For those who've been inquiring about the latest on Buddy....

Well, I've finally answered one of the questions I've had about the whole of
the Boo clan (named for the first cat adopted out of this group, Boo, the cat
with one blue eye and one green eye). I suspected that one of the two
progenitors of this group was a siamese, givens ome of the markings, a
suspicion recently confirmed when one came out with all the siamese recessive
genes....

And now Buddy, the king of the recessive genes, has answered the other half of
that question. The other progenitor was a Maine coon cat...which is what he
is, in spades.

Maine coon cats are big, very funny, very predatory (in a cute way) cats that
can get to be 25 pounds or better. Not only does Buddy have all the markings,
inclusive of the big sweeping tail that's as long as he is...at 8 months he is
already 12 pounds without an ounce of fat there anywhere. By the time he
finishes growing -- and Maine coon cats can grow into their third year -- he
will be big enough to have his own zip code.

I have let a furred Godzilla into my home.

They are also known as the clowns of the cat species...as evidenced pretty much
every day, inclusive of the day he found the bag of plastic peanuts, rolled
around in same, until static electricity had covered him nose to tail in
phosphorescent green styrofoam peanuts until you couldn't see a trace of
fur...and went parading around the house as proud as if he'd just discovered
radium (which, given the green color, seemed about right). I scraped them off,
and they kept flying back onto him drawn by the static, but finally got them
all off...he ran off...I turned around...and he had done exactly the same thing
again. This time the pursuit went all over the house, leaving little bits of
peanut over every square inch.

He doesn't meow, he chirrups and trills, Maine coon traits. So he wanders the
house, just talking to himself all day. I think he's worried about the
economy, but I'm not sure.

He's also the poster child for attempted suicide. Leaving out how he was
found, every day he does something to elicit a shriek of horror from me. In a
ten minute span of time, for instance, he went from trying to chew through a
power cord at the socket (sticking his claws into the open socket below for
leverage), to wrapping the mouse cord under my desk around his neck like a
noose, and finally, when chased out of my office, I looked out to find him
sticking his paw into the toaster.

It's like that every day with him. Every. Day.

I don't know where he came from, but he does seem in an awful big hurry to get
back there. Whether he or I survive this process only the universe knows.

If anyone sees a mushroom cloud rising from the Los Angeles area someday, you
will know that Buddy finally hit the big time....

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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