The Late Great Vladimir Pootin

Pat the Cat (later to evolve into Toot, Tu-Tu, Pootin)

came to us a starving, homeless kitten,

hungry enough to ravage a watermelon rind. Over the

course of his life with us he turned into the

swaggering, fully man-skirted Prince of Couches

you see napping happily below.

If Pat was a man, he’d have been the marrying kind,

the steady-Freddy, solid, dependable, home-at-five

every-night kind a guy that lives for his family. Of our

three cats, Pat ruled the interior of the house.

His brother could have everything outdoors, and his

sister owned the porch but inside, that was Pat’s domain.

So we wondered when he didn’t show up for breakfast Saturday.

By noon we were worried and after the sun went down and

still no sight of him, we were pretty certain Pat was gone.

We came home Sunday after being out all day, hoping

to find him in his usual spot on the bed, but nope. Not to be.

He never strayed far enough for a coyote to pick him off, and

for five years he lived with the foxes that nightly visit the pond,

so we suspect he may have been dinner for the great-horned owl

that perches on the power pole near the top of the steps where

Toot loved sitting in sunny contemplation of the great outdoors

without actually getting down into it. We miss his little body

curled into us at night and his rough-tongue cleanings, but  his

spirit is here, and when I come up the steps cut into the hill

I go around the top step because I know Tootin is sitting there.