My Blacky Cat 7

 I have a studio apartment; there is not a great deal of extra space here.  Perfect, really, I thought, for me and a cat.  I gave my cat the best life I could.  There was always water in his bowls and most likely, there was dry food for him to graze on.  His cat box was almost always cleaned and ready for him to use; he was very good about the cat box until the last night or two of his life.  He did not look happy about that.

We went through three of these scratching posts:

These were angular posts wrapped in rope, that took about three years of dedicated, 14- 16 pounds of cat scratching.  Cardboard boxes were not immune; the scratching posts were meant to pull my cat’s dedicated efforts away from the couch and the cardboard boxes organizing my stuff.

I was sorta scared of his claws; and ya know, he DID send me to the hopital with them once.  Boxes, had they any consciouness, would have been terrified.  Blacky Cat was murder on cardboard boxes.

His cat carrier was always in it’s place under my bed:

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The carrier is in a direct line of sight from my desk:

Blacky could open his eyes and see me at my desk; he slept here a lot.

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He slept here in the summers:

That is my "paperbag drawer" in the kitchen.  Blacky took it over because he could stand up and put his front paws on the top of the drawer and easily pull it out to jump into.

I never did get my camera out and catch that; he was pretty fast and slick about it.

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Outdoors to Blacky Cat was either out on my balcony:

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Or out in the hallway:

After sundown, he loved to go out in the hallway and walk around, patrolling HIS world.

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He would spend hours out here, if I forgot the door was open:

In fact, he would come out here to REALLY stretch; first his front paws, then his back and his back paws, then he’d roll from side to side, purring and happy.

I think he had a good life here.

cont’d

 

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