Editor’s Note: Here is a note from the Coastal Empire that commemorates something real and personal, and has nothing to do with the various crises we are supposed to stay alarmed about. This is about love. It seems like a good day for it.

– Vic

Angel Baby

6-month-old Angel in 2010

Author’s Note: Our furry, feathered and scaled companions forever mystify us upon long contemplation during this plague. This is about our current one.

– Marlow

Angel is our black, 11-and-a-half-year-old, runt, Hemingway 6 toed cat — a lap sitting, heat vampiring, quadruped carnivore of refined and picky degustation.

Her visual, olfactory, and auditory senses contribute zip to her hunting skills and natural defenses. She has staff for those items. Even her healthcare and maid services are free.

Her subvocal oscillations are like catnip to her staff provoking unasked for but appreciated rhythmic stroking of her fur. We mistake these sounds as demonstrations of her affection for this attention.

Neighborhood dogs say otherwise secretly, confiding under close questioning after provision of medium rare table scraps that she is really laughing at our subservience.

Experts say her tail is quite essential for her acrobatic talents and that she would not be so agile, if she lacked its counterbalance. From our point of view its use is solely related to displaying the state of her emotion — which is almost always signaling her displeasure in her staff members’ lack of attention to detail.

Angel’s complex levels of displayed behavior except for the uncommanded, wild running about from room to room followed by an immediate screeching stop for no apparent purpose, rhyme, or reason connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array. Though the jury remains out regarding her sentience, we, her loyal staff, nonetheless consider her, a true and valued friend.

PS: She recently became listless and began refusing food and water. Despite emergency interventions by her caring vets, we were unable to stabilize her. So, with deep regret and sadness, we said goodbye our bunny furred friend this week. W and I glass-clinked and drank fine bourbon long into Thursday night swapping tales of her times with us. They were as good as they get. Angel’s likely somewhere up and out there hanging with her bubba, kitten days nurse maid, and home-boy cat Honey Boy.

Honey Boy (l) and Angel (r) 2014

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