Apollo
Ras Phoebus Apollo
May 1992 - December 2000
______________________________________
The Cat With Many Names
I found him in a vetinary clinic in Savannah Georgia some time in june of 1992. My girl friend jayme and i had been looking to adopt a cat as we had just moved out of the dorms and into our own place, 18 west Hull st , top floor. We had just been there a month or less and a few days before had adopted two kittens ,two brothers who we named clem and jasper. They were cute enough , Both grayish ,clem a more solid creamy gray and white, jasper the clasic tiger stripes. Like i said cute , but nothing that struck me as unique.
You see I am a cat person. I’ve always had them and many at that. Occasionally you meet one that is special. My mother breads them now so twenty something cats (kittens included) in a house is not strange to me although i’ll admit alot to live with. There had always been at least two. I say this because since I was that age we had them and they kept coming ever since. We had two standard poodles and a cat , My mother and I in a apartment on west 68th street in New York. It Was 1975. I was almost three. This was when our second cat came to live with us. I seem to be jumping around in time but to understand my relationship with Apollo i have to remember the reason i got him.
He was a tiny little fellow with a just healed broken leg and bleeding toes. He had been declawed that day, something we regreted and have never done to a cat since. This is one of my strongest memories of childhood, sitting on the bathroom tiles holding this bleeding little guy while my mom wraped his toes in toilet paper and our other cat Snuffalofogus, of sesame street fame, looked on with curios knowing.
He was solid black with yellow green eyes , part siamese and had that particular to siamese howling meow. I loved his voice. As he grew he taught me to talk like he did. We would play this call and response game, first him and then my imitation and then him again. I got quite good at it and we would make this sound to each other for some time.
We called him Ally. Partly for Ally Cat as thats what he was but also because of what my father had named him. My parents had been divorced for little over a year and my father found this cat outside his appartment on 65th street with a broken leg. He kept the cat till its leg healed and then named him Alamony and gave him to my mother . Bitting humor between my parents but that was between them. I was in love and that was the most important part for everyone involved.
We were brothers of a special kind. Our bond grew. We understood each other. He followed me all over the house and slept on the pillow next to mine every night . Ally watched over me. He was there for me the night my mom brouht this guy home from a date. He was drunk and got drunker. When it was time for me to get into bed he came in and “tucked” me in, Telling me that i’d better be a good boy for my mother and not the little bastard he knew I was, all the while jabbing me in the chest with his finger and breathing his hot rotten grape breath in my face . I think my mom knew somthing had happened from my face and his drunken aura when she came in the room because she promptly kicked him out . Then she and Ally came back to me and as she stroked my head Ally curled up next to my pillow and purred loud ,vibrating me to sleep .
- to be continued:
May 1992 - December 2000
______________________________________
The Cat With Many Names
I found him in a vetinary clinic in Savannah Georgia some time in june of 1992. My girl friend jayme and i had been looking to adopt a cat as we had just moved out of the dorms and into our own place, 18 west Hull st , top floor. We had just been there a month or less and a few days before had adopted two kittens ,two brothers who we named clem and jasper. They were cute enough , Both grayish ,clem a more solid creamy gray and white, jasper the clasic tiger stripes. Like i said cute , but nothing that struck me as unique.
You see I am a cat person. I’ve always had them and many at that. Occasionally you meet one that is special. My mother breads them now so twenty something cats (kittens included) in a house is not strange to me although i’ll admit alot to live with. There had always been at least two. I say this because since I was that age we had them and they kept coming ever since. We had two standard poodles and a cat , My mother and I in a apartment on west 68th street in New York. It Was 1975. I was almost three. This was when our second cat came to live with us. I seem to be jumping around in time but to understand my relationship with Apollo i have to remember the reason i got him.
He was a tiny little fellow with a just healed broken leg and bleeding toes. He had been declawed that day, something we regreted and have never done to a cat since. This is one of my strongest memories of childhood, sitting on the bathroom tiles holding this bleeding little guy while my mom wraped his toes in toilet paper and our other cat Snuffalofogus, of sesame street fame, looked on with curios knowing.
He was solid black with yellow green eyes , part siamese and had that particular to siamese howling meow. I loved his voice. As he grew he taught me to talk like he did. We would play this call and response game, first him and then my imitation and then him again. I got quite good at it and we would make this sound to each other for some time.
We called him Ally. Partly for Ally Cat as thats what he was but also because of what my father had named him. My parents had been divorced for little over a year and my father found this cat outside his appartment on 65th street with a broken leg. He kept the cat till its leg healed and then named him Alamony and gave him to my mother . Bitting humor between my parents but that was between them. I was in love and that was the most important part for everyone involved.
We were brothers of a special kind. Our bond grew. We understood each other. He followed me all over the house and slept on the pillow next to mine every night . Ally watched over me. He was there for me the night my mom brouht this guy home from a date. He was drunk and got drunker. When it was time for me to get into bed he came in and “tucked” me in, Telling me that i’d better be a good boy for my mother and not the little bastard he knew I was, all the while jabbing me in the chest with his finger and breathing his hot rotten grape breath in my face . I think my mom knew somthing had happened from my face and his drunken aura when she came in the room because she promptly kicked him out . Then she and Ally came back to me and as she stroked my head Ally curled up next to my pillow and purred loud ,vibrating me to sleep .
- to be continued:
posted by surfacebeauty at 1:00 PM
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