Lo these many years ago

We almost never get brand-new kitties.  Most of our cats have been second-hand.  Years ago we took in a cat from a friend who was a biker, and who said, "If that cat doesn't stop peeing on my stuff I'm going to have to use him for target practice."  Thus we acquired Bosco Benvenutti, the polar cat.  He had been discovered as a kitten in Denali Park in Alaska by the biker's sister.  He subsequently spend several years with her as an indoor-outdoor cat in a rough neighborhood of Washington DC (I think of those as his war years.) She moved to finer digs where she couldn't keep cats, so her brother took the old boy in.  And then he came to us.

I thought of Bosco as an old peasant who knew that we didn't want him peeing on things, but couldn't see any reason to stop.  But, whenever we fed him, he would first rub his face against our feet in gratitude.  And as a lap cat, he was superb, purring like a small diesel engine and gazing at us with adoring eyes, saying in his own cat fashion, "Thank you for not hurting me.  Thank you for feeding me and taking care of me. Thank you for warmth and safety and kindness."

So we lived with his nasty habits, putting clear Contact paper on the walls and furniture, and using quantities of Nature's Miracle pet deodorizer. The first year we had him, he felt impelled to spray the Christmas tree early and often.  Cat urine dissolves the paint off Christmas tree ornaments.  From then on, as long as Bosco lived with us, we put the tree too high for him to pee on.  End of that problem.  He sometimes sat and gazed wistfully up at it, but we were able to arrange it so he couldn't get his tail end high enough unless he stood on his front paws.  And he never tried that.

But we had all those perfectly good, if nasty, ornaments.  So I put on my rubber gloves, got a bucket of hot water with bleach, and scrubbed them clean.  The paint slipped off like the skin off blanched peaches. Then I had a bunch of clear glass ornaments.  Feeling crafty, I sprayed them white with a rattle can, then took black paint and put faces on them.  I now have a host of quirky little faces peering through the branches of my Christmas tree.

Bosco has finally gone to that great lap in the sky, but whenever I decorate for Christmas, I think of him.