a seriously infected leg, possibly brought into the pound that way, or the victim of an encounter with another cat or a wild critter while he was on the loose.  My daughter called me at work, and I told her to take him to the vet.  Apparently, Charley thought the trip to the vet was a trip back to the slammer.  When they entered the vet's office, he struggled wildly to get away, and the pus filled wound exploded all over daughter's new skirt.  It was ghastly smelling.  The vet sedated Charley, cleaned the wound thoroughly packed it with antibiotic ointment, stitched it up, gave him a prescription for that sweet, pink amoxcylin my kids got when they were little, and daughter brought a groggy, somewhat mollified Charley home, but not without a little news from the vet.  

While he was still sedated, the vet had given Charley a thorough examination.  He asked, "How old do you think this cat is?"  She replied, "Maybe eight months to a year old."  The vet chuckled.  "No way.  He's still got his baby teeth.  I think what you have here is a purebred Maine Coon.  He's going to be a big cat."  Oh yeah, Charley topped out at 23 lb., and there was no coping with his appetite.  His favorite sound was the whir of the electric can opener, and you'd better not be in his way when he headed for the kitchen or you'd have paw prints up your back!

Once back home, with three attentive nurses to tend his wounds, Charley finally decided he'd found a home.  I liked to go out in the back yard on a weekend and relax with a cup of coffee.  One fine spring day, I was lucky enough to have a day off in the middle of the week, so I took Charley out with me and used Bubba's leash to hook him to Bubba's tie out screw by hooking it to his pretty blue cat collar with the bell on it.  He was in seventh heaven, prowling through the grass, chasing butterflies, exploring the spring jungle of dandelions and crab grass, when up the alley came the weekly garbage truck.  It made that horrible, loud clanking and crunching noise trash trucks will make when they pick up the trash.  Before I could even think, 'Oh darn, I forgot to take out the trash last night,' Charley had snapped that pretty blue collar and was at the bag door clawing and howling to be let in to safety.

Determined that my cat would not be the neighborhood chicken, I went straight to Wally World and bought him a leather dog collar and his own leash.  Whereupon we discovered he loved to go through the neighborhood for a walk.  We never tried to teach him to heel, he preferred to lead the way, whereas most cats will simply assume a prone position and dare you to drag them along the sidewalk, scraping off all their fur.

Charley did have his drawbacks.  He sharpened his claws on one of my  door facings so often he clawed his way straight through to the sheet rock, necessitating a facing replacement.  I detest having a cat de-clawed, but as a single mom rearing four teenagers alone, I could only afford so many facing replacements.  It didn't deter Charley in the least.  He used his back claws to climb the door facing and polished it with his nonexistent front claws for many years.  I could live with the puncture marks from the back claws.

When the girls and I were living there alone after he got his own apartment, my older son installed a Radio Shack burglar alarm for me.  Having run out of electrical tape, he made do with scotch tape on one splice near the door to my room.  One night about 3:00 am, the alarm went off, and the girls and I met in the hallway like a car wreck, looking for the burglar, who was as nonexistent as Charley's claws.  We finally figured out that Charley had brushed up against that scotch tape splice, and the static electricity from his fluffy, striped Maine Coon tail had triggered the alarm.  We slept the remaining few hours, and on the way home from work, I bought a roll of electrical tape.

With the boys' bedroom vacant, I rented it out to a college student who was majoring in Opera and working part time.  Joe was 6' 5'', wore size 14 shoes, had wild, frizzy red hair and beard, and with his schedule, seriously needed his afternoon naps.  Charley liked to tempt the devil and his own fate.  One afternoon, I had come home from work early. I slipped my heels off to rest a bit before thinking about supper.  Charley liked to sneak in Joe's room, leap on the bed, and bat Joe's beard around like it was a fluffy cat toy.  Suddenly, Charley came racing down the hall toward me at a pace that exceeded the well known can opener dash, followed closely by Joe's size 14s thundering after him.  Charley made it into the laundry room and hid under a pile of dirty clothes in the laundry hamper,  Joe grumbled his way back to bed, and I chuckled all the way through supper preparations. 

Everyone loved Charley.  My best friend Jacque was afraid of cats, but Charley wouldn't brook such timidity in humans.  He'd jump in your lap and pound his head against your chest, demanding affection.  Jacque finally succumbed to his charms, and to this day swears he's the only cat she ever liked.  One of my daughter's friends had no room for his male equipment between his chubby thighs, so it was not without justification that he dubbed Charley "the feline nut job."  The tech director of my community theater, Daryl, called him "Garfield in a grey flannel suit."  Perhaps due to his love of chow and his nutty behavior.  

I'm afraid I may have tempted fate once, much like Charley.  One of the guys who occasionally auditioned for our community theater was a local newspaper man named Charlie.  I read that women living alone shouldn't indicate that on their answer machines.  Charlie had a nice gravelly voice and a talent for accents, so I got Charlie the writer to pretend to be Charley the cat, from Brooklyn.  We taped this message, "Hiya. Dis is Charley. Da goils and I ain't home right now, so leave da message, and maybe we'll get back to ya, see?"  Sometimes my theater friends would call and hang up, thinking they'd reached the wrong house.  A few got up the courage to call back and leave a message.  Soon the rumor spread that Charlie and I were having an affair.  Apparently, Mrs. Charlie took it in good humor, because he never showed up sporting a black eye, and they stayed married.  

One Christmas eve, Jacque, Daryl, and his wife Cindy were at our house for egg nog, cookies, and a gift exchange. Charley nonchalantly stepped over a Christmas candle and walked along the back of the couch. I yelled at my daughter that the cat was on fire. She turned around and snuffed out his tail like it was a candle.  He looked at her (the very one who had rescued him from the slammer) with a glare that clearly said, "You bitch, how dare you pull my magnificent tail?" and stalked off never knowing she'd saved his life a second time.

There are many more Charley stories I could tell you, but frankly - I'm "pencil sharpening" to avoid the three new chapters I have to write for my book this weekend.  I will simply let you know that Charley lived to a ripe old age in cat years, helped rear my preemie grandson who is now a whopping 25 years old and a character in my book.  Both were well loved and cared for, and Charley is missed.